13
Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab*
University of Bonn
Here is a periodical that aims at a collective cultural work, starting from the questions of everyday reality that concern the intellectual and his role as well as the ordinary person searching for bread, freedom and national dignity. The journal aims to connect the present Arab democratic culture with its cultural past, a culture that had struggled for rationality and human dignity as well as to build a civil society in the service of the common good, based on speech, action and a sense of initiative. The review does not seek new answers to existing questions as much as it attempts to re-formulate them.1
These lines constituted the mission statement of Qadaya wa-shahadat (Issues and Testimonies), a cultural journal published in Damascus between 1992 and 1993, and they appeared on the title page of each and every issue. In this chapter, I tease out the main cultural and political objectives of this short-lived yet substantial journal by looking at the opening editorials of its six issues in order to explore how the journal attempted to reconnect with the legacy of the nineteenth-century Arabic Nahda (renaissance), and why this should have taken place in the early 1990s, in particular. Qadaya wa-shahadat was hardly a unique effort in this direction. Even if references alternated between vilification and glorification, the Nahda was central to post-independence Arab thought across the region.
The appearance of Qadaya wa-shahadat needs to be situated in the larger context of late-twentieth century Arab intellectual history. In fact, studying the journal in context now functions as a kind of curatorial work, a labor of critical empathy, incumbent not only on students of modern and contemporary Arab thought but all the heirs to the intellectual, moral and political project that this generation of Arab thinkers pursued. It is striking that all four editors of the journal understood and defined their intellectual activities in terms of tanwir, or enlightenment. An examination of their editorials and other writings clarify why they wished to refer to their work as tanwir, and what they meant by the term. In fact, it is through this particular project of tanwir that they hoped to connect to the spirit and aims of the Nahda. The conclusion will offer an assessment of the merits and shortcomings of their work.
Six volumes of Qadaya wa-shahadat were published between 1992 and 1993. A seventh and final volume appeared in 2000 as a tribute to its leading editor and writer, the Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous (1941–97), whose illness had something to do with the disappearance of the journal. The editorial board also included Saudi/Jordanian/Iraqi novelist ʿAbd al-Rahman Munif (1933–2004), Palestinian literary critic Faysal Darraj (b. 1942) and Egyptian literary critic Gaber ʿAsfur (b. 1944).2 Wannous, Munif and Darraj were based in Damascus, while ʿAsfur lived in Egypt. All six issues were devoted to three major themes: the intellectual legacy of the Egyptian liberal thinker and “dean of Arabic literature,” Taha Husayn (1889–1973); the challenge and promise of modernity; and the historical formation of national culture.3 Each contained documents (wathaʾiq), selections (mukhtarat) and testimonies (shahadat); some also included translations (tarjamat). The documents were selections taken from the writings of prominent Arab thinkers of the twentieth century such as Mikhail Nuʿayma, Taha Husayn, Zaki Naguib Mahmud, Husayn Muruwwa, Yasin al-Hafiz, Abdallah Laroui, Mahdi ʿAmil, Salim Khayyata, Ghassan Kanafani and Sadiq Jalal al-ʿAzm. The testimonies were texts by major Arab writers from Gamal al-Ghitani and Sonallah Ibrahim to Haydar Haydar. As for the translations, they included pieces by Marshall Berman, Frederic Jameson, Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, Frantz Fanon and Edward Said. The inclusion of such wide-ranging materials addressed what the mission statement characterized as “Arab democratic culture.” The editors intended to present, and “make present,” Arabic intellectual and literary production within that democratic culture in order to offer its readers opportunities to (re)acquaint themselves with it while also engaging in conversation with its various ideas. The opening pieces of the first four volumes were written by Wannous, the fifth by Darraj, and the sixth by Munif. The introduction to the seventh volume was an homage to Wannous co-written by Darraj and Munif.
The Centrality of the Nahda in Contemporary Arab Critical Thought
The twentieth century started with a major political and administrative redefinition of the Arab lands. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the abolition of the Caliphate at the end of World War I, Arabic-speaking regions that had been Ottoman provinces for centuries became new political entities under Western colonial control. The French and the British administered internationally recognized Mandate states under the auspices of the League of Nations, ostensibly charged with the task of preparing these states for full sovereignty. It took the peoples of the region a few decades in order to liberate themselves from European tutelage and to set up independent states. Amidst high geo-political tensions, the mid-twentieth century witnessed decolonization, a wave of independence and vigorous state- and nation-building, filled with hopes of development and liberation yet still not entirely free from foreign intervention.
This period was also characterized by an intense struggle for power between various political parties and ideologies throughout the Arab world, which led to instability, the weakening of parliamentary and constitutional institutions and political and military coups. By the early 1970s, much of the post-independence enthusiasm and euphoria had dissipated, and a deep collective sense of disappointment, disillusionment and anxiety settled in. The regimes in power became increasingly autocratic, repressive, corrupt and inept at managing the common good and wealth of their nations. As was the case elsewhere in the Third World during the 1970s and 1980s, socio-economic conditions in several Arab countries worsened with the application of structural adjustment programs recommended by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank; these resulted in the removal of state-sponsored social safety nets and the drastic reduction of state employment. Riots against price increases for essential commodities broke out across the Arab world (Egypt 1977 and 1986, Morocco 1983, Tunisia 1984, Sudan 1982 and 1985, Lebanon 1987, Algeria 1988 and Jordan 1989).4 Furthermore, the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the Arab defeat against it in 1967 and the Egyptian-Israeli Camp David Accords in 1978 followed by the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979 were experienced by a vast majority of Arabs as episodes of political and cultural defeat. Finally, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 not only indicated for many the collapse of the Left but also the dwindling resources for the Arab Left, which found itself increasingly marginalized and buffeted by authoritarian regimes and rising Islamist forces. By the end of the twentieth century there was a widespread feeling of overwhelming despair and impotence (ʿajz), a mood prevalent throughout the Arab world during the early 1990s.
Out of such profound dismay Qadaya wa-shahadat aimed to revitalize an intellectual legacy that seemed vibrant, hopeful and free. For its editors, turning to the Nahda legacy was a way of reconnecting with the relative audacity, openness and plurality of voices and opinions that were typical of that earlier epoch but now seemed remote; their estrangement from the past was a direct consequence of the repression, despotism and censorship exercised by the post-independence regimes. Abdallah Laroui, Anouar Abdel Malek, Nassif Nassar and Elias Khoury, along with many other high-profile Arab intellectuals, called for another Nahda. As a means of finding an alternative to prevailing ideologies, a conscious effort was made to claim early Nahda thinkers as predecessors who offered a valuable stock of ideas.5
Beyond this urge to reclaim this liberal and plural past, though, there was also the need to explain why its reform projects and emancipatory promises had failed to materialize in the first place, to make sense of the nightmare that was the post-independence regimes. Syrian thinker Sadiq Jalal al-ʿAzm described the traumatic effect of the defeat in 1967 as a “thunderbolt” that made him realize how superficial and partial the achievements of the Nahda were with respect to reform and modernization.6 Indeed, this disappointment had turned into a profound crisis that led to radicalization in two directions: on the one hand, intellectual critique, and on the other hand, the search for alternative doctrinal solutions such as Islamism. Whereas the former saw in the Nahda an early modern attempt at enlightenment, which needed further growth and development, the latter tended to ignore the Nahda or else accuse it of causing the current crisis through its betrayal of an authentic Arab-Islamic tradition. Both responses were animated by two key questions of the post-1967 period: What were the achievements, promises and failures of the Nahda? And, what were the chances and challenges of producing a second Nahda?7
The editors of Qadaya wa-shahadat saw themselves as members of the post-independence generation, as militants struggling for justice, progress, sovereignty and freedom who were also disillusioned and marginalized, if not silenced altogether, forced to bear the brunt of successive disappointments and defeats. In a long conversation with Faysal Darraj, conducted in 1988, ʿAbd al-Rahman Munif described his generation as follows:
[W]e as a generation only lived defeats until now, and our disappointments are almost enough for generations, or so I fear. Or maybe every generation laments the luck of having been born in such a time. But on the whole if you compare the generation that was born between the two wars, and lived big dreams which soon were crushed, meaning that nothing was accomplished, you may find generations that were more satisfied than us, more understanding and accepting of their realities, better at coping with them. But we got filled too soon with dreams and then with the collapse of these dreams. Too big a gap developed between what we wanted to accomplish and what actually did get accomplished. Here you see a kind of inner devastation and bitterness that we did not expect; these [feelings] are always vivid in us and they express themselves in different forms. Even moments of joy are stolen or forced, meaning that there is no joy in the full sense.8
Munif added that he refused to give in to total despair, convinced that his fiction writing was one way of sustaining both hope and life. We find similar acknowledgement of the dismal realities of the late-twentieth-century Arab world in Qadaya wa-shahadat, but also such resistance to despair, the struggle to maintain hope and light by advocating critical thinking and human freedom and by denouncing totalizing salvation doctrines. The post-independence state was perceived to be the root of the problem and the main cause of this collapse.
Darraj engages Munif on the place of politics in his writing. Having once been a militant in the Iraqi Baʿth party, Munif resigned and left for Damascus, disappointed by his experience with political parties. He says that mistakes were made not only by the rulers but also by the vanguardist oppositional parties, who failed to stay in tune with their societies and to defend their causes. Even more discouraging was the fact that these parties didn’t engage in any serious work of critical self-reflection. However, this did not mean total disaffection from politics for Munif, as he continued his political struggle through different means, namely, the novel. In his introductory remarks, Darraj characterizes Munif’s literary oeuvre as highly political for critically tackling socio-political matters and raising thought-provoking questions. “ʿAbd al-Rahman Munif,” he states, “rejects the reality of despotism and defeat, and this rejection leads him to the act of writing.”9 Reflecting on his own literary criticism, Darraj has searched for writings that promote social transformation, however modestly. Contrary to scholarly expectations, his primary preoccupation as a literary critic is not with formal questions but the effective word (“al-kalima/al-fiʿl” [the word/act]).10 For the editors of Qadaya wa-shahadat, this notion of effectiveness in both thought and writing anchored in reality is one of the most valuable features of Nahda literature.
Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannous also embarked upon a journey from militancy to disappointment and despair, followed by the slow resumption of struggle in a more modest, long-term and resilient manner. In an interview filmed just before his death from cancer in 1997, Wannous spoke about his descent into despair and his attempted suicide.11 The low point for him was the 1978 Camp David agreement between Egypt and Israel, which indicated the betrayal of Arab solidarity for Palestinian and Arab rights against Israeli aggression. He soberly described the collapse of his dreams for justice, freedom and Arab unity, and his loss of faith in the value of writing itself. Nevertheless, sometime in the mid-1980s he resumed writing. Asked to give the 1996 World Theater Day speech, he concluded with the famous line “We are condemned to hope. This cannot be the end of history.”12
Saadallah Wannous Reads Taha Husayn, or, Towards an Archeology of Arab Enlightenment
Saadallah Wannous is a pioneering figure in modern Arab drama. His plays critique hypocrisy, religious fanaticism and intolerance as well as the abuse of power in Arab society and politics; they aim to raise critical awareness and call for individual and civil liberties. Wannous studied journalism in Cairo and later edited the cultural pages of the Lebanese daily al-Safir and the Syrian newspaper al-Thawra. After studying theatre in Paris, he returned to Syria to become the director of the historic Qabbani Theatre in Damascus, subsequently teaching at the Damascus Institute of Drama, which he helped to found in the late 1970s. For many years he also edited the journal Hayat al-Masrah (Life of the Theatre).
For Wannous, Qadaya wa-shahadat was both a standpoint and a testimony (mawqif wa-shahada), as he writes at the end of his introduction to the first volume, entitled, “In Lieu of a Presentation.” It was a standpoint in defense of reason, historical thinking, independence, progress and civil society; it was a testimony of the Arab yearning for enlightenment (tanwir) since the time of the Nahda, one that has been carried forward by innovative and committed thinkers but thwarted throughout modern Arab history by what he calls intellectual and political coups. The disruption of this enlightenment project led to what he calls the present time of collapses (zaman al-inhiyarat). Qadaya wa-shahadat would contribute to reclaiming modern Arab attempts at enlightenment – a task, he added, that might prove Sisyphean but that remained indispensable nonetheless.
In his introductory essay to the first issue devoted to Taha Husayn, Wannous explained that the volume was no paean to the centenary of the Egyptian thinker’s birth. Rather, the task was to reclaim his radical enlightenment legacy that had been marginalized for the last four decades. For Wannous, the enlightenment elements of Taha Husayn’s legacy involved a series of interwoven themes and critical interventions, all of which – as I shall argue – were central to the four editors of Qadaya wa-shahadat. Taha Husayn stood for historicizing Qurʾanic exegesis (tafsir) as well as the wider Islamic heritage (al-turath). According to Wannous, through his move from a theological approach that sanctified the past to a historical method that looked at the past as an objective becoming (sayrura mawduʿiyya) that was also part of a global human becoming, Husayn subjected the sacred to critique, thereby opening an epistemological space for freedom, self-awareness and progress.13 He added that sixty-four years after Husayn’s audacious study Fi al-shiʿr al-jahili (On Pre-Islamic Poetry) challenged the objectivity of the Qurʾan, few scholars would dare to do the same for fear of reprisal, including death sentences.14 Wannous recalled how Husayn once criticized al-Azhar for its outmoded pedagogy, ignorant sheikhs, backward mentality and inadequate attitude toward modern culture. Uncompromising in his stances on political apathy and unquestioning subservience to religious authority, Husayn demanded the separation of state from religion at a time when other self-proclaimed radicals and progressives were unwilling to do so.
Wannous valued Husayn’s universal humanism because it was based on connections with other cultures, exemplified in the contacts among Arab, Greek and Roman cultures. Husayn’s humanism was radical for its openness and egalitarianism towards cultural and national others. Meanwhile, Husayn also espoused what Yoav Di-Capua, elsewhere in this volume, calls “a deepening of the impact of colonial Enlightenment.” For his part, Wannous praised Husayn’s lifelong efforts to tie enlightenment goals to the lived reality of Arabs.
These political elements of Taha Husayn’s enlightenment legacy are needed today, according to Wannous. The 1952 Egyptian Free Officers’ coup showed disdain for democracy and political parties, many of which were banned, supposedly to prepare for democratic elections and constitutional rule. But what was installed instead was the rule of a “just despot,” as some early Nahda thinkers would have put it. Wannous lamented the exclusion of the people from politics (taghyib al-shaʿb), the confiscation of political engagement (musadarat al-ʿamal al-siyasi) and a conciliatory mode of thinking (al-fikr al-tawfiqi) that lacked clear intellectual, moral and political moorings.15 The upshot was the collapse of those enlightenment aspirations articulated by Husayn, even the unraveling (tafkik) of the Arab enlightenment project (al-mashruʿ al-tanwiri al-ʿarabi).
Husayn opposed the anti-democratic tendencies of the 1952 “revolution.” As early as January 1953 he expressed his opposition in an article in the magazine al-Kitab:
Egypt does not need anything as much as it needs the liberation of its sons’ minds, and if this were to happen, it could succeed in all domains of life … free reason does not accept the imposition by political power of opinion or a school of thought or a mode of expression, action or activity. Free reason does not accept dictatorship, irrespective of its color, objective or government style. We won’t approve of the revolution unless the power of reason conquers the minds of all citizens with knowledge; unless the horizons of reason widen to receive knowledge from all parts of the world; and unless the power of reason ceases to fear censors when it passes judgment.16
The revolutionary regime in Egypt stifled cultural and political expression and would not tolerate such advocacy of freedom and reason. Nasser silenced Husayn, even though his ideas could have helped the government undermine the popularity of the Islamists.
For Wannous, Husayn had not only been betrayed by Nasserism, but also by his fellow progressive intellectuals who were supposed to support him and his enlightenment project. Wannous mentions ʿAbd al ʿAzim Anis and Mahmud Amin al-ʿAlim and their 1955 book Fi al-thaqafa al-misriyya (On Egyptian Culture), in which they accused Husayn of elitism and intellectual feudalism, turning away from his ideas in the name of realism and positivism.17 Wannous charged that this positivism was in itself an ideological doctrine that at once attacked the principles of the Enlightenment and appeared alien to Egyptians. It was precisely such political and intellectual disavowals of universal humanism, according to Wannous, that thwarted Arab efforts towards enlightenment and led to the present state of collapse. Reclaiming Husayn’s project was not only the task of intellectuals but all socio-political forces willing to come out of the “dominant darkness.” Wannous concluded his essay:
Therefore … the task of reclaiming Taha Husayn and incorporating him into the context of the present is the responsibility of forces and parties, not only of intellectuals … As for this periodical, it is a standpoint and a testimony.18
The political reading of Arab malaise, the belief in critical thinking and free reason that Wannous put forward in his plays, for example, in the case of his celebrated work, Haflat samar min ajl 5 Huzayran (An Evening Entertainment for June 5), written immediately after the 1967 defeat and in which he identified the disenfranchisement of the people as the main cause for the debacle, can also be seen two decades later in Qadaya wa-shahadat. These convictions connected Wannous to Taha Husayn’s work and presented the Nahda as an Arab version of enlightenment that Wannous and his colleagues would summon in order to launch a new phase in the modern Arab project of tanwir.
Wannous and the Nahda: The Sisyphean Task of Sustaining the Light of Hope
In his introduction to the second issue of Qadaya wa-shahadat, Wannous discussed the life and times of Rifaʿa Rafʿi al-Tahtawi (1801–73) and Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi (1822/3–99), two pioneering figures of the Nahda. What he found inspiring about them was not their specific suggestions to improve the socio-political and cultural conditions of their societies, but the audacity and relative freedom with which they raised questions. For Wannous, these intellectual-activists on the cusp of modernity offered lessons of responsibility and commitment that ought to be recognized and followed today. Although one could blame the Nahda thinkers for lack of radicalism, epistemological fragility in their work, and/or Westernized mindsets, for Wannous the Nahda remained the most promising and liveliest period of modern Arab history, in which change was promoted and undertaken with creativity, confidence and optimism.
The point was not to defend the Nahda thinkers per se but to recognize a trend in their work that could lend itself to reflection and progress. Wannous argued that two crucial factors often get left out when assessing the Nahda project: colonialism and the post-independence state. Colonialism disrupted the Nahda projects of religious reform and cultural and political change; in addition to violent aggression, it led to ideological polemic and conceptual transformations. The West, both a source of inspiration and an object of curiosity to those yearning for change and improvement during that early period, became an enemy against which one had to defend oneself.
Al-Tahtawi, one of the leading figures of the Nahda, gained notoriety for his contributions to the modernizing projects of Mehmet Ali Pasha (who ruled Egypt from 1805 to 1848), first as the chaplain of a group of Egyptian young men sent to study in Paris between 1826 and 1831, and later as founder of the School of Languages in Cairo with a long career of teaching and translating works of Western secular thought. His memoir of traveling to Paris is regarded as one of the landmark publications of the Nahda.19 For Wannous, al-Tahtawi understood that the key to improving society was not only Western knowledge and science, but also its political system, specifically constitutional rule, civil liberties, the rule of law and legislative bodies. He endorsed modern schooling for all, including girls and those pursuing a religious education, as well as the dissemination of knowledge through translation. He creatively interpreted shariʿa, taking into consideration historical transformations. Al-Tahtawi, in other words, according to Wannous, prioritized history over rigid textual analysis. His wishes for change were shared by contemporaries such as Butrus al-Bustani, Marun Naqqash, Nassif al-Yazigi, Faris al-Shidyaq and Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi.20
Al-Tunisi wrote about his experiences as Grand Vizier of Ottoman Tunisia (1873–77), as Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul (1878–79) and as a political reformer in a book considered to be another landmark of the Nahda.21 He warned against the misleading (talfiqiyya) presentation of Europe as two separate and distinct realities: a Europe of goods and a Europe of reason, science and industry. Such a separation for al-Tunisi only encouraged and justified a relation of dependency wherein Arabs consumed European goods without adopting the principles of reason that could enable them to produce those goods themselves. Paradoxically, that separation would subsequently be advocated by the fiercest opponents of such dependency, who spoke in the name of defending identity, tradition and culture.22
Wannous insisted that attempts to explain Arab backwardness are all too often sought in the cultural realm rather than the political.23 From the very beginning, modern Arab intellectual history was interconnected with political and social history. Nahdawi thinkers weren’t interested in producing “laboratory knowledge.” They saw their writing as actively involved in living history, a form of intellectual work that was implicated in real-world issues. In the post-independence era, Arab intellectuals confront the same questions at stake during the Nahda but with less courage and freedom to tackle them.24 Wannous concludes:
one element remains absent, with some conspiracy to keep it absent so that the debate stays innocent, safe and elitist. This element is the state, or the political regime. And I don’t really know the point in holding conferences on modernization and the challenges of the present age without addressing the crucial factor in this process, namely the state. In fact, the national state, i.e. the post-independence state and the state for the recuperation of national dignity, betrayed its modernization promises as well as its promises of building a unified nation that enters the age with power and establishes itself. Some states even claimed legitimacy solely on modernization while burning the stages of its achievement. But here we are in the nineties and we are still backward countries, threatened by hunger, and inhabited by fear and despotism, in which the human being is the cheapest commodity.25
The critique of the post-independence state becomes indeed a pivotal concern for Wannous, Darraj and Munif, both in their Qadaya wa-shahadat essays and in the rest of their works.
Re-building the human is the main theme of Wannous’ introductory piece to the third issue, which also featured his lengthy interview with Syrian socialist philosopher Antun Maqdisi (1914–2005). In their conversation, both lamented the state of human, cultural, economic and political collapse in Arab life. The way forward was through education – building a modest nucleus of civil society, especially among the youth, in order to raise awareness and gradually prepare the ground for open civic dialogue. The paradox, according to Wannous, was that there must be a margin of freedom and an elementary civil society to start from, which was not possible given the levels of repression and devastation in the educational system.26 Although Maqdisi acknowledged this difficulty, he saw no alternative to the struggle to gradually reconstruct what had been destroyed. In fact, he asserted that change and modernization necessitated the construction of the human being (binaʾ al-insan), the constitution of a new Arab person anchored in his own history. If modernization had been a viable notion back in the 1960s, it later drowned in the rush to consumerism and the opportunistic manipulation of ideologies. Intellectuals only made things worse by supporting coups and hoping to accelerate modernization; not only were they impatient but they also wanted to replace the ruling elite and secure benefits for themselves.27 Maqdisi feared that it had become difficult to discuss modernization in a philosophically meaningful way.28
The next three issues of Qadaya wa-shahadat were devoted to national culture. In his fourth and last introduction Wannous criticized the “culturalist” understanding of national culture and argued instead for a historical and political approach shaped by the national struggle for freedom and dignity.29 First and foremost, he rejected deterministic conceptions of national culture, which eliminated human agency, canceled history and left no room for hope.30 By way of example, he presented the ideas of Algerian thinker Malek Bennabi (1905–73) and the Egyptian ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb (1906–66). Wannous faulted Bennabi for presenting a cyclical view of history that was basically restricted to tracking the rise and fall of civilizations, echoing Ibn Khaldun, on the one hand, and Spengler, on the other.31 By confusing the theological with the historical, Bennabi explained those cyclical movements in “mental” (dhihni), that is, moral, psychological and spiritual, terms, which was a reductionist approach, as far as Wannous was concerned, for its neglect of socio-economic and political factors. Bennabi focused on the moral and spiritual weakness that predisposed people, Muslims in this case, to be colonized, without taking into account the importance of invading armies and occupying administrations. Consequently, his proposed response to colonialism was a spiritual revival that disparaged politics and left out crucial questions such as: Who would reform the reformers? What social base would reform rely on?32
Sayyid Qutb set forth a more authoritarian yet also cyclical view of Islamic civilization, in which progressive history was all but eliminated. Islam was not to be understood as a source of Arab pride or social justice or a basis for morality in government and everyday life; it was the justification for the creation of a society governed by a literalist reading of the Qurʾan, ruled by God himself, not mortal humans.33 Wannous reminded his readers that such a situation had never been the case in the entirety of Islamic history, criticizing Qutb’s vision for its lack of any footing in historical reality.34 While also conceivable as an expression of protest against authoritarianism, Qutb’s Islamism nonetheless mirrored the violence and intolerance of Nasser’s authoritarian modenizing regime that it opposed. The keywords of Qutb’s philosophy – divine sovereignty (hakimiyya), excommunication (takfir), violent struggle (jihad), obedience to an emir and the cult of appearances (the veil, the beard, etc.) – fed on and nurtured ignorance, violence and sectarianism. According to Wannous, this was an example of cultural renewal devolving into regression, revivalism into idolatry.35
In order to avoid these pitfalls, the understanding of culture needed to be rooted in history and reality. Wannous was uneasy about the tendency of many Arab thinkers to intellectualize problems, that is, to reduce them to conceptual issues instead of grounding them in the historical reality of brutal despotic regimes (sharasat al-istibdad), the mismanagement and misappropriation of national wealth, the exacerbation and manipulation of sectarian divisions and the disregard for constitutions and laws.36 Recalling Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, Wannous insisted that the struggle for national culture had to be part of the broader struggle of the nation, including the struggle against both external and internal forces.37 At this juncture the intellectual couldn’t help but be part of both struggles:
[T]herefore, national culture is a solemn duty because it involves taking responsibility for the nation itself. Culture is an aspect of the nation’s existence, and so it is difficult, if not impossible, for the intellectual to shoulder this responsibility if they do not acquire historical consciousness and do not immerse themselves in reality, if they do not get involved in their people’s struggle for dignity and freedom …
National intellectuals today live a sad paradox. At the time when they are marginalized on two interconnected levels – the universal and the local – they find themselves asked to shoulder ever-growing tasks. They know that their means are diminishing day by day, in the face of the ever-widening wave of futility pushed by “victorious” capitalism, and in the face of the complex repression machine in their countries where absence of democracy, poverty, illiteracy, and useless media predominate. And yet, like Sisyphus … they are condemned to carry the boulder, and condemned not to expect – especially in these deprived days – any compensation. They must accept their marginalization, continue their work, be a witness … be a voice in the wilderness, an impulse. It is also important that they have no illusion about their role, and inadvertently let defeat creep into their consciousness. Therefore, let us carry the boulder… and carry on.38
The ironically hopeful Sisyphean intellectual depicted by Wannous is an important figure of post-independence tanwir. The paradoxical task was, on the one hand, to acknowledge the despair, the obstacles and the post-independence trauma, while on the other hand to simultaneously sustain hope and struggle for a better human future. The rosy narrative of anti-colonial struggle leading to a liberated, prosperous and just era of sovereignty as well as the set of ideologies that accompanied postcolonial nation- and state-building have been severely damaged by the “aftermath of sovereignty,” to use David Scott’s phrase.39 Wannous’ oeuvre, including his plays and his analytic writings, consistently aimed to cultivate hope against overwhelming odds in order to build critical consciousness among his fellow Arabs. In this sense, he remained true to the tanwiri project.
Faysal Darraj Creates Light from the Lived Darkness: The Nahda as Modern Arab Enlightenment
Faysal Darraj is a leading figure in Arab literary criticism, and one of the most articulate proponents of contemporary Arab enlightenment. After studying Marxist philosophy in France, he went on to become a prolific writer, with numerous books and articles that take on cultural and political issues confronting the Arab world, with a special focus on the modern Arab and Palestinian novel. Darraj lived between Beirut, Damascus and Amman, collaborating closely with the editors of Qadaya wa-shahadat and sharing their goals of tanwir. In his essay introducing issue five, Darraj situated the notion of “national culture” in the post-independence context, which was marked by cultural dependency and dominated by a “false universalism” that had been imposed by Western capitalism.40 Since the 1950s “national culture” had been impulsively defensive against external threats. Enlightenment ideals of universal humanity and historical progress dovetailed with the spread of capitalism and Eurocentric interests in order to generate a global discourse of development that concealed the harsh realities of structural dependency. Despotic regimes relied upon hollow binaries of authenticity and contemporaneity, tradition and renewal, identity and modernity, science and faith, all the while championing reductionist notions of cultural “invasion” and “dependency.”41
A pronounced focus on these issues masked more pressing socio-economic problems throughout the Arab world. Such “culture talk,” to use Mahmood Mamdani’s felicitous phrase, went hand in glove with esoteric ideologies that offered illusory answers to questions of culture even as people struggled for bread and human dignity.42 Arab champions of culture talk pushed against the exercise of human agency by projecting the inevitable coming of a better day instead of motivating people to make their own futures. For Darraj, such defeatist thought was little more than apologetic for a moribund reality. What was needed was critical thought capable of envisioning an alternative horizon. Recalling the ideas of al-Tahtawi, al-Kawakibi, al-Afghani, al-Rihani, al-Ghalayini, al-Tunisi and ʿAli Mubarak about improvement, reform and the importance of education, Darraj underlined the commitment of nahdawi thinkers to change while remaining anchored in the conditions of their societies.43 If Nahda thinkers were often accused of being overly Westernized, the sad irony for Darraj was that those who followed after them wound up acting like servants of Western interests in the name of cultural authenticity and religious traditionalism. Many who tried to initiate ideas for change, such as the Egyptian philosophers Hassan Hanafi and ʿAdil Husayn, failed to attain the clarity of Nahda reformers, ending up instead with doctrines that confused faith with reality.44
Given the state of generalized defeat, despotism had to be confronted. The problem of thought couldn’t be tackled without raising the question of political power. The Nahda project didn’t simply translate European thought for its own sake, but rather looked for the objective factors that allowed the West to become triumphant, in order to understand what led to the defeat of Arab-Islamic society. In other words, the Nahda read Western history in order to understand another history, its own, which was defeated by the West. This reading of the Nahda turns the relation between Europe and the Arab world into diagnostic (mushakhkhasa) knowledge, not ideological or political knowledge. In this sense, questions of the Nahda turned on those diagnostic-objective causes that led to the defeat, which, if allowed to endure, would only perpetuate the defeat. Despotism occupied a central location here, because the problem of thought – of philosophy and thinking – could not be adequately addressed in the age of defeat without engaging with the matter of political power.45 Darraj goes on:
And the question of political power is about the persecuted human being. Starting with the question of power gives Nahda thought the character of a comprehensive social project, and liberates it from the distorting (talfiqi) and the eclectic (intiqaʾi). The project raises the issue of the captive human (al-isnan al-muʿtaqal) and the means of their liberation from their inherited prison.46
This empowered and liberated human, anchored in his or her social context, was a central figure of the Nahda, according to Darraj, which is one reason why Nahda thought remained valuable and relevant. Such a commitment to confronting the question of political power made the Nahda project an authentic and inspiring intellectual movement. If Darraj advocated re-claiming the Nahda, this was not only because of its timeliness or the timelessness of the questions it raised. What impressed Darraj even more was the ethos through which nahdawi intellectuals debated those questions and answers.
After Qadaya wa-shahadat became defunct, Darraj continued to reflect on the definition and reception of the Nahda in contemporary Arab thought.47 In subsequent essays he characterized the Nahda as Arab enlightenment thought (al-fikr al-tanwiri). Meanwhile, he noted that what is interchangeably referred to as the Age of the Nahda (ʿasr al-nahda), the Age of Reform (ʿasr al-islah) or the Age of Enlightenment (ʿasr al-tanwir) required more precise conceptual definition. Despite its diversity, however, various thinkers of the Nahda expressed a common need to combat the negative conditions (suʾ al-hal) of their societies in the wake of colonialism. Egyptian reformer and journalist ʿAbdallah al-Nadim (1843/44–96) spoke of backwardness (taʾakhkhur), Syrian journalist ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi (1849–1902) of despotism (istibdad), Egyptian religious reformer Muhammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905) of stagnation (jumud) and Egyptian reformer ʿAli ʿAbd al-Raziq of obedience toward religious scholars (taʿat al-aʾimma). They all used words such as decline (inhitat), defeat (hawan), and discouragement (hubut), which logically led to notions of darkness (dhulma, dhalam, dhulumat) but also elicited calls for solutions expressed through the metaphors of light (nur, anwar) and enlightenment (istinara).48 A particular atmosphere of enlightenment (manakh tanwiri) united the diverse visions of these thinkers, and a certain openness allowed for the development of a rich, multivocal debate.
Despite these recognizable contours of the Nahda, Darraj insisted that one cannot speak of one Nahda “age” as such since this epoch did not witness the deep and comprehensive societal transformations that would merit such a designation. The historical circumstances in which the Nahda unfolded were not favorable to its development. Here is one aspect of the tragedy (maʾsa) of Arab enlightenment.49 Darraj identified a number of conceptual flaws built into modern Arab enlightenment thought.50 On the one hand, ironically, the quest for a historical origin (asl) in which to anchor such progress wound up paving the way for the varieties of fundamentalism that followed. On the other hand, by clinging to origins while advocating for change, the Nahda resulted in a kind of distortion (al-talfiqiyya).51 Moreover, by situating “the West” as its reference point and model, Nahda thought became mired in a mode of dependency (tabaʿiyya). Finally, an obsession with Self and Other constrained the project, laying the foundation for binary ideologies such as us versus them, authenticity versus contemporaneity.
Darraj understood that the colonial and imperial conditions in which these debates took place were part of the explanation. Yet despite these constraints, he also thought that the Nahda project had a number of positive qualities: pluralism and, hence, the recognition of relativism. That intellectual climate facilitated debate and disagreements between the likes of Farah Antun and Muhmmad ʿAbduh, between Taha Husayn and Satiʿ al-Husri, without ostracism or accusations of treason (takhwin). The Nahda’s conceptual point of departure was not a given text but lived realities; as such, it catapulted the intellectual to the forefront of struggles for societal and political change. Darraj lamented the loss of this position for the Arab intellectual in the wake of independence, writing that the nationalist sense of belonging and loyalty to one’s socio-cultural and historical self were grounded in the enlightenment character of the Nahda.52 The Nahda may have had its own myths and limitations, but Darraj considered those “noble” as they were centered on a belief in the equality of human capacities and rights, in the common humanity of all mankind, and in the possibility of a life without subjugation.
