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The first comprehensive social and intellectual biography of Jalal Al-e Ahmad
This book explores the life and legacy of Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923-69) - arguably the most prominent Iranian public intellectual of his time - and contends that he was the last Muslim intellectual to have articulated a vision of Muslim worldly cosmopolitanism, before the militant Islamism of the last half a century degenerated into sectarian politics and intellectual alienation from the world at large.
Hamid Dabashi places Al-e Ahmad beside other towering critical thinkers of his time, showing how he personified a state of Muslim anticolonial modernity that has now disappeared behind the smokescreen of sectarian politics. This unprecedented engagement with Al-e Ahmad's life and legacy is a prelude to what Dabashi calls a 'post-Islamist Liberation Theology'.
The Last Muslim Intellectual is about expanding the wide spectrum of anticolonial thinking beyond its established canonicity and adding a critical Muslim thinker to it - an urgent task, if the future of Muslim critical thinking is to be considered in liberated terms beyond the dead-end of its current sectarian predicament.
Key Features
. A full social and intellectual biography of Jalal Al-e Ahmad, a seminal Muslim public intellectual of the mid-20th century
. Places Al-e Ahmad's writing and activities alongside other influential anticolonial thinkers of his time, including Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire and Edward Said
. Chapters cover Jalal Al-e Ahmad's intellectual and political life; his relationship with his wife, the novelist Simin Daneshvar; his essays; his fiction; his travel writing; his translations; and his legacy
Sommario
Acknowledgements; Introduction: The Last Muslim Intellectual; 1. Remembrance of Things Past; 2. Something of an Autobiography; 3. Her Husband Jalal; 4. The Master Essayist; 5. Gharbzadegi: The Condition of Coloniality; 6. Literary Interludes; 7. Traveling in and out of a Homeland; 8. Translating the World; 9. From a Short Life to a Lasting Legacy: Towards a Post-Islamist Liberation Theology.
Info autore
Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. He is the author of many books and articles on the social and intellectual history of Islam, both medieval and modern, many of them translated into other languages. He is a globally recognized critical thinker on contemporary affairs and a regular columnist for Aljazeera.
Riassunto
In this social and intellectual biography, Hamid Dabashi contends that Jalal Al-e Ahmad was the last Muslim intellectual to have articulated a vision of Muslim worldly cosmopolitanism. This unprecedented engagement with Al-e Ahmad’s life and legacy is a prelude to what Dabashi calls a ‘post-Islamist Liberation Theology’.
