The Politics of Writing Islam: Voicing Difference (Suspensions: Contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate Thought)

Mahmut Mutman

ISBN 10: 144116524X / ISBN 13: 9781441165244

Published by Bloomsbury Academic, 2013

About this Item

Seller Inventory # V9781441165244

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Politics of Writing Islam: Voicing Difference (Suspensions: Contemporary Middle Eastern and Islamicate Thought)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 144116524X
• ISBN 13: 9781441165244
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The Politics of Writing Islam provides a much-needed critique of existing forms of studying, writing and representing Islam in the West. Through critiquing ethnographic, literary, critical, psychoanalytic and theological discourses, the author reveals the problematic underlying cultural and theoretical presuppositions. Mutman demonstrates how their approach reflects the socially, politically and economically unequal relationship between the West and Islam.

While offering a critical insight into concepts such as writing, power, post-colonialism, difference and otherness on a theoretical level, Mutman reveals a different perspective on Islam by emphasizing its living, everyday and embodied aspects in dynamic relation with the outside world - in contrast to the stereotyped authoritarian and backward religion characterized by an omnipotent God.

Throughout, Mutman develops an approach to culture as an embodied, everyday, living and ever changing practice. He argues that Islam should be perceived precisely in this way, that is, as an open, heterogeneous, interpretive, multiple and worldly belief system within the Abrahamic tradition of ethical monotheism, and as one that is contested within as well as outside its 'own' culture.

About the Authors

Mahmut Mutman teaches cultural and critical theory and is the co-ordinator of the Program in Cultural Studies at Istanbul Sehir University in Turkey. He has widely published on orientalism, postmodernism, nationalism, and Islam.

Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh is a philosopher, literary theorist, and professor of comparative literature at Babson College. His work tracks movements of radical thought across the so-called East and the West, with particular attention to concepts of chaos, violence, illusion, silence, extremism, mania, disappearance, night, evil, secrecy, and apocalyptic writing. He has published nine books to date, including two volumes titled Omnicide I and Omnicide II on madness, and two volumes on night titled Night: A Philosophy of the After-Dark and Night II: A Philosophy of the Last World. He is also the founding director of the Future Studies Program, Programmer of Transdisciplinary Studies for The New Centre for Research & Practice, and co-editor of the Future's Theory and Suspensions book series for Bloomsbury Press.

Lucian Stone is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, The University of North Dakota, USA.