Arabic Thought against the Authoritarian Age 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 postwar 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 phil- osophy,andreligiousreformandculturalresilienceallacrossthelength andbreadthoftheArabworld,fromMoroccototheGulfStates.Thisis an important statement of new directions in Middle East studies that challengesconventionalthinkingandhasaddedrelevancetothestudy ofglobalintellectualhistorymorebroadly. jens hanssen is Associate Professor of Arab Civilization at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Fin de Siecle Beirut: The MakingofanOttomanProvincialCapital(2005). max weiss isAssociate Professor in theDepartments of Historyand Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, New Jersey. He is the authorofIntheShadowofSectarianism:Law,Shi’ismandtheMakingof ModernLebanon(2010). Arabic Thought against the Authoritarian Age Towards an Intellectual History of the Present Edited by Jens Hanssen UniversityofToronto Max Weiss PrincetonUniversity UniversityPrintingHouse,CambridgeCB28BS,UnitedKingdom OneLibertyPlaza,20thFloor,NewYork,NY10006,USA 477WilliamstownRoad,PortMelbourne,VIC3207,Australia 314–321,3rdFloor,Plot3,SplendorForum,JasolaDistrictCentre, NewDelhi–110025,India 79AnsonRoad,#06–04/06,Singapore079906 CambridgeUniversityPressispartoftheUniversityofCambridge. ItfurtherstheUniversity’smissionbydisseminatingknowledgeinthepursuitof education,learning,andresearchatthehighestinternationallevelsofexcellence. www.cambridge.org Informationonthistitle:www.cambridge.org/9781107193383 DOI:10.1017/9781108147781 ©JensHanssenandMaxWeiss2018 Thispublicationisincopyright.Subjecttostatutoryexception andtotheprovisionsofrelevantcollectivelicensingagreements, noreproductionofanypartmaytakeplacewithoutthewritten permissionofCambridgeUniversityPress. Firstpublished2018 PrintedintheUnitedKingdombyTJInternationalLtd.PadstowCornwall AcataloguerecordforthispublicationisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary. LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Names:Hanssen,Jens,editor.|Weiss,Max,1977-editor. Title:Arabicthoughtagainsttheauthoritarianage:towardsanintellectual historyofthepresent/editedbyJensHanssen,UniversityofToronto; MaxWeiss,PrincetonUniversity,NewJersey. Description:NewYork,NY:CambridgeUniversityPress,2017.| Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. Identifiers:LCCN2017035419|ISBN9781107193383(hardback:alk.paper)| ISBN9781316644195(pbk.:alk.paper) Subjects:LCSH:Arabcountries–Intellectuallife–20thcentury.| Arabcountries–Intellectuallife–21stcentury. Classification:LCCDS36.88.AA7428352017|DDC956.04–dc23 LCrecordavailableathttps://lccn.loc.gov/2017035419 ISBN978-1-107-19338-3Hardback CambridgeUniversityPresshasnoresponsibilityforthepersistenceoraccuracy ofURLsforexternalorthird-partyinternetwebsitesreferredtointhispublication anddoesnotguaranteethatanycontentonsuchwebsitesis,orwillremain, accurateorappropriate. Contents Noteson Contributors page viii Preface xiii Noteon Transliteration xiv 1 Introduction: Arabic Intellectual History between the Postwarand the Postcolonial 1 max weiss and jens hanssen Part I Arab Intellectuals inan Age of Decolonization 37 2 Changing the Arab Intellectual Guard: On the Fall ofthe udabaʾ,1940–1960 41 yoav di-capua 3 Arabic Thought in the Radical Age: Emile Habibi, the Israeli Communist Party, and the Production of Arab JewishRadicalism, 1946–1961 62 orit bashkin 4 Political Praxis in the Gulf:Ahmadal-Khatib and the Movement ofArab Nationalists,1948–1969 86 abdel razzaq takriti 5 Modernism in Translation: Poetry and Intellectual History in Beirut 113 robyn creswell Part II Culture and Ideology in theShadow of Authoritarianism 139 6 TheSpecificitiesofArab Thought: Morocco since the Liberal Age 143 hosam aboul-ela v vi Contents 7 Sidelining Ideology:Arab Theory in the Metropole and Periphery, circa 1977 163 fadi a. bardawil 8 Mosaic,Melting Pot, Pressure Cooker:The Religious, the Secular, and the Sectarian in Modern Syrian Social Thought 181 max weiss 9 Looking for “the Woman Question” in Algeria and Tunisia:Ideas, Political Language, and Female Actors before and after Independence 203 natalya vince PartIII From (Neo-)Liberalism to the“ArabSpring” andBeyond 233 10 Egyptian Workers in the Liberal Age and Beyond 239 joel beinin 11 Reviving Qasim Amin, Redeeming Women’s Liberation 262 ellen mclarney 12 Turath as Critique:Hassan Hanafi on the Modern Arab Subject 285 yasmeen daifallah 13 Summoning the Spirit ofEnlightenment: On the Nahda Revival in Qadaya wa-shahadat 311 elizabeth suzanne kassab 14 Revolution as Ready-Made 336 negar azimi Translations 355 15 Fora Third Nahda 357 elias khoury translated by max weiss, with jens hanssen 16 Where Are the Intellectuals in the Syrian Revolution? 