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'Offers an imaginative and groundbreaking intervention that sheds light on a new generation of Arab writers and allows us to understand the literary past anew.' Michael Allan, University of Oregon Zeina G. Halabi examines the unmaking of the intellectual as prophetic figure, national icon and exile in Arabic literature and film from the 1990s onwards. She comparatively explores how contemporary writers and film directors such as Rabee Jaber, Rawi Hage, Rashid al-Daif, Seba al-Herz and Elia Suleiman have displaced the archetype of the intellectual as it appears in writings by Elias Khoury, Edward Said, Jurji Zaidan and Mahmoud Darwish. In so doing, Halabi identifies and theorises alternative articulations of political commitment, displacement and loss in the wake of unfulfilled prophecies of emancipation and national liberation. The Unmaking of the Arab Intellectual offers critical tools to understand the evolving relations between aesthetics and politics in the alleged post-political era of Arabic literature and culture. Zeina G. Halabi is Assistant Professor of Arabic Literature and Culture at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She specialises in contemporary literature, music and film with particular interest in questions of loss, dissidence and political commitment. Cover image: Waiting for Youssef (detail), Acrylic on canvas, 160 x 140 cm (c) Tarek Butayhi, used with the permission of the artist Cover design: [EUP logo] edinburghuniversitypress.com ISBN (PPC): 978-1-4744-2139-3 Barcode
List of contents
List of Stills
Note on Translations and Transliteration
Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction: In the Beginning Was the Word
Chapter 1. Requiem for the Enlightenment
Chapter 2. Elegy for the Intellectual
Chapter 3. The Banality of Exile
Chapter 4. Ruins of Secular Nationalism
Chapter 5. The Political Remains
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Zeina G. Halabi is Assistant Professor of Arabic Literature at the American University of Beirut. She specializes in modern Arabic literature with particular interest in questions of loss, mourning, and dissidence in contemporary literature and visual culture. She has authored articles on the shifting notion of political commitment in the writings of canonical and emerging Arab writers.
Summary
In this book Zeina G. Halabi examines the figure of the intellectual as profet national icon, and exile in contemporary Arabic literature and film. Staging a comparative dialogue with writers and critics such as Elias Khoury, Edward Said, Jurji Zaidan, and Mahmoud Darwish, Halabi focuses on new articulations of loss, displacement, and memory.
