Commitment and Beyond: Reflections on/of the Political in Arabic Literature since the 1940s

by Yvonne Albers (With), Georges Khalil (Editor), Friederike Pannewick (Editor)

Overview

This book is about relations between literature, society and politics in the Arab world. It is an attempt to come to terms with the changing conceptualizations of the political in Arabic literature in recent modern history. It examines historical and contemporary conceptions of literary commitment (iltizam) and how notions of 'writing with a cause' have been shaped, contested, re-actualized since the 1940s until today. Against the backdrop of the current social and political transformations in the Arab world, questions on the role of the arts, specifically literature and its politics, arise with immediacy and require profound reflection and analysis. The chapters reexamine critically both current and historical notions of the political in modern Arabic literature as well as the legacy of iltizam as a term and an agenda. Literary commitment is understood here not just solely as a (completed) period in Arabic literary history but also as a vivid, changing and continuing idea that questions the role of literature and the author in and for a society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783954900404
Publisher:	Dr Ludwig Reichert Verlag
Publication date:	11/03/2015
Series:	Literaturen im Kontext. arabisch - persisch - turkisch , #41
Pages:	356
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 9.60(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Friederike Pannewick is Professor for Arabic Literature and Culture at the Philipps-Universitat Marburg, Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS), and co-director of the research field "Travelling Traditions: Comparative Perspectives on Near Eastern Literatures" within the research program "Europe in the Middle East - the Middle East in Europe" (EUME) at the Forum Transregionale Studien Berlin and director of the research group "Figures of Thought u Turning Points. Cultural Practices and Social Change in the Arab World" at CNMS. She is co-editor of the series "Literatures in Context: Arabic - Persian - Turkish" (Reichert) and has published extensively on modern Arabic literature and theater. Georges Khalil works at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and is the Academic Coordinator of the Forum Transregionale Studien. He is also responsible for "Europe in the Middle East - The Middle East in Europe" (EUME), a research program that seeks to rethink key concepts and premises linking and dividing Europe and the Middle East. He was previously the coordinator of the "Working Group Modernity and Islam" from 1998 to 2006 at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and studied History and Islamic Studies in Hamburg and Cairo, as well as European Studies at the Europa-Kolleg Hamburg. From 1995 to 1996 he was fellow of the College for International Affairs, Robert Bosch Foundation. Yvonne Albers studied Philosophy, Theater Studies, and Arabic Studies in Leipzig and Damascus. She is currently a Research Associate at the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS) at Philipps-Universitat Marburg and a member of the research group "Figures of Thought u Turning Points: Cultural Practices and Social Change in the Arab World" (DFG). While her former work was concerned with contemporary theater and performance art in Lebanon, she is now writing a PhD on the Beirut-based cultural magazine Mawaqif and post-1967 aesthetic thought. Albers is also co-founder and editorial board member of the open access journal Middle East - Topics & Arguments.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 7

Introduction: Tracks and Traces of Literary Commitment-On Iltizam as an Ongoing Intellectual Project Yvonne Albers Georges Khalil Friederike Pannewick 9

Part 1 Of Poetics and Politics: Revolution and Literary Commitment

The Egyptian Colloquial Poet as Popular Intellectual: A Differentiated Manifestation of Commitment Randa Aboubakr 29

Rewriting Resistance: The Revival of Poetry of Dissent in Egypt after January 2011 (Surur, Najm and Dunqul) Atef Botros 45

Egyptian Narratives of the 2011 Revolution: Diary as a Medium of Reconciliation with the Political Dina Heshmat 63

Part 2 Roots of a Discourse: Historical Concepts of Literary Commitment

Beyond Commitment Elias Khoury 79

The Intellectual Revolt of the 1950s and the "Fall of the Udaba'" Yoav Di-Capua 89

On the Trail of Frantz Fanon Rachid Ouaissa 105

Part 3 Refiguring Iltizam: Literary Commitment after 1967

Between Commitment and Marginalization: The 'Generation of the Sixties' in the Sadat Era Stephan Guth 125

The Arabic Novel between Aesthetic Concerns and the Causes of Man: Commitment in Jabra Ibrahim Jabra and (Abd al-Rahman Munif Sonja Mejcher-Atassi 143

The Day the Wandering Dreamer Became a Fida'i: Jabra Ibrahim Jabra and the Fashioning of Political Commitment Zeina G. Halabi 157

The Afterlives of Iltizam: Emile Habibi through a Kanafaniesque Lens of Resistance Literature Refqa Abu-Remaileh 171

You, The Sacrificial Reader: Poetics and Pronouns in Mahmoud Darwish's "al-Qurban" Michael Allan 185

Molding the Clay: Muzaffar al-Nawwabs Concept of Colloquial Poetry as Art of Resistance Leslie Tramontini 201

Sargun Bulus's Commitment Sinan Antoon 213

From the Politicization of Theater to Individual Humanism: Towards a New Concept of Engagement in the Theater of Saadallah Wannous Friederike Pannewick 221

Part 4 Commitment or Dissent? Contemporary Perspectives

Fiction of Scandal Tarek El-Ariss 237

On Affect and Emotion as Dissent: The Kifaya Rhetoric in Pre-Revolutionary Egyptian Literature Christian Junge 253

A Body of Dissenting Images: Kama! al-Riyahi's "Novel Al-Ghurilla Read as an Example of Engaged Literature from Tunisia Charlotte Pardey 273

Narrating, Metaphorizing or Performing the Unforgettable? The Politics of Trauma in Contemporary Arabic Literature Stephan Milich 285

Redeemed from Politics: Notions of Literary Legitimacy in the Lebanese Literary Field Felix Lang 303

The Empty Chair: On the Politics of Spectatorial Situatedness in the Performances of Rabih Mroué Yvonne Alhers 317

Whatever Happened to Iltizam? Words in Arab Art after the Cold War Hanan Toukan 333

Notes on the Contributors 351

Editorial Reviews

"Since 2011, 'the political' has (again) become ubiquitous in all forms of Arab culture. At the same time many critics have questioned the role of writers and intellectuals. Did they play a role in stoking the popular uprisings? If not, and literature had indeed become somehwat disconnected from social change, what is its relevance? [...] Frederike Pannewick, Georges Khalil and Yvonne Albers' timely volume approaches these questions through a sustained discussion of the term iltizam (engagement). Building on the pioneering work of Verena Klemm, the book presents twenty-two essays that track literary commitment from the 1940s to the present day. The authors represent a German-Arab network of literary scholars whose research has been developed concomitantly over decades. [The book] opens onto sociological questions of historical memory and the role literature might play in working through collective experiences, making [it] relevant beyond the field of literary studies. [...]The first section of the book, "Of poetics and Politics: Revolution and Literary Commitment," starts in the present with three articles on the Egyptian revolution of 2011. [...] The volume's second section, "Roots of a Discourse: Historical Concepts of Literary Commitment," focuses on the watershed year of 1967. [...] The books third section, "Refiguring iltizam: Literary Commitment after 1967," focuses on what became of commitment in a literature that is sometimes interpreted as uncommited and de-politicized. [...] [The book] presents a number of fresh analytical angles and new, previously undiscussed, authors, espacially in the fourth and final section of the book, "Commitment or Dissent? Contemporary Perspectives." Here, the volume returns to the present with seven articles on literary and artistic works produced since the 1990s. They probe globalization, cultural disorientation, the impact of new social movements and political questions after the financial crisis, and the fragmentation of literaty forms in the age of social media. [...]The most exciting aspect of Commitment and Beyond is its ambitious attempt to connect contemporary changes in artistic production - confusing and multi-facetted as they may be - to the history of the 20th century, pushing other disciplines in Middle East studies to consider how historical events and figures are continuously reinterpreted." Sune Haugbolle (Roskilde University)In: Journal of Arabic Literature 48, (2017), S. 205-209

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