Nevertheless, Darraj concluded, the Nahda project failed to adequately address the question of political power. Nahdawi thinkers assumed that the coming sovereign state would be shaped by the aspirations of the people. Their failure to call attention to the dangers of dependency resulted from a somewhat naïve expectation that colonialism and its effects would simply pass away, and an unrealistic belief in the unity of human civilization. Unfortunately, Darraj added, the post-independence state foreclosed the political space necessary to debate or enact enlightenment thought. To blame enlightenment thought itself, therefore, was a mistake. For Darraj, such a charge demonstrated the very cultural and political deterioration that was the cause for post-independence intellectual atrophy. Indeed, he disagreed with a number of contemporary Arab thinkers who held the Nahda – the modernity it advocated and the modern ideologies to which it had given rise, especially nationalism and socialism – responsible for the decline in Arab intellectual culture after independence. For Darraj this included Syrian sociologist Burhan Ghalioun, who claimed that Arab defeatism was the effect of modernist Arab regimes, which imposed Nahda ideologies alien to the majority of the population, and were then unable to deal with the crisis of modernity; Syrian historian Muhammad Jamal Barut, who ascribed the present Arab crisis to the gap between an enlightened secular elite and a religious nation; Egyptian Islamist thinker Muhammad ʿImara, Egyptian philosopher Hassan Hanafi and Moroccan thinker Muhammad ʿAbid al-Jabiri, who blamed the Nahda for not being Islamic enough; Egyptian thinkers Galal Amin and Murad Wahba, who saw a problem in the close association between the enlightenment and the West; and, finally, the Syrian poet Adonis, who thought that the Arab mind was incapable of true modernization.53 A full examination of Darraj’s critique of these figures and their intellectual positions vis-à-vis the Nahda is beyond the scope of this chapter. The basic flaw he found in their arguments, though, was that they all assumed the Nahda project had been realized in independence, when in reality it was aborted by the very regimes that claimed to represent the Arab world and its desires. The real problem, he claimed, was that those regimes never allowed the Nahda project to come to fruition in the first place, that the Nahda modernization project had been thwarted. Moreover, Darraj insisted, the Nahda was never fundamentally anti-religious or even agnostic; on the contrary, religious reform was at its heart.
In his monograph on Taha Husayn and Adonis, Darraj quotes a moving passage from the last interview Husayn gave, to fellow liberal thinker Ghali Shukri, in which he lamented the fading away of the Nahda age:
It seems to me that our struggle on your behalf and on behalf of future generations needs to continue. I told you a little while ago that I am in my last days, and I bid you farewell with a lot of pain and [only a] little hope. I repeat to you the same question: where are the people of my generation (abnaʾ jili)? Unfortunately, I outlived them. Rest assured that they all died with deep regret in their heart. Salama Musa hid his bitterness so well behind his love for the people and for Egypt and behind his romantic faith in the future. [Mahmud ʿAbbas al-] ʿAqqad knew to hide his disappointment behind his stubborn pride, self-respect and dignity. ʿAqqad struggled for freedom, and Salama Musa for socialism. Did you achieve one or the other? Is [your generation] in a position to decide whether our role is finished, or to find us another role? … Our values were justice and freedom, and we were against foreign colonialism and against inner despotism. What are your values?54
Darraj answered Taha Husayn’s question by pointing to the post-independence regimes that had betrayed ʿAqqad’s freedom and Musa’s socialism, and defeated the enlightenment project of the Nahda. It was therefore not warranted to blame the Nahda for the calamities that were perpetrated in the name of nationalism and socialism after the Nahda itself was defeated by the regimes that claimed to espouse its ideals.55 For Egyptian critic Gaber ʿAsfur, Darraj claimed, the defeat started as early as the 1920s with the critical perspectives of ʿAli ʿAbd al-Raziq and Taha Husayn. For Egyptian novelist Bahaa Taher it started with the Nasserist regime, which equated loyalty with creativity and critique with treason. Nasser, according to Darraj, championed national culture but defeated the intellectuals; then Sadat defeated both. The naksa (setback) of 1967 only accelerated the collapse of the Nahda dreams of cultural and political modernity. The collapse of 1967 also meant the end of the Arab intellectual as an effective thinker able to contribute to societal change.
But this, according to Darraj, was different than the “end of the intellectual” discourse so often invoked by Western thinkers, whose arguments stemmed from a different historical background.56 Arab thinkers who imported their ideas and spoke of the end of the Arab intellectual in similar terms misunderstood the concrete realities of their own societies.57 The reduction of reason to its deconstructive function by these “importers,” as he calls them, reflects the degradation of Arab intellectual culture as well as the disconnect between thought and knowledge, on the one hand, and lived realities, on the other.58 In the final analysis, Darraj does not call for a return to the Nahda, but for anchoring new Arab enlightenment thought in experience. He believes that the corpus of Nahda writings, ideas and thinkers offers a method that has its own history (nasaqan dhat tarikh) that includes the theoretical, the scientific, the cognitive, the moral, the imaginary and the true; and this history is open-ended, to be re-written and pursued.59
ʿAbd al-Rahman Munif: Culture, Politics and the Intellectual – Enlightening Through Questioning
The third driving force behind Qadaya wa-shahadat was the renowned Arab novelist ʿAbd al-Rahman Munif (1993–2004), an exilic Arab intellectual who moved from one Arab country to another in order to avoid state repression for his political activism. Munif was born in Saudi Arabia and grew up in Amman, Jordan. After studying law in Iraq, he moved to Cairo and then Paris, where he enrolled at the Sorbonne, later studying oil economics in Belgrade. He worked for the ministry of oil in Baghdad and became a member of the Baʿth party, eventually leaving Baghdad and the party in order to settle in Damascus, where he dedicated himself to writing. His novels deal with the dramatic socio-economic and political transformations of the Arab world over the course of the twentieth century, especially after the discovery of oil.
Writing in 1993, with the fall of the Soviet Union and the specter of a US-imposed “New World Order,” Munif expected that national culture would be part of Arab resistance to Western hegemony. He soon modified his views, arguing that this culture had already suffered too much from adverse socio-economic and political conditions at home. He therefore set about clarifying three key themes: the relationship between culture and politics, the role of ideology in national culture and the role of intellectuals, especially in times of collapse and transformation (zaman al-inhiyarat wa-l-tahawwulat). If politics itself was restricted to mundane power struggles over narrowly defined interests, losing its connection with aspirations and values, as Munif alleged was the case in the post-independence Arab world, it devolved into a field in which culture had only a marginal or nominal value. In times of tension, he added, intellectuals would be called upon to provide apologies, justifications or cosmetic discourses for rulers. In times of severe crisis, they would be asked to provide “solutions,” but since despotic regimes preferred to keep intellectuals out of public affairs, they were bound to be powerless. Although some might try to challenge regimes from within, they would be co-opted more often than not. Intellectuals, Munif affirmed, could not replace politicians.
At the same time, if politics did not base itself on culture, in terms of both imagination and values, it would remain unable to confront let alone solve the serious problems a society faced. Intellectuals should be deemed essential partners in political life, offering their interpretations of reality and proposing solutions to wide-ranging problems. Like Wannous and Darraj, Munif also insisted that thought needed to be grounded in social reality. The role of intellectuals was to uphold critique, and it was consequently necessary for intellectuals to resist the temptation of everyday politics and not merely act as apologists for power, which would only obstruct the flourishing of democracy.
