No Exit: Arab existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, and decolonization by Yoav Di-Capua

Abstract

Reviewed by: No Exit: Arab existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, and decolonization by Yoav Di-Capua Hugo Zetterberg No Exit: Arab existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, and decolonization By Yoav Di-Capua. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Jean-Paul Sartre is well known to scholars, students and general readers alike, and much has been written and commented on his work over the years. The same can also be said of French intellectuals' role in shaping the discussion of decolonisation—the work of James D. Le Sueur in particular stands out in this aspect.1 Focusing on Sartre but looking beyond the hexagon, Yoav Di-Capua fills an important scholarly gap as he shows the impact that the famous existentialist had on literature and society in independent Arab nations. Providing a thorough overview of the literary establishment mainly in Egypt and Lebanon, Di-Capua traces its transformation throughout the 1950s and 1960s and how it was influenced by Sartre. The book is organised to lead up to Sartre's visit to Egypt and Israel in 1967, with the first chapter explaining the background and introducing the main protagonists for the journey that was organised by Les Temps Modernes in order to make Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir acquainted with the dynamics of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The visits were followed by a special issue of the journal, containing articles by both Arab and Israeli writers and Sartre's Arab followers also expected him to take a public stance in support of Palestine. As Sartre and De Beauvoir instead came out in support of Israel on the eve of the 1967 war (a topic dealt with in the ninth chapter), the existentialist went from being seen as a hero to a traitor, and the Arab writers who had produced the impressive canon of wujudiyya or Arab existentialism severed their ties to Sartre. The second chapter takes a step back and introduces the reader to a number of leading writers in the pre-war and immediate post-war period and shows that some—notably Suhayl Idris—were more willing than others to adapt Sartrean existentialism to the context of Egyptian decolonisation. The third chapter continues with the theme of commitment and the debate that it caused between a newer generation who wished to be committed writers and the older pre-independence authors who believed in "art for art's sake" (79). The picture is further complicated by Communism, which also favoured commitment but of a different kind that did not require intellectual freedom. The fourth and fifth chapters explore the tensions that intellectuals faced as the Pan-Arab state encouraged a certain version of the intellectual and victimised those who diverged from their proscribed role. The sixth chapter turns to the reception of Sartre's works in the region before 1967 and shows that his philosophy often was confused with that of Camus. The seventh chapter provides a detailed overview of Sartre's global engagement, noting how his preface to Fanon's book made readers link him to violence. This, taken together with the importance of Sartrean concepts for understanding the cultural and social impact of (neo-)colonialism made Arab readers expect Sartre to support the Palestinian cause. Chapter eight, which covers the visit of Sartre and De Beauvoir to the region shows that neither philosopher–both sympathetic to the State of Israel as a consequence of having witnessed state Anti-Semitism in France–was prepared to question the Jewish state's right to exist. The ninth and concluding chapter outlines the aftermath of the trip, and the reactions to Sartre signing the open letter in support of Israel together with other French intellectuals. With an extensive survey of wujudiyya literature and its writers, Di-Capua convincingly demonstrates that Sartre did have an extensive impact on Arabic writing. The published sources are complemented with correspondence between Les Temps Modernes and the Israeli and Arab co-organisers of the visit, as well as with official papers from Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other archives in the country. This impressive body of source material is used to show what was at stake for each actor, whose life trajectory is conveyed to the reader through...