Rethinking Critical approaches to Arabic Comparatively, in a ‘Post’ Colonial Context

Abstract

Rethinking critical approaches requires rereading Arabic through a comparative perspective of distinct practices, within their continual intra-regional exchanges. This ought to be implemented by theoretical methods with strategies to contest the canonical, invoked by critical approaches from the North and the South. New outlooks to the postcolonial approach need to be assessed in relation to the decolonial approach postulated by the Latin American Philosophy of Liberation movement (1960). Its critics have propounded an epistemology for determining the role played by vocational discursive practices in canon formation, challenging the reification of the canon. The decolonial approach can be instrumental in rethinking the process of canon formation in Arabic. Decolonizing Arabic literature from the centralized ‘master voice’ invokes new critical modes of reading radical writing inhibited by institutional and political hegemony. By challenging major literature, minor writing dismantles institutionalized major literature, and destabilizes the canon. It requires from the reader/critic a comparative approach aware of cultural specificities, while relating them to what goes beyond their borders. Such an awareness would initiate an intracultural dialogue among scholars of Arabic from different locations, which would open more channels for partaking in a global critical debate.