MESA Banner
The Political Subject in Contemporary Arab Thought: Jaberi's "Critique of Arab Reason" as a Case in Point
Abstract
This paper explores how the political is theorized in the works of Mohammad Abed al-Jaberi, especially his four-volume Critique of Arab Reason. It examines how the notion of the political, and its attendant mode(s) of subjectivity, relates to other realms of human activity, namely the cultural, the religious, the social, and the economic. First, the paper situates Jaberi’s intervention in the broader philosophical debate in Arab intellectual circles on how best to achieve modernity in a postcolonial context. The paper then traces how Jaberi’s intervention seeks to deconstruct the basis upon which the debate had been conducted since the late 19th century, and to use that deconstructive effort as the launch pad for his subsequent Critique of Arab Reason. Next, the paper explores the various subject positions that Jaberi theorizes in his Critique, namely the epistemological, the political and the ethical subject. It analyzes the conceptual connections between these seemingly independent categories, and, more specifically, their relationship to, and consequences for, theorizing the Arab political subject. Finally, I compare Jaberi’s notion of the political with that of major figurations of the political in western political theory.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Arab States
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries