The Politics of Writing Islam: Voicing Difference

by Mahmut Mutman

Overview

The Politics of Writing Islam provides a much-needed critique of existing forms of studying, writing and representing Islam in the West. Through critiquing ethnographic, literary, critical, psychoanalytic and theological discourses, the author reveals the problematic underlying cultural and theoretical presuppositions. Mutman demonstrates how their approach reflects the socially, politically and economically unequal relationship between the West and Islam.

While offering a critical insight into concepts such as writing, power, post-colonialism, difference and otherness on a theoretical level, Mutman reveals a different perspective on Islam by emphasizing its living, everyday and embodied aspects in dynamic relation with the outside world - in contrast to the stereotyped authoritarian and backward religion characterized by an omnipotent God.

Throughout, Mutman develops an approach to culture as an embodied, everyday, living and ever changing practice. He argues that Islam should be perceived precisely in this way, that is, as an open, heterogeneous, interpretive, multiple and worldly belief system within the Abrahamic tradition of ethical monotheism, and as one that is contested within as well as outside its 'own' culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781441165244
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/16/2014
Series:	Suspensions: Contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate Thought
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Mahmut Mutman teaches cultural and critical theory and is the co-ordinator of the Program in Cultural Studies at Istanbul Sehir University, Turkey. He has widely published on orientalism, postmodernism, nationalism, and Islam.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I: Ethnographies: Writing Culture
1. Writing Culture: the Name of Man
2. Native Speaker, Master Audience
3. Exchange Past and Future
Part II: Literatures: Crossing Culture
4. Resonance of Light: Reading T.E. Lawrence
5. Nomadism or Sovereignty: Location of Culture
Part III: Theologies: the Voice of the Other
6. Orphan Religion
7. Reciting: the Voice of the Other
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"In The Politics of Writing Islam, Mahmut Mutman has produced an admirably clear and finely argued account of the complex problems that arise whenever Islam is posited as an object of knowledge. In critical readings of exemplary works in a variety of fields, ranging from ethnography and travel writing to discussions of gender among Muslim intellectuals and novelists, Mutman explores how Islam typically stands in for something else: culture, nation, identity. With deft support from Jacques Derrida and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Mutman shows how the emergence of a new phase of 'political Islam' in the last four decades marks a crisis of legitimacy, no longer dominated by opposition to neo-colonialism and the West, but a struggle to frame a democratic politics within Islamic discourse." --Gerald Maclean, Professor of English, University of Exeter, UK

"Whose Islam? When did Islam first become political? This exhilarating and rigorous book ranges from ethnography to literature to theology, hanging out with Pierre Bourdieu in Algeria, debating with Fethi Benslama, Saba Mahmoud, Mehdi Abedi and Michael M. J. Fischer, James Clifford, Alain Badiou, Assia Djebar, and Abdelkabir Khatibi, and shedding light on imperialism, colonialism, global capitalism, Islamic disputation, Sufism, and struggles for democracy from Istanbul to Cairo. Everyone should follow Mutman into the desert with the imperialist adventurer T. E. Lawrence, and Edward Said and Gilles Deleuze, and take to the road with the Sufi nomad Isabelle Eberhardt, who observes, 'I am quite aware this way of life is dangerous, but the moment of danger is also the moment of hope'. The Politics of Writing Islam is a triumph of the spirit of the Qur'an's Sura 30 Ayat 22, in which the very 'variations in your languages and your colours' beckon as revelatory signs against racism and authoritarian identity politics everywhere." --Donna Landry, Professor of English, University of Kent, UK

"This book is an excellent analysis of the treatment of Muslim societies and Islam in contemporary social theory, literature, and travel writing. Reading a dazzling array of genres, Mahmut Mutman reveals the underlying thread of Orientalist preoccupations that saturates these writings from various Western disciplines. Challenging innovations in postmodern ethnography, Mutman skillfully deconstructs these to demonstrate how anthropology remains a key site for colonial conceptions of the Western subject.
The Politics of Writing Islam is indispensable reading for scholars of 'political' Islam as well as those interested in understanding Western investments in their phantasies of Muslim peoples. Mutman's deep familiarity with critical theory secures his position as a leading cultural critic." --Sunera Thobani, Associate Professor, University of British Columbia, Canada, and author of Exalted Subjects: Studies in the Making of Race and Nation in Canada

"The Politics of Writing Islam provides a much-needed critique of existing forms of studying, writing and representing Islam in the West . . . While offering a critical insight into concepts such as writing, power, post-colonialism, difference and otherness on a theoretical level, Mutman reveals a different perspective on Islam by emphasizing its living, everyday and embodied aspects in dynamic relation with the outside world" --Critical Theory blog (voted #1 Critical Theory Book of 2014)

From the Publisher

The Politics of Writing Islam provides a much-needed critique of existing forms of studying, writing and representing Islam in the West . . . While offering a critical insight into concepts such as writing, power, post-colonialism, difference and otherness on a theoretical level, Mutman reveals a different perspective on Islam by emphasizing its living, everyday and embodied aspects in dynamic relation with the outside world

Critical Theory blog (voted #1 Critical Theory Book of 2014)

This book is an excellent analysis of the treatment of Muslim societies and Islam in contemporary social theory, literature, and travel writing. Reading a dazzling array of genres, Mahmut Mutman reveals the underlying thread of Orientalist preoccupations that saturates these writings from various Western disciplines. Challenging innovations in postmodern ethnography, Mutman skillfully deconstructs these to demonstrate how anthropology remains a key site for colonial conceptions of the Western subject.
The Politics of Writing Islam is indispensable reading for scholars of 'political' Islam as well as those interested in understanding Western investments in their phantasies of Muslim peoples. Mutman's deep familiarity with critical theory secures his position as a leading cultural critic.

Sunera Thobani

Whose Islam? When did Islam first become political? This exhilarating and rigorous book ranges from ethnography to literature to theology, hanging out with Pierre Bourdieu in Algeria, debating with Fethi Benslama, Saba Mahmoud, Mehdi Abedi and Michael M. J. Fischer, James Clifford, Alain Badiou, Assia Djebar, and Abdelkabir Khatibi, and shedding light on imperialism, colonialism, global capitalism, Islamic disputation, Sufism, and struggles for democracy from Istanbul to Cairo. Everyone should follow Mutman into the desert with the imperialist adventurer T. E. Lawrence, and Edward Said and Gilles Deleuze, and take to the road with the Sufi nomad Isabelle Eberhardt, who observes, 'I am quite aware this way of life is dangerous, but the moment of danger is also the moment of hope'. The Politics of Writing Islam is a triumph of the spirit of the Qur'an's Sura 30 Ayat 22, in which the very 'variations in your languages and your colours' beckon as revelatory signs against racism and authoritarian identity politics everywhere.

Donna Landry

In The Politics of Writing Islam, Mahmut Mutman has produced an admirably clear and finely argued account of the complex problems that arise whenever Islam is posited as an object of knowledge. In critical readings of exemplary works in a variety of fields, ranging from ethnography and travel writing to discussions of gender among Muslim intellectuals and novelists, Mutman explores how Islam typically stands in for something else: culture, nation, identity. With deft support from Jacques Derrida and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Mutman shows how the emergence of a new phase of 'political Islam' in the last four decades marks a crisis of legitimacy, no longer dominated by opposition to neo-colonialism and the West, but a struggle to frame a democratic politics within Islamic discourse.

Gerald Maclean