Foundations of Modern Arab Identity
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Foundations of Modern Arab Identity (Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2004) is a book-length study of the Nahda, or Arab Renaissance, by Arab American scholar Stephen Sheehi, that critically engages the "intellectual struggles that ensued when Arab writers internalized Western ways of defining themselves and their societies" in the mid-1800s.[1]
Summary
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Among the first of a wave of scholars to apply post-colonial and post-structural theory, most notably the theory of
Foundations of Modern Arab Identity is a cornerstone for Nahdah Studies, critically re-examining the intersection of European colonialism and the creation of Arab modernity. Reframing the conception of modern
As this epistemology is based on priorities of indigenous and colonialist capitalist development and Western political hegemony, recast in the form of liberalism and Western cultural and superiority, intellectual paradigms, political programs, and visions of new national social order among Arab thinkers inevitably always express "lack" as the core of Arab identity because it is engaged in an endless struggle of authority and "subjective presence" with the West, who otherwise accuses Arabs as being inherently "backwards". This condition of failure is written into Arab subjectivity by Arabs themselves, internalizing racist notions of Arab otherness that accompany the "modern", humanist, Enlightenment project. Hence, what is self-diagnosed as "the inherent failure of Arab culture and "identity" is not proof of the inability of the Arab world to enter into modernity but in fact is precisely a condition of it.[2] Hence, Foundations of Modern Arab Identity reveals that a "spectral European presence" is ever present in Arab modernity and its paradigms of Arab identity.[3]
Critical reception
Middle East scholar Orit Bashkin stated that "Sheehi’s work is an innovative and important contribution to the field of Arabic literature, Arab culture, and intellectual history" is noted for its "imaginative outlook on the ways in which we read the texts that make up the canon of the Arab nahda," otherwise known as the Arabic Renaissance.[4] Bashkin added that "Sheehi's selection of texts is unique and original. Instead of focusing on either works in social thought or narrative prose, the book studies a variety of texts - pamphlets, newspaper articles, and philosophical tracts as well as maqamat, novels, and sketches - in an attempt to explicate new conversations and ideas, which were articulated in different genres and linguistic modes."[4] Anthropologist Lucia Volk writes that Sheehi proves that these intellectual "elites actively produced indigenous ideologies of modernity while struggling against the overwhelming powers of Western colonialism."[2]
See also
References
- .
- ^ .
- ISBN 978-0-549-73759-9.
- ^ a b Bashkin, Orit (2008). "Review of Foundations of Modern Arab Identity". Middle East Journal. 62 (2): 354–356 – via JSTOR.