Abstract
ABSTRACT This paper theorizes the Sufi notion of shawq (longing) in Ḥammūr Ziyāda’s novel Shawq al-darwīsh, as a method of critique emerging from Sufi philosophy and the history of nineteenth-century anti-colonial Sufi resistance movements in Sudan and throughout North Africa. Specifically, Ziyāda’s fictional return to the violence of the colonial era and the Mahdist revolt presents shawq as a radically persistent political and spiritual ethic. Through animating the figure of the darwīsh (dervish) and his subaltern longings, Ziyāda critiques historical violence and its reverberations through the present. This paper frames Ziyāda’s critique with David Scott’s theory of postcolonial tragedy and Maḥmūd al-Masʿadī’s theory of literary tragedy. By reading Shawq al-darwīsh alongside Jurjī Zaydān’s historical novel Asīr al-mutamahdī and Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx, I show how Ziyāda breaks with the Nahḍa origins of the Arabic historical novel and charts an urgent critical horizon for the Arabic historical novel’s post-2011 present.
Published Version
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