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Whereas most studies of Islamism focus on politics and religious ideology, this book analyses the ways in which Islamism in the Arab world is defined, reflected, transmitted and contested in a variety of creative and other cultural forms. It covers a range of contexts of production and reception, from the early twentieth century to the present, and with reference to cultural production in and/or about Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, the Gulf, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine. The material engaged with is produced in Arabic, English and French and includes fiction, autobiography, feature films, television series, television reportage, the press, rap music and video games. Throughout, the book highlights the multiple forms and contested interpretations of Islamism in the Arab world, exploring trends and tensions in the ways Islamism is represented to (primarily) Arab audiences and complicating simplistic perspectives on this phenomenon. The book considers repeated and idiosyncratic themes, modes of characterisation, motifs, structures of feeling and forms of engagement, in the context of an ongoing struggle for symbolic power in the region.
List of contents
Introduction Part 1: Symbolic Power, Representation and Reception 1. Islam in Arabic Literature: The Struggle for Symbolic Power 2. Managing Religion in the Name of National Community 3. Islamically Marked Bodies and Urban Space in Two Egyptian Films 4. Piety, Youth and Egyptian Cinema: Still Seeking Islamic Space Part 2: Types, Tropes and Teleologies 5. ‘Those who cure you will kill you’: The Doctor and the Terrorist in Arab Fiction and Film 6. ‘Ostentatious Veils’ in the Moroccan Weeklies 7. ‘Drives in the Name of Freedom’: Desire and Death in North African Islamization Plots 8. Islamism, Capitalism and Mimetic Desire in the Terrorism Novel: Fantasy and Dream Part 3: National, Regional and International Frames 9. Al-Manar and Hizbullah: Creative Instances in Propaganda Warfare 10. Video Games as Civilizational Configurations: US-Arab Encounters 11. Rap and Islamism in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia: Local Idiosyncrasies and Global Reverberations 12. Towards a New Language: Liberating Arab Artists from Islamist Discourses 13. Stateless Confederations: Revolutions of Islamic Consciousness in the Arab World
About the author
Abir Hamdar is a Lecturer in Arabic at Durham University, UK
Lindsey Moore is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Lancaster University, UK
