Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective - Softcover

Kassab, Elizabeth Suzanne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0231211678 ISBN 13: 9780231211673

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2025

Synopsis

In the last third of the twentieth century, the Arab intellectual and political scene polarized between totalizing doctrines―nationalist, Marxist, and religious―and radical critique. Arab thinkers were reacting to the disenchanting experience of postindependence and a widespread sense of malaise, as well as to authoritarianism, intolerance, injustice, failed development, and successive defeats by Israel. The foundational account of these responses, Contemporary Arab Thought illuminates the relationship between cultural and political critique in the work of major Arab thinkers. Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab also connects Arab debates to the postcolonial issues of Latin America and Africa, revealing the shared struggles of different regions.

Since its first publication in 2009, this book has stood as the foremost account of contemporary Arab debates on culture, philosophy, modernity, tradition, identity, and liberation. It is widely used in Middle Eastern studies courses, and it has become a classic in the field of Arab intellectual history. Contemporary Arab Thought now features an extensive new introduction that reconsiders post-1967 Arab intellectual history in light of the 2011 uprisings and the upheavals that have occurred over the intervening years. Kassab critically reflects on the book’s arguments and the responses it has provoked, and she surveys the new preoccupations that have emerged in Arab debates since 2011. As crises again overtake the Middle East, this landmark work continues to offer indispensable insight into the richness of contemporary Arab thought.

About this title

About the Author

Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab is associate professor of philosophy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. Her books include Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution: The Egyptian and Syrian Debates (Columbia, 2019). The Arabic edition of Contemporary Arab Thought received the prestigious Sheikh Zayed Book Award.

Edition details

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0231211678
• ISBN 13: 9780231211673
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 424