In the wake of the Arab uprisings, the Middle East descended into a frenzy of political turmoil and unprecedented human tragedy which reinforced regrettable stereotypes about the moribund state of Arab intellectual and cultural life. This volume sheds important light on diverse facets of the post-war Arab world and its vibrant intellectual, literary and political history. Cutting-edge research is presented on such wide-ranging topics as poetry, intellectual history, political philosophy, and religious reform and cultural resilience all across the length and breadth of the Arab world, from Morocco to the Gulf States. This is an important statement of new directions in Middle East studies that challenges conventional thinking and has added relevance to the study of global intellectual history more broadly.
Chapter 1. Introduction: Arabic Intellectual History between the Postwar and the Postcolonial
Chapter 2. Changing the Arab Intellectual Guard: On the Fall of the udabaʾ, 1940–1960
Chapter 5. Modernism in Translation: Poetry and Intellectual History in Beirut
Chapter 6. The Specificities of Arab Thought: Morocco since the Liberal Age
Chapter 7. Sidelining Ideology: Arab Theory in the Metropole and Periphery, circa 1977
Chapter 10. Egyptian Workers in the Liberal Age and Beyond
Chapter 11. Reviving Qasim Amin, Redeeming Women’s Liberation
Chapter 12. Turath as Critique: Hassan Hanafi on the Modern Arab Subject
Chapter 13. Summoning the Spirit of Enlightenment: On the Nahda Revival in Qadaya wa-shahadat
Chapter 14. Revolution as Ready-Made
Chapter 16. Where Are the Intellectuals in the Syrian Revolution?
Chapter 17. The Intellectuals and the Revolution in Syria