Papers by Yasmeen Daifallah
Perspectives on Politics, Feb 7, 2018
Colonial Exchanges, 2017
This chapter investigates the contemporary Moroccan scholar Abdullah Laroui, who has been active ... more This chapter investigates the contemporary Moroccan scholar Abdullah Laroui, who has been active since the late 1960’s in a variety of works and genres. Daifallah demonstrates that Laroui’s thinking has continued to use Marxism as a central intellectual resource up to the present, even as his work has become less explicit about that source given changes in time and circumstance. Throughout his prolific corpus, Daifