Creative Radicalism in the Middle East: Culture and the Arab Left after the Uprisings

by Caroline Rooney

Overview

Addressing the question of how neoliberal ideology has served to conflate the radical left with extremism, this book examines how the Arab left has asserted itself in the context of authoritarianism and Islamic extremism during and after the Arab uprisings. It examines how the Arab cultural left has offered a critique of the signifying practices of political hegemonies in the region and argues that though creative expression as constituted in the very language of the Arab uprisings, it has put forward its own alternatives
Using a wide array of texts and sources, both Arab and non-Arab, the opening chapters of the book identify how ethical and radical values pertaining to sociality are co-opted by political leaders in the Middle East and turbaned into jargon. Later chapters outline resistance to this co-option through a poetics of inter-subjectivity that takes structures of feeling into account, ranging from disappointment, despair and distrust, to dignity, solidarity and reconfigured senses of the sacred. In showing how psychological and affective states relate to signifying practices, the book offers an original conceptual framework for differentiating 'radicalization' from the creative radicalism of the Arab avant-garde.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781838601164
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	07/09/2020
Series:	Written Culture and Identity
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d)

About the Author

Caroline Rooney is Professor of African and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Kent. From 2009-2016, she held Global Uncertainties Fellowships (AHRC/ESRC) with research programmes that explore the differences between radicalism and extremism through the arts and popular culture. Her work engages with contemporary arts activism both critically and creatively, ranging from scholarly research to theatre production, filmmaking and the curating of exhibitions.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements viii

Introduction: From radical distrust to the darwish avant-garde 1

1 Politics as theatre in Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition 29

2 Discourses of authenticity and poetic good faith: Algeria, Israel and Syria 51

3 From hegemonic interpellations to revolutionary signs or amara 71

4 Chronic disappointment, humiliation and pariah elitism in the Arab novel 93

5 Cults of pride and cultures of right-wing populism 113

6 The poetics of karamah or why the Egyptian revolution was a poem 135

7 Figuring the sacred in martyr art 155

8 Equine messianism in Palestinian literature and art 177

Concluding remarks: Adab and iqtibas 189

Notes 201

Work cited 203

Index 220