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The Making of the Arab Intellectual

Empire, Public Sphere and the Colonial Coordinates of Selfhood

Edited by Dyala Hamzah

To Be Published November 21st 2012 by Routledge – 304 pages

Series: SOAS/Routledge Studies on the Middle East

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Description

In the wake of the Ottoman Empire’s nineteenth-century reforms, as guilds waned and new professions emerged, the scholarly ‘estate’ underwent social differentiation. Some found employment in the state’s new institutions; as translators, teachers and editors, whilst others resisted civil servant status. Gradually, thescholar morphed into the public writer. Despite his fledgling status, he catered for the public interest since new professionals such as doctors, engineers and lawyers endorsed this latest social role as an integral part of their own self-image.

This dual preoccupation with self-definition and all things public is the central concern of this book. Focussing on the period after the tax-farming scholar and before the alienated intellectual prevailed on the contemporary Arab cultural scene; it situates the making of the Arab intellectual within the dysfunctional space of competing states’ interests known as the ‘Nahda’. Located between Empire and Colony, the emerging Arab public sphere was a space of over and under-regulation, hindering accountability and upsetting allegiances.

Examining a range of individuals including liberals, radical secularists and salafi intellectuals, this interdisciplinary approach to The Making of the Modern Arab Intellectual will be of interest to students and scholars of the Middle East, history, political science, comparative literature and philosophy.

Contents

1. Introduction: The Making of the Arab Intellectual: Empire, Public Sphere and the Colonial Coordinates of Selfhood Dyala Hamzah 2. Pharaoh’s Revenge: Translation, Literary History and Colonial Ambivalence Samah Selim 3. Public Deliberations of the Self in Fin-de-Siècle Egypt (1880-1910) Michael Gasper 4. Inscribing Socialism into the Nahda: al-Muqtataf, al-Hilal, and the Construction of a Leftist Reformist Worldview, 1880-1914 Ilham Khuri-Makdisi 5. From ‘Ilm to Sihafa or the Politics of the Public Interest (Maslaha): Muhammad Rashîd Rida and his journal al-Manar (1898-1935) Dyala Hamzah 6. Partitioned Pasts: Arab Jewish Intellectuals and the Case of Esther Azhari Moyal, 1873-1948 Lital Levy 7. The "Mahjar" as literary and political territory in the first decades of the 20th century: the example of Amîn Rîhânî (1876-1940) Leyla Dakhli 8. The Generation of Broad Expectations: Nationalism, Education, and Autobiography in Syria and Lebanon, 1930-1958 Christoph Schumann 9. Waiting for the Superman: A New Generation of Arab Nationalists in 1930s Iraq Peter Wien 10. Afterword

Author Bio

Dyala Hamzah is Research Fellow at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin. She holds an M. Phil in Philosophy from the Sorbonne and a PhD in History and Islamic Studies from the Freie Universität Berlin and the EHESS (Paris). She is currently completing a book entitled MuÎammad RashÐdRiÃÁ (1865-1935) ou le "Tournant Salafiste". Intérêt général, Islam et Opinion Publique dans l'Egypte Coloniale.

Name: The Making of the Arab Intellectual: Empire, Public Sphere and the Colonial Coordinates of Selfhood (Hardback) – Routledge 
Description: Edited by Dyala Hamzah. In the wake of the Ottoman Empire’s nineteenth-century reforms, as guilds waned and new professions emerged, the scholarly ‘estate’ underwent social differentiation. Some found employment in the state’s new...
Categories: Middle East Studies, Cultural Studies, Imperial & Colonial History, Middle East Philosophy, Middle East History, Middle East Culture