370 rosa yassin hassan translated by max weiss Contents vii 17 TheIntellectuals and the Revolution in Syria 374 yassin al-haj saleh translated by max weiss Bibliography 380 Index 428 Contributors hosam aboul-ela isAssociateProfessorintheUniversityofHouston’s DepartmentofEnglish.HeisthetranslatorofthreeArabicnovelsand theauthorofnumerouscriticalarticlesintheareasofliteratureofthe Americas,Latin Americancultural studies, andArabculturalstudies. He is the author of Other South: Faulkner, Coloniality, and the Mariá- tegui Tradition (2007), and co-editor with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak of the series “Theory in the World.” His current research project focusesontheparticularcharacterofU.S.imperialcultureafterWorld War II read through the lens of cultural critical theory from the GlobalSouth. negar azimi is a writer and the senior editor of Bidoun, an award- winningartsand culture magazineand curatorial project.Herwriting has appeared in Artforum, Frieze, Harper’s, The New Yorker, and the New York Times Magazine,among other venues. fadi a. bardawil is Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian StudiesattheUniversityofNorthCarolina,ChapelHill.Hisresearch, at the crossroads of political anthropology and intellectual history, focuses on contemporary modernist Arab thinkers and the inter- national circulation of social theory. Currently, he is working on a book manuscript provisionally titled In Marxism’s Wake: Disenchanted Levantine Intellectuals and Metropolitan Traveling Theories. His writings haveappeared,andareforthcoming,intheJournalforPalestineStudies (Arabic edition), Boundary 2, Jadaliyya, Kulturaustausch, and al-Akh- bar daily(2006–2012). orit bashkin is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago. Her publications include twenty-five book chapters and articles on the history of Arab-Jews in Iraq, on Iraqi history, and on Arabic literature and the Nahda. She has also edited abookSculpturingCultureinEgypt[le-faseltarbutbe-mitzrayim](1999) withIsraelGershoniandLiatKozma,whichincludedtranslationsinto viii NoteonContributors ix HebrewofseminalworksbyEgyptianintellectuals.Sheistheauthorof TheOtherIraq:PluralismandCultureinHashemiteIraq(2009)andNew Babylonians: AHistory of Jews in Modern Iraq (2012). joel beinin is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and Professor of Middle East History at Stanford University. In 2002 he served as president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. His most recent books are Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa, 2nd edition (2013), co-edited with Frédéric Vairel, and The Struggle for Worker Rights in Egypt (2010). robyn creswell is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University, and poetry editor of The Paris Review. He is the translator of Abdelfattah Kilito’s The Clash of Images (2010) and Sonallah Ibrahim’sThatSmell and Notes from Prison (2013). yasmeen daifallah is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the UniversityofMassachusettsatAmherst,wheresheteachescourseson classical and modern Islamic political thought. Prior to joining the University of Massachusetts in 2014, Yasmeen taught at and earned herPhD in politicalsciencefrom UC Berkeley. yoav di-capua is Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches modern Arab intellectual history. He is the author of Gatekeepers of the Arab Past: Historians and History WritinginTwentieth-CenturyEgypt(2009).Heiscurrentlyatworkona newbook,tentativelytitledNoExit:ArabIntellectuals,JeanPaulSartre andDecolonization. Hisresearchissupported bytheNationalEndow- ment for the Humanities and the University of Texas Humanities ResearchAward. yassin al-haj saleh is a former political prisoner, a Syrian writer, activist, and academic. He is the author of many books, including Al-Sayr ʿala qadam wahida: Suriya al-muqala (2012), Bi-l-khalas ya shabab: 16 ʿaman fi al-sujun al-suriyya (2012), al-Thaqafa ka-siyasa: al-muthaqqafun wa-masʾuliyyatuhum al-ijtimaʿiyya fi zaman al-ghilan (2016), and, most recently, The Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of theSyrianTragedy(2017).HelivesinIstanbulandiscurrentlyafellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. jens hanssen is Associate Professor of Arab and Mediterranean His- tory.HereceivedhisDPhilinModernHistoryfromOxfordUniversity in 2001 and joined the University of Toronto the following year. His dissertation has been published by Clarendon Press as Fin de Siècle