Georges CormArab Political Thought: Past and Present by Patricia M. Phillips-Batoma Atoma Batoma

Abstract

BOOKS IN REVIEW Day. Almost all the characters, even a couple of bandits, surprisingly wear the same warm color against the gloomy social backdrop . The traditional Chinese doctrine of Confucianism is hardly mentioned in this book, but its characters behave in accordance , seemingly on instinct. The country gentlemen and stewards, young masters and hired hands, merchants and prostitutes , and all the other ordinary people struggling in the turbulent age of the late Qing Dynasty, they all shimmer unexpectedly with warmth and kindness, loyalty and humanity. From this novel, you might get the impression that Yu Hua seems to have reverted from his earlier years of being a cynical adult and turned into an innocent child, endeavoring in rebuilding a fairy land after a catastrophe, and trying to find a satisfying answer for all problems. He does want to reach a peaceful balance in this novel, like a serious reconciliation with his old sulky self. The novel starts with a quest, and it ends with emotional closure. A husband leaves his home in search of his wife; though he fails, providence brings their coffins together for a short moment on a beautiful sunny day. The key is that the reader knows. They know why she left and where she went and how she died. They know she loved him as he loved her, and she regretted every moment after leaving him, and she sent their daughter embroidered clothes, filled with a mother’s love. They know he died a hero, and she died thinking of him. They know everything . Different from Brothers and To Live, where readers are tortured with unsolved questions and unpacified grief, Wen Cheng indulges and feeds its readers with everything they want. Yu Hua endeavors to draw a perfect circle in this book. And sometimes , he even goes a little further on the path of perfecting it. The first part should end when Lin Xiangfu is killed, for usually the protagonist’s perspective is over after his death, and the writer of To Live would definitely leave it there. But today’s Yu Hua just cannot leave his death unrevenged. Of course, if he could, the second part added to patch up the tragedy would not be there either, and the whole story might make another realistic novel, instead of a romance. Gong Qiangwei China University of Mining & Technology Georges Corm Arab Political Thought: Past and Present Trans. Patricia M. Phillips-Batoma & Atoma Batoma. London. Hurst. 2020. 367 pages. AS EVENTS UNFOLD in the Arabicspeaking Middle East, whether related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, to the war in Syria, or to Trump’s so-called deal of the century more recently, we observers might be wondering what Arab intellectuals think, how they have been thinking for many decades now about politics in their respective countries and in the region. Apart from the occasional media appearance by English speakers like Palestinian American historian Rashid Khalidi, we likely lack historical perspective when it comes to Arab political thought. A recently published comprehensive overview by Lebanese economist Georges Corm goes a long way to fill this gap. This is not another work attempting to delve into the “Arab mind” but rather to track the evolution of Arab thought from the nineteenth century to the present. A professor of economics, political science , and contemporary history of the Middle East and North Africa, Corm has authored numerous works in French and Arabic but has little name recognition among readers in English, a reality that is somehow emblematic of one of his main points in Arab political thought: The major problem of secular or modernist thought was not its failure to conform to the realities of the Arab world. . . . Rather, its near total invisibility in academia and the media, both Western and Arab, is unquestionably what stifled it in favor of debates that were exclusively theologico-political, redundant, and circular. Whether they were portrayed positively or negatively, these debates continued to be the focus of what bordered on being a marketing campaign to promote the different Islamic movements and their leaders as if they constituted the main political and social force in the Arab world. This state of affairs led to a vicious selfperpetuating...