Contemporary Arab Thought
Contemporary Arab Thought

Author: Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 0231144881

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During 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.

Rituals of Memory in Contemporary Arab Women’s Writing
Rituals of Memory in Contemporary Arab Women’s Writing

Author: Brinda Mehta

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2007-04-26

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9780815631354

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This volume carefully assesses fixed notions of Arab womanhood by exploring the complexities of Arab women’s lives as portrayed in literature. Encompassing women writers and critics from Arab, French, and English traditions, it forges a transnational Arab feminist consciousness. Brinda Mehta examines the significance of memory rituals in women’s writings, such as the importance of water and purification rites in Islam and how these play out in the women’s space of the hammam (Turkish bath). Mehta shows how sensory experiences connect Arab women to their past. Specific chapters raise awareness of the experiences of Palestinian women in exile and under occupation, Bedouin and desert rituals, and women’s views on conflict in Iraq and Lebanon, and the compatibility between Islam and feminism. At once provocative and enlightening, this work is a groundbreaking addition to the timely field of modern Arab women’s writing and criticism and Arab literary studies.

Contemporary Arab Women Writers
Contemporary Arab Women Writers

Author: Anastasia Valassopoulos

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-03-10

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 1134260865

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This book engages with contemporary Arab women writers from Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon and Algeria. In spite of Edward Said’s groundbreaking reappraisal of the uneven relationship between the West and the Arab world in Orientalism, there has been little postcolonial criticism of Arab writing. Anastasia Valassopoulos raises the profile of Arab women writers by examining how they negotiate contexts and experiences that have come to be identified with postcoloniality such as the preoccupation with Western feminism, political conflict and war, the social effects of non-conformity and female empowerment, and the negotiation of influential cultural discourses such as orientalism. Contemporary Arab Women Writers revitalizes theoretical concepts associated with feminism, gender studies and cultural studies, and explores how art history, popular culture, translation studies, psychoanalysis and news media all offer productive ways to associate with Arab women’s writing that work beyond a limiting socio-historical context. Discussing the writings of authors including Ahdaf Soueif, Nawal El Saadawi, Leila Sebbar, Liana Badr and Hanan Al-Shaykh, this book represents a new direction in postcolonial literary criticism that transcends constrictive monothematic approaches.

Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought
Trends and Issues in Contemporary Arab Thought

Author: Issa J. Boullata

Publisher: Suny Press

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 576

ISBN-13:

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This book focuses on contemporary Arab thought during the past twenty years, especially since the 1967 Arab defeat in the Six Day War. Well-known Arab writers are studied, and their unprecedented and anguished exercise of self-examination and self-criticism is explored. A number of Arab thinkers are presented for the first time in English. Here is an account of some of the most recent intellectual trends in the Arab world. As the writers grapple with the Arab desire for social change, with ideas of freedom and equality and social justice, and with the problem of accommodating Arab culture to modern times, their will to preserve their national identity is displayed. The role played by Islam in the current Arab discourse is analyzed as Arab intellectuals creatively interpret their present predicament in order to make it meaningful in the present day. Arab thought is seen here to be in crisis as it reflects this reality and questions the legitimacy of Arab political regimes. Much of the present turmoil in the Arab world can be better understood in light of this insightful treatment of contemporary Arab thinkers because it shows how the Arabs themselves feel, what they think about their own contemporary life, and how they envision their future.