Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective

by Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab

Overview

Durgaing the second half of the twentieth century, the Arab intellectual and political scene polarized between a search for totalizing doctrines—nationalist, Marxist, and religious—and radical critique. Arab thinkers were reacting to the disenchanting experience of postindependence Arab states, as well as to authoritarianism, intolerance, and failed development. They were also responding to successive defeats by Israel, humiliation, and injustice. The first book to take stock of these critical responses, this volume illuminates the relationship between cultural and political critique in the work of major Arab thinkers, and it connects Arab debates on cultural malaise, identity, and authenticity to the postcolonial issues of Latin America and Africa, revealing the shared struggles of different regions and various Arab concerns.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231144896
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	11/19/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab is associate professor of philosophy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. Her books include Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution: The Egyptian and Syrian Debates (Columbia, 2019).

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: Cultural Malaise and Cultural Identity in Twentieth-Century Western, Postcolonial, and Arab Debates
1. The First Modern Arab Cultural Renaissance, or Nahda: From the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Mid-Twentieth Century
2. Critique After the 1967 Defeat
The Existential Dramatization of Critique the Day After the Defeat: Saadallah Wannous's Theatrical Oeuvre
Humanistic Nationalism and Critical Reason: Qustantin Zurayq
The Critique of Religious-Metaphysical Thought: Sadeq Jalal al-Azm
The Critique of Ideology and Historicization: Abdallah Laroui
Gendering Critique: Nawal el-Saadawi and the Late-Twentieth-Century Arab Feminists
The Radicalization of Critique and the Call for Democracy: Reclaiming the Individual's Critical Faculties
3. Marxist, Epistemological, and Psychological Readings of Major Conferences on Cultural Decline, Renewal, and Authenticity
The Cairo Conference of 1971: "Authenticity and Renewal in Contemporary Arab Culture"
The Kuwait Conference of 1974: "The Crisis of Civilizational Development in the Arab Homeland"
The Cairo Conference of 1984: "Heritage and the Challenges of the Age in the Arab Homeland: Authenticity and Contemporaneity"
Critique in These Conferences: The Fixation on Tradition and the Intellectualization of the Malaise
4. Critique in Islamic Theology
From the Unthought and the Unthinkable to the Thinkable: Mohammed Arkoun
The Historicity of Revelation and the Struggle for Thought in the Time of Anathema: Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd
Feminist Historicization of Religious Traditions: Nazira Zain al-Din, Fatima Mernissi, and Leila Ahmed
An Islamic Theology of Liberation: The "Islamic Left" of Hassan Hanafi
A Christian Arab Theology of Liberation: Naim Ateek and Mitri Raheb in Palestine-Israel
On the Potential for Critique in Traditional Islam: Talal Asad's Analysis of the Public Criticism by Ulemas in Saudi Arabia
Islamic Critique and the Cultural Malaise
5. Secular Critique
Critique of the Exclusive Monopoly over "True" Islam: Farag Fouda
The Importance of Keeping the Debate on the Human Level: Fouad Zakariyya
Critique of the Essentialist and Romantic Conception of Identity: Aziz al-Azmeh
Critique of the Islamicization of Knowledge and the Quest for an Indigenous Social Science: Bassam Tibi, Abdelkebir Khatibi, and Hisham Sharabi
Critique of the Conciliatory Pattern of Thinking: Muhammad Jaber al-Ansari, Hisham Sharabi, and Nadeem Naimy
Secularism, Democracy, and Cultural Critique
Recentering the Historical, the Human, and the Partial: The Secular Call for Democracy and Human Rights
6. Breaking the Postcolonial Solitude: Arab Motifs in Comparative Perspective
The Western Debates
The Non-Western Postcolonial Debates
Common Leitmotivs and Arab Specifi cities
Shifting Priorities
Conclusion: The New Nahda Impulses, Reclaiming the Right to Freedom and Life
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Issa J. Boullata

The malaise of Arabs today, evident in their critiques of efforts to modernize their culture and society and preserve their identity, is intelligently analyzed in this encyclopedic book. Kassab shows that other nations have experienced similar periods of cultural angst before achieving resolutions specific to themselves. Her book is one of the few in English that can make the Arab world's cultural predicament understandable for open-minded outsiders.

— Issa J. Boullata, author of Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought

Ahmad Dallal

The views presented here are extremely diverse and reflect an intense internal debate among Arab intellectuals over epistemological, cultural, and political causes of decline. Kassab does an excellent job of distilling various ideas and surveying the field, thereby providing the first summative narrative of its kind.

— Ahmad Dallal, Georgetown University

Lewis Gordon

Kassab has written no less than a monumental intervention in contemporary intellectual history and philosophy. This treatise, rich in erudition and critical reflection, tears apart a web of misrepresentations. Kassab makes visible the ideas, wrought from continuous struggle, crucial to, as she puts it, 'the search for a thought of one's own,' through the power of her scholarship and rigorous argumentation. This work is a triumph, a major achievement in contemporary thought, and a must-read for anyone committed to a more nuanced understanding of the intellectual's role in anticolonial struggle in modern times. As a work in political thought and intellectual history it is destined to be a classic.

— Lewis Gordon, Laura H. Carnell, Temple University, and author of An Introduction to Africana Philosophy

Editorial Reviews

...a very important contribution to the field of Arab intellectual history...a much-need addition to our field.

International Journal of Middle East Studies - Orit Bashkin

[An] outstanding contribution that does an excellent job of exposing the self-analysis of contemporary Arab culture.

H-Levant - Yoav Di-Capua

[An] outstanding contribution that does an excellent job of exposing the self-analysis of contemporary Arab culture.

— Yoav Di-Capua

H-Levant

A must read for all those who want to understand the Arab world's cultural predicament.

— Issa J. Boullata

The Middle East Journal

A must read for all those who want to understand the Arab world's cultural predicament.

The Middle East Journal - Issa J. Boullata