Conclusion: The Abstractions of Homo Economicus: Now a Stomach, Now an Anus
The modern impasse hails for the Arabic reading subject a crisis in symbolic identification: there is a retreat of the discourse of the master, a crisis in the symbolic and the relationship between language and law comes to fore. The nineteenth century in particular is marked by the emergence of a neurotic subject (Bustani) obsessed with questions of origins (original sin, origins of language, origins of society and habit, origins of culture) and a hysteric subject (Shidyaq) that asks: what do you want of me? The problem of origins does not cease to repeat itself in the corpus of texts from the time, it takes the shape of a compulsive reposing of the questions of beginnings and ends: where does taste come from (inclination, disposition, acquired)? What is the origin of sociality? How does habit originate? What is the origin of language? How to write a history of culture? When and how does culture originate? How does one become a woman?