Insofar as Munif expected contemporary Arab intellectuals to play the role of both questioner and critic, he drew on the tradition of nahdawi intellectuals as well as thinkers from the European enlightenment:
The role of the intellectual in facing major transformations, especially the setbacks and the impotence that have characterized political organizations lately resembles in certain aspects the role of the thinkers and the intellectuals of the European enlightenment, keeping in mind the differences in time, place, needs and possibilities. It is necessary now for the Arab intellectual to again raise the fundamental questions of the Nahda, and to add to them those that have emerged since.60
For Munif, it was crucial to explicitly discuss the factors that led to post-independence failure, which he identified in three broad explanations: nationalist and Marxist projects were ill-conceived; repressive regimes were unable to alleviate poverty and hunger, which paved the way for salafist trends to exploit religious dispositions and fill the void left by the fall of socialism; and the demise of almost all existing political parties and organizations created the need for new conceptions of politics. Munif concluded that the Arab intellectual was called upon to reflect critically on these failures and to re-examine the intellectual foundations upon which past efforts, organizations and movements were based, much like the intellectuals of the Nahda had done in their own times.
Conclusion: Qadaya wa-shahadat in Post-Independence Enlightenment
In what sense did the editors of Qadaya wa-shahadat consider themselves enlightened intellectuals (tanwiriyyun)? Did their ideas and writings live up those tanwiri standards they set for themselves? Were they the only ones to advocate for tanwir during those years? And what was the ultimate impact, if any, of their work? Three main principles stand out in their understanding of tanwir: to sustain hope against despair and disenchantment; to promote critical thinking, to anchor it in lived reality; and, finally, to draw attention to the importance of politics. In their writings and interviews, Wannous, Darraj and Munif all epitomized the journey towards disillusionment disaffection that many Arab intellectuals experienced in the post-independence but especially in the post-1967 period. Their hope was cobbled together out of the wreckage of independence and struggles for liberation, justice and development. Whether in organized political parties, as in Munif’s Baʿth Party, or in the nationalist and left leaning activism of Wannous and Darraj, they had expected those projects to yield a better future. Instead, they witnessed the collapse of their hopes as well as ensuing “collapses” (inhiyarat) on multiple levels: the defeat of 1967, the Baʿth turning into a police state ideology and twinned regimes in Iraq and Syria that ruled through dictatorial repression, mounting corruption and the deterioration of education, economy, media and health. Their hope was no longer borne of optimism, but of a force of will that they should not to give in to collapse, resting upon a sober realization that nothing could be achieved without the reconstruction of the human (binaʾ al-insan). They understood this could only take place through a slow and arduous process carried out against forbidding odds in the 1990s.
Reconstructing the human meant rebuilding, maintaining and nurturing people’s critical faculties and their ability to critically address political, social and cultural problems. This is what Wannous aimed for in his plays, Darraj through literary criticism and Munif in his novels. Their works dealt with socio-economic, cultural, moral and political issues that shaped their own lives and those of people around the Arab world, aimed at changing those realities by raising critical awareness among their readers and spectators. That their oeuvres have come to be regarded as classics of modern Arab literature indicates that they had their minds and pens on the pulse of the era. They didn’t preach ready-made doctrines or solutions imported from other times and places, but rather looked into the darkness of their own times, tried to create light through the cultivation of hope against all odds and dared to question and think in the midst of ideological disorder, socio-political instability, military terror and economic ruin.
In conclusion, none of these writers made politics into a career, nor did they remain political activists throughout their adult lives. But they were political in terms of their concern for the res publica.61 They drew attention to the political causes of Arab malaise at a time when cultural analysis was the prevailing discourse. They believed that abuse and corruption of the post-independence state and the political disenfranchisement of the people were key factors in the Arab predicament. Meanwhile, the authors in Qadaya wa-shahadat also knew that real political action wasn’t easy or viable under the formidable repression of the 1990s. A sense of ʿajz (impotence) persisted throughout their journey of moral and intellectual resistance. Only a popular uprising, a broader reclaiming of political power could break the chains of ʿajz – things they and most people saw as too daring to hope for at that time. The recent revolts across the Arab world echo their diagnosis, as masses of people took to the streets in order to reclaim the public sphere and bring down corrupt and dysfunctional regimes. Moreover, Wannous, Darraj and Munif practiced the tanwir that others only preached, and in this sense they earned the title “tanwiriyyun” (Men of Enlightenment). Revisiting the Nahda, its elements of hope and confidence, critical questioning of realities and public concern, was part of their attempt to consolidate other tanwiri efforts made throughout the history of modern Arab thought. They claimed the mantle of the Nahda legacy as their own. As Darraj often insisted, it is the contemporaneity of causes (rahiniyyat al-qadaya) that counted most in their re-appropriation of the Nahda more than a compensatory search for past glory.
What was the cumulative impact of Qadaya wa-shahadat? We know that the journal was short-lived and quite limited in its distribution. But its authors, and especially its editors, were hardly obscure figures; on the contrary, they were well-known intellectuals. The voices in Qadaya wa-shahadat were not the only ones to speak in defense of tanwir. A whole host of prominent intellectuals advocated and practiced the same principles of critique, struggling in different ways to enable the critical faculties of fellow Arabs.62 Future narratives of modern Arab intellectual history will have to evaluate the legacy of this fin-de-siècle tanwir, especially in terms of its impact on the younger Arab generation, immersed as it is in dramatic and transformative upheavals. This late-twentieth-century commitment to Nahda principles needs to be studied further, perhaps in the larger tanwiri context of the Arab world, which would include the Maghrib.63 Situating Qadaya wa-shahadat in the broader perspective of comparative Enlightenments might open up a new field of reflection called Post-Independence Arab Enlightenment, which could be expanded into comparative analysis incorporating other parts of the global South.64
*I wish to thank our editors, Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss, for reading multiple drafts of this essay and for offering numerous helpful suggestions and modifications.
1All translations are my own.
2In a conversation with the author, Faysal Darraj explained that Gaber ʿAsfur was invited to join the editorial board in order to give the project a wider Arab horizon, though ʿAsfur’s contribution remained limited to one essay in volume 2 entitled, “Islam al-naft wa al-hadatha” (Islam, Oil and Modernity), Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 2, 357–83.
3Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 1 (spring 1990): rationalism, democracy and modernity; vol. 2 (summer 1991): the Nahda, and modernization then and now; vol. 3 (winter 1991): nationalism, the culture of difference, and the modernity of others; vol. 4 (fall 1991): dependency and turath; vol. 5 (spring 1992): reason, the nation and universality; vol. 6 (winter 1992): literature, reality, history. For more on Taha Husayn, see the chapter in this volume by Yoav Di-Capua.
4For an insightful reading of the socio-political and economic impact of these developments, see, for instance, Bayat (2013).
5For example, see the essay “For a Third Nahda” by Elias Khoury, published for the first time in English-language translation as Chapter 15 in this volume.
6Talhami (1997).
7In the late 1990s, and again in 2006–2007, the Lebanese journalist Ibrahim al-ʿAriss (2011) conducted a large number of interviews with prominent Arab thinkers from across the Arab world, of diverse backgrounds and disciplines, about the cultural and political state of the Arab world at the turn of the twenty-first century, the role of the intellectual and the question of the first and the second Nahda. These were published in the monthlies al-Masira and al-Maqasid as well as in the dailies al-Safir and al-Hayat, and thirty of them were compiled and published as a book. For a discussion of some of these interviews, see the concluding chapter of my book, “The New Nahda Impulses, Reclaiming the Right to Freedom and Life,” in Kassab (2010: 347–63).
8Al-Waqiʿ wa-l-muthaqqaf wa-l-riwaya (Reality and the intellectual and the novel),” in Munif (2001: 221–22). The conversation was conducted as an interview (although it reads more like a dialogue) that Darraj published in 1988 in al-Nahj (no. 18), that is, two years before the launch of Qadaya wa-shahadat. It is interesting to note that it was members of this generation who would announce the advent of a new one with the start of the recent Arab uprisings. For them, the uprisings will flag, at least in their early phase, the end of their defeated generation and the advent of a more confident, courageous and hopeful one.
9Munif (2001: 188).
10Ibid. Faysal Darraj analyzed the phenomenon of defeat in Palestinian and Arabic literature in Darraj (1996); the Arab novel in Darraj (2008); Palestinian literary figures in Darraj (2010a); and the specific theme of progress in Darraj (2010).
11This interview was filmed by the late Syrian filmmaker, Omar Amiralay (1944–2011) for his 1997 documentary “Wa hunaka ashyaʾ kathira kana yumkin an yatahaddath al-marʾ ʿanha” (“And There Were Many Things One Could Have Talked About”).
12For more on his work, see Kassab (2000: 48–65).
13Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 1, 12–18.
14Husayn (1926). I recommend the full text reproduced in Majallat al-fikr wa-l-fann al-muʿasir Vol. 149 (April 1995).
15Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 1, 8.
16Cited in Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 1, 6.
17Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 1, 8–11.
18Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 1, 19.
19Al-Tahtawi (2003); first published in Bulaq in 1834, and translated into Turkish and published also in Bulaq in 1839 by order of Muhammad Ali Pasha. See, too, Tahtawi (2004).
20Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 2, 8–12.
21Tunisi (2000); originally published in 1867–1868; French translation: Tunisi (1868); English translation: Tunisi (1967).
22Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 2, 12–14.
23Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 2, 19.
24Qadaya wa shahadat, vol. 2, 21.
25Ibid.
26Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 3, 9–10. An eloquent representation of this devastation can be found in Omar Amiralay’s film Tufan fi bilad al-Baʿth (A Flood in Baʿth Country), 2003.
27Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 3, 8–9.
28Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 3, 13–17.
29Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 4, 6.
30A similar rejection of determinism is found in Qustantin Zurayq’s view of culture and history. See, for instance, “Fi maʿrakat al-hadara (On the Struggle for Civilization),” in Zurayq (1994, vol. 2: 687–982).
31Postwar Lebanese and Syrian intellectuals also (re)turned to Ibn Khaldun as an intellectual resource. In their chapters in this volume, Fadi Bardawil and Max Weiss address this question with respect to Waddah Charara and Burhan Ghalioun, respectively.
32Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 4, 6–12. This dichotomization of the spiritual and the political in the face of colonial domination is reminiscent of Partha Chatterjee’s (1990: 233–53) discussion of South Asian history, especially the one regarding women, culture and authenticity.
33Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 4, 12–19.
34Egyptian intellectual Farag Fouda (1946–92) tried to show this time and again though his lectures and writings, and his steadfast positions ultimately cost him his life, shot dead by Islamists in broad daylight in Cairo in 1992. See (Fouda 1988).
35Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 4, 18–19.
36Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 4, 21–35. These themes were also taken up in a 1984 conference on tradition and the present age held in Cairo. The proceedings were published by the Center for Arab Unity Studies (1985).
37Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 4, 35.
38Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 4, 36–37.
39Scott (1999: 131–57).
40Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 5, 7–8.
41Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 5, 16.
42Mamdani (2004: 17–62).
43Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 5, 21–23.
44Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 5, 24–25. In her chapter in this volume, Yasmeen Daifallah explores the influence of phenomenology on Hanafi’s engagement with Islamic tradition (turath), coming to a different conclusion about the significance of his thought.
45Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 5, 20.
46Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 5. 21.
47Darraj (1997a; 1997b; 1998) – these three were part of a special thematic dossier of this issue of the journal devoted to the “death of the intellectual”; Darraj (2005a; 2005b). I will refer to the pieces by the first word of the Arabic titles.
48Darraj (2005a: 93–94).
49Darraj (2005b: 7–12).
50Darraj (2005a: 108).
51Hisham Sharabi (1970) offered a compelling analysis of the difficulty Nahda thinkers found in taking decisive and consistent stands, using a sociology of knowledge approach.
52Darraj (1997a: 2).
53Elsewhere in this volume, Burhan Ghalioun is discussed by Max Weiss, the Egyptian Islamist intellectual milieu is addressed by Ellen McLarney and Yasmeen Daifallah, and Adonis is historically contextualized and critically analyzed by Robyn Creswell.
54Darraj (2005b: 214–15).
55Ibid., 214.
56Indeed, the European intellectual has been declared dead over and over again, by Pierre Nora, Jean-François Lyotard, and Bernard-Henri Lévy. See, for example, Nora (1996: 1–20); Lyotard (1984); Lévy (1987).
57Darraj refers here to the work of ʿAli Harb (b. 1939), a Lebanese philosopher and the foremost Arab theoretician of globalization, whose work aims at applying Derridean deconstruction to modern and contemporary Arab discourses on modernity. See Harb (1993; 1996).
58Darraj (1997b: 7).
59Darraj (1998: 70).
60Qadaya wa-shahadat, vol. 6, 17.
61This turn away from ideology and toward a re-definition of “the political” resonates with the argument made about Waddah Charara and Edward Said in the chapter by Fadi Bardawil.
62Elsewhere I called them the “critical” thinkers of the post-independence era. I am thinking here of Qustantin Zurayq, Sadiq Jalal al-ʿAzm, Abdallah Laroui, Mohammed Arkoun and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, to name but a few. See Kassab (2010).
63One pan-Arab tanwiri worth considering is the Association of Arab Rationalists (Rabitat al-ʿAqlaniyyin al-ʿArab), founded in 2007 by Georges Tarabishi, Sadiq Jalal al-ʿAzm, and Aziz al-Azmeh, funded by the Libyan businessman Muhammad Abdel Muttalib al-Huni. It is currently headed by Tunisian thinker Raja Benslama. Its online journal may be accessed here: http://alawan.org/.
64In my forthcoming book, Critique, Enlightenment and Revolution: Arab Intellectuals and the Uprisings (Columbia University Press), I examine the debates over tanwir that took place in Cairo and Damascus in the two decades preceding the uprisings. I also explore the connections between those issues and the ones voiced and developed by demonstrators and intellectuals during the uprisings.