Foundations of Modern Arab Identity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Foundations of Modern Arab Identity (Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2004) is a book by Stephen Sheehi.

Reviewer Lucia Volk writes that Sheehi "argues that Arab minority elites actively produced indigenous ideologies of modernity while struggling against the overwhelming powers of Western colonialism." Essentially re-framing the conception of modern Arab identity, the book proposes that the concept of failure is inherent to modern Arab subjectivity. That is, that Arab identity always posits lack as the core of its identity because it is engaged in an endless struggle of authority and "subjective presence" with the West, who otherwise accuses Arabs as being inherently "backwards". This condition of failure is written into Arab subjectivity by Arabs themselves, internalizing racist notions of Arab otherness that accompany the "modern", humanist, Enlightenment project. Hence, what is self-diagnosed as "the inherent failure of Arab culture and "identity" is not proof of the inability of the Arab world to enter into modernity but in fact is precisely a condition of it.[1]

Reviewer Khaled Furani writes that the book is about "intellectual struggles that ensued when Arab writers internalized Western ways of defining themselves and their societies a century and a half ago."[2]

[edit] References

  1. ^ International Journal of Middle East Studies (2006), Volume 38, Issue 01, Feb 2006, pp. 132-134.
  2. ^ Journal of Arabic Literature (2005), Vol. 36 Issue 2, pp. 224-234.

[edit] External links

  • [1]Attac Lubnan