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Explores the formation of a modern Arab identity through the conceptions of politics, morality and language in Arab thought
Psychoanalysis and the Love of Arabic reorients the debates around Arabic and global modernity in relation to psychoanalysis, capitalism and universality. The study offers the first psychoanalytic reading of 19th-century works written during the nahda movement by Ahmad Faris Shidyaq (1805-87) and Butrus al-Bustani (1819-83), showing how a curious relationship was forged between language and politics - one driven by both a desire for, and anxiety about, modernity.
In analysing the abstractness of national belonging as belonging to the language, author Nadia Bou Ali considers why modern Arabic grammarians fell in love with language again and explores how language became ideated as a 'mirror of the nation'.
Nadia Bou Ali is an Assistant Professor in the Civilization Studies Program at the American University of Beirut. She is the co-editor of Lacan contra Foucault: Subjectivity, Sex, and Politics (with Rohit Goel, 2018).
List of contents
Introduction: The Mirror Of Language; 1. Literature as a Ruthless Excavator of Culture; 2. Why Is Their Lalangue Rather Than Nothing? Love of Lugha and Lalangue; 3. Piercing The Bull's Eye: The Sexual (Non-)Relation; 4. A Liberal Psycho-Theology; Conclusion: The Abstractions of Homo Economicus: Now A Stomach, Now an Anus.
About the author
Nadia Bou Ali is Assistant Professor at the Civilization Studies Program at the American University of Beirut. She is co-editor of Lacan contra Foucault, subjectity, sex, and politics (Bloomsbury 2018) and her research interests revolve around modern Arabic intellectual history, critical theory and psychoanalysis.
Summary
Nadia Bou Ali explores the formation of a modern Arab identity through the conceptions of politics, morality and language in Arab thought.
