scholarly journals EDWARD SAID'S INTELLECTUAL LEGACY IN THE ARAB WORLD

2004 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 76-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabry Hafez

This article discusses Edward Said's intellectual legacy in the Arab world. After examining Said's own cultural influences, the trajectory of his early academic career in America, and his ““re-orientation”” towards his Arab identity and culture following the 1967 war, the author focuses on the reception of his works in Arab intellectual circles. Though Orientalism was initially misperceived through the frame of identity politics, his theoretical writings exerted a steadily growing impact on Arab criticism, particularly by offering a way out of its methodological dependency on the West. The author suggests that Said's final role as an oppositional intellectual ““speaking truth to power,”” which reached beyond the Arab intelligentsia to a broader audience, may in the final analysis be his most lasting contribution.

This book is devoted to the life and academic legacy of Mustafa Badawi who transformed the study of modern Arabic literature in the second half of the twentieth century. Prior to the 1960s the study of Arabic literature, both classical and modern, had barely been emancipated from the academic approaches of orientalism. The appointment of Badawi as Oxford University's first lecturer in modern Arabic literature changed the face of this subject as Badawi showed, through his teaching and research, that Arabic literature was making vibrant contributions to global culture and thought. Part biography, part collection of critical essays, this book celebrates Badawi's immense contribution to the field and explores his role as a public intellectual in the Arab world and the west.


Author(s):  
Christian Joppke

AbstractThe rise of populism in the West is often depicted as opposition to a “double liberalism”, which is economic and cultural in tandem. In this optic, neoliberalism and multiculturalism are allied under a common liberal regime that prescribes “openness”, while populism rallies against both under the flag of “closure”. This paper questions the central assumptions of this scenario: first, that neoliberalism and multiculturalism are allies; and, secondly, that populism is equally opposed to neoliberalism and to multiculturalism. With respect to the alliance hypothesis, it is argued that only a diluted version of multiculturalism, in terms of diversity and antidiscrimination, is compatible with neoliberalism, which also needs to be sharply distinguished from liberalism. With respect to the dual opposition hypothesis, it is argued that the economic inequalities generated by neoliberalism may objectively condition populist revolts, but that these inequalities are not centrally apprehended and addressed in their programs; furthermore, it is argued that the rejection of multiculturalism indeed is central to populist mobilization, but that the two have important things in common, not least that both are variants of identity politics, if incompatible ones.


1973 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikki R. Keddie

The Middle East, as a geographical term, is generally used today to cover the area stretching from Morocco through Afghanistan, and is roughly equivalent to the area of the first wave of Muslim conquests plus Anatolia. It is a predominantly Muslim area with widespread semi-arid and desert conditions where agriculture is heavily dependent on irrigation and pastoral nomadism has been prevalent. With the twentieth-century rise of exclusive linguistic nationalisms, which have taken over many of the emotional overtones formerly concentrated on religious loyalties, it becomes increasingly doubtful that the Middle East is now much more than a geographical expression – covering an area whose inhabitants respond to very different loyalties and values. In Turkey since the days of Atatürk, the ruling and educated élites have gone out of their way to express their identification with Europe and the West and to turn their backs on their traditional Islamic heritage. A glorification of the ‘modern’ and populist elements in the ancient Turkish and Ottoman past has gone along with a downgrading of Arab and Persian cultural influences–indeed the latter are often seen as having corrupted the pure Turkish essence, which only re-emerged with Atatürk’s swepping cultural reforms. Similarly the Iranians are increasingly emulating the technocratic and rationalizing values of the capitalist West, and in the cultural sphere identify with the glorious civilization of pre-Islamic Iran. This identification goes along with a downgrading of Islam and particularly of the Arabs, which has characterized both radical nationalists like the late nineteenth-century Mîrzâ Âqâ Khân Kirmânî and the twentieth-century Ahmad Kasravâ1 and more conservative official nationalists such as the Pahlavi Shahs and their followers. The recent celebrations of the 2500th anniversary of the Persian monarchy, for example, were notable for their virtual exclusion of the Muslim ulama, though religious leaders of other religious were invited, and their lack of specifically Islamic references. In both Iran and Turkey, traditional Islam has become largely a class phenomenon, with the traditional religion followed by a majority of the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie, but rejected or radically modified by the more educated classes. With the continued spread of Western-style secular education it may be expected that the numbers of people identifying with nationalism and with the West (or with the Communist rather than the Islamic East) will grow.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-69
Author(s):  
Ibrahima Sarr

Senegal is a melting pot of several civilizations mainly originated from the West (Europe) and the East (the Arab world). Assuming that language and culture are intrinsically related, the settlement of those people and their status as dominant minority sparked and strengthened the use of their languages in formal domains. In the long ran, as they became domesticated, thus now considered African languages because they have contributed to mold the cultural identity of younger generation, they involve in all linguistic interaction. Arab, in its classical form, remains a symbol of Islam which earns it a certain degree of sacredness. Nevertheless the contact situation with the other languages forced it to crossbreed in special ways like borrowings and interferences. As for the other foreign languages, namely French, English, Spanish, and German at a least extent, they are made to carry the weight of local cultures.


Author(s):  
Richard van Leeuwen

This chapter examines the influence of Alf layla wa layla (A Thousand and One Nights), the ingenious Arabic cycle of stories, on the development of the novel as a literary genre. It shows that the Nights helped shape the European novel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The chapter first explains how the French translation of the Nights and its popularity in Europe led to its incorporation in world literature, creating an enduring taste for “Orientalism” in many forms. It then considers how the Nights became integrated in modern Arabic literature and how Arabic novels inspired by it were used to criticize social conditions, dictatorial authority, and the lack of freedom of expression. It also discusses the Nights as a source of innovation for the trend of magical realism, as well as its role in the interaction between the Arab world and the West.


2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 180-198
Author(s):  
Sándor Horváth

AbstractThe images of the “modern youth” and moral panics concerning the youth as a metaphor played an important part in the identity construction process throughout Cold War Europe. For Hungarian youth the West represented the land of promise and desires, albeit their knowledge of the Western other was highly limited and controlled by the socialist state. But how did the partly unknown West and its “folk devils” become the objects of desire in the East? For Western youngsters it seemed to be easier to realize their cultural preferences, however, youth cultures of the sixties were represented in the transnational discourses as manifestations of intra-generational, parent–adolescent conflicts not only in the Eastern Bloc, but also in Western democracies. The perception of the parent–child conflict became a cornerstone of the studies on the sixties, and the youth studies represented youth subcultures as “countercultures.” This paper addresses the role of the official discourse in the construction of “youth cultures” which lies at the heart of identity politics concerning youngsters. It looks at some of the youth subcultures which emerged in socialist Hungary and, in particular how “Eastern” youth perceived “the West,” and how their desires concerning the “Western cultures” were represented in the official discourse. It also seeks to show that borders created in the mind between “East” and “West” worked not only in the way that the “iron curtain” did, but it also became a cultural practice to create social identities following the patterns of Eastern and Western differentiation in the socialist countries.


1970 ◽  
pp. 10
Author(s):  
Lebanese American University

The AIDOS Project: The Institute for Women's Studies in the Arab World, (IWSAW) was selected to take part in an international project aimed at establishing four documentation centers -specialized in women's human, civic, labor and reproductive rights- in fourArab countries: Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The main objective of the project is to create an information network of women's organizations throughout the Mediterranean area.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Al Ghafri ◽  
Younes Audeh ◽  
Muhieddin Al-Gadallah

This study addresses the controversial question of which is more effective; teaching to the test, or teaching to communicate. It also highlights the viewpoints of some scholars about tests in different regions of the world; the Middle East and the West. The content of the research embedded in this article shows that there are a number of teachers who still believe in teaching to test following the traditional method, while some others think tests -especially in the elementary phase- cause anxiety, chaos and disappointment, and should be ruled out as a means of assessing students. In the Arab World, tests are still considered the main criterion by which students prove eligible to move to upper classes and get admitted to university programs. To provide the readers with a more concrete grasp of the discussed viewpoints, a questionnaire has been distributed among sixty-five male and female students taking English courses in the Foundation Program at Ibri College of Applied Sciences- the Sultanate of Oman. The results, implications, and applications will be discussed throughout this article while tackling the two major controversial issues: teaching to test or communicate.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 863-875
Author(s):  
Ayyad Echine

The Arab world, starting from December 2010 onward, has witnessed unprecedented revolutions during which many long-lasting Arab leaders were unseated. Western media has allotted much coverage to the uprisings especially in nations, such as Egypt, with which the West, namely the U.S, shares mutual political ambitions in the Middle East. This study analyses a sample of 101 editorials headlines that were written, between 2011 and 2018, by the NYT, the WP, the Guardian and the Telegraph and suggests that these papers treatment of the revolutions is reflective of Orientalist conceptualizations that inferiorize Egypt and the Egyptians. The study draws on Edward Saids postcolonial model of Orientalism (1978) to make sense of the selected sample and targets two main areas in critical media studies quantitative content analysis and critical discourse analysis (CDA), to uncover whether or not the four newspapers editorials headlines are suggestive of Orientalist modes of thought. The study concludes that the coverage under scrutiny connects the West with the East in a way that is characterized by power relations wherein the West is having the upper hand, and thus producing a rhetoric that is stereotypical and Orientalist.


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