Abstract
The Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef urgently asks, “Why are the poets silent?/Where have they gone?” These questions underscore the compelling need for the guiding voices of Arab intellectuals at this deeply divided present moment in the Arab world that has effectively seen the destruction of seemingly stable nations and identities. It is important to understand why and how easily “things fell apart” for Arab nations and peoples under the destructive influence and direct intervention of imperialist and Zionist agendas and forces. What does it mean to speak truth to power in the current Arab and global context where the destruction of Arab nations, such as Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen has become the all too familiar, convenient, and accepted status quo, which is marked by destructive and exclusionary discourses? It has become incumbent upon the Arab intellectual/writer/poet to lead the self-examination process in order to provide an understanding of the current Arab situation within its greater global context and construct a revolutionary and insurrectionary oppositional discourse that would expose and dismantle the current defeatist and divisionary discourses. Antonio Gramsci's concepts of hegemony and consent, Louis Althusser's ideological state apparatuses, and Edward Said's important ideas on the intellectual's critical consciousness, secular criticism, and beginnings are the theoretical lenses used to help decipher the catastrophic happenings in the Arab world. This study also examines excerpts of literary works by important Arab poets/intellectuals, such as Mahmoud Darwish, Mourid Barghouti, Bader Shaker Al-Sayyab, Saadi Youssef, and Yusuf Al-Ani.
Highlights
Knowing ThyselfEdward Said began his 1979 essay entitled “Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims” with what he thought to be a pivotal quotation from the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci (a quotation, which he uses in the introduction to his 1978 book, Orientalism): Tahrir Hamdi is assistant editor of Arab Studies Quarterly and Professor of Postcolonial Literature, Arab Open University, Amman, Jordan
Knowing ThyselfEdward Said began his 1979 essay entitled “Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims” with what he thought to be a pivotal quotation from the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci: Tahrir Hamdi is assistant editor of Arab Studies Quarterly and Professor of Postcolonial Literature, Arab Open University, Amman, JordanASQ 41.1 Produced and distributed by Pluto JournalsARAB STUDIES QUARTERLYThe starting point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is “knowing thyself” as a product of the historical process to date which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory
It is of the utmost importance for the Arab intellectual to seize the present moment of utter defeat and despair to nurture hope: Here, by the downslope of hills, facing the sunset and time’s muzzle, near gardens with severed shadows, we do what the prisoners do
Summary
Edward Said began his 1979 essay entitled “Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims” with what he thought to be a pivotal quotation from the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci (a quotation, which he uses in the introduction to his 1978 book, Orientalism): Tahrir Hamdi is assistant editor of Arab Studies Quarterly and Professor of Postcolonial Literature, Arab Open University, Amman, Jordan
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