The New Orientalists: Postmodern Representations of Islam from Foucault to Baudrillard
The west's Orientalism - its construction of an Arab or Islamic 'Other' - has been exposed and examined under the critical theory microscope and thoroughly expelled, it seems, from academic thought. At the same time postmodern thinkers from Nietzsche onwards have employed the motifs and symbols of the Islamic Orient within an ongoing critique of western modernity, an appropriation which, this hugely controversial book argues, runs every risk of becoming a new and more insidious Orientalist strain.Ian Almond sensitively yet rigorously examines the work of Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Julia Kristeva and Slavoj Zizek, as well as that of postmodern writers Jorge Luis Borges, Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk. In doing so he exposes the implications of this 'use' of Islam for both the postmodern project and for Islam itself. Taking apart the assumptions, omissions and contradictions inherent in these thinkers' approaches to Islam and to the Arab world, and drawing on the work of prominent Muslim thinkers including Ziauddin Sardar, Aziz Al-Azmeh and Bobby S. Sayyid, "The New Orientalists" highlights the difficulty of ever speaking truly about the 'Other'.
In light of the current Western climate of fear and hysteria surrounding the Islamic world, this groundbreaking project could hardly be more timely.
1136739118
The New Orientalists: Postmodern Representations of Islam from Foucault to Baudrillard
The west's Orientalism - its construction of an Arab or Islamic 'Other' - has been exposed and examined under the critical theory microscope and thoroughly expelled, it seems, from academic thought. At the same time postmodern thinkers from Nietzsche onwards have employed the motifs and symbols of the Islamic Orient within an ongoing critique of western modernity, an appropriation which, this hugely controversial book argues, runs every risk of becoming a new and more insidious Orientalist strain.Ian Almond sensitively yet rigorously examines the work of Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Julia Kristeva and Slavoj Zizek, as well as that of postmodern writers Jorge Luis Borges, Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk. In doing so he exposes the implications of this 'use' of Islam for both the postmodern project and for Islam itself. Taking apart the assumptions, omissions and contradictions inherent in these thinkers' approaches to Islam and to the Arab world, and drawing on the work of prominent Muslim thinkers including Ziauddin Sardar, Aziz Al-Azmeh and Bobby S. Sayyid, "The New Orientalists" highlights the difficulty of ever speaking truly about the 'Other'.
In light of the current Western climate of fear and hysteria surrounding the Islamic world, this groundbreaking project could hardly be more timely.
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The New Orientalists: Postmodern Representations of Islam from Foucault to Baudrillard

The New Orientalists: Postmodern Representations of Islam from Foucault to Baudrillard

by Ian Almond
The New Orientalists: Postmodern Representations of Islam from Foucault to Baudrillard

The New Orientalists: Postmodern Representations of Islam from Foucault to Baudrillard

by Ian Almond

eBook

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Overview

The west's Orientalism - its construction of an Arab or Islamic 'Other' - has been exposed and examined under the critical theory microscope and thoroughly expelled, it seems, from academic thought. At the same time postmodern thinkers from Nietzsche onwards have employed the motifs and symbols of the Islamic Orient within an ongoing critique of western modernity, an appropriation which, this hugely controversial book argues, runs every risk of becoming a new and more insidious Orientalist strain.Ian Almond sensitively yet rigorously examines the work of Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Julia Kristeva and Slavoj Zizek, as well as that of postmodern writers Jorge Luis Borges, Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk. In doing so he exposes the implications of this 'use' of Islam for both the postmodern project and for Islam itself. Taking apart the assumptions, omissions and contradictions inherent in these thinkers' approaches to Islam and to the Arab world, and drawing on the work of prominent Muslim thinkers including Ziauddin Sardar, Aziz Al-Azmeh and Bobby S. Sayyid, "The New Orientalists" highlights the difficulty of ever speaking truly about the 'Other'.
In light of the current Western climate of fear and hysteria surrounding the Islamic world, this groundbreaking project could hardly be more timely.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780857730930
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date: 07/20/2007
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 256
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Ian Almond teaches English and American Literature at the Europa-Universitat-Viadrina (Frankfurt Oder) and the Freie Universitat (Berlin). He is also the author of Sufism and Deconstruction (2004).

Table of Contents


Acknowledgements     vi
Introduction     1
Islam and the critique of modernity
Nietzsche's peace with Islam     7
Foucault's Iran and the madness of Islam     22
Derrida's Islam and the peoples of the book     42
Islam and postmodern fiction
Borges and the finitude of Islam     65
The many Islams of Salman Rushdie     94
Islam and melancholy in Orhan Pamuk's The Black Book     110
Islam, 'theory' and Europe
Kristeva and Islam's time     131
Islam and Baudrillard's last hope against the New World Order     156
Iraq and the Hegelian legacy of Zizek's Islam     176
Concluding thoughts     195
Notes     204
Bibliography     219
Index     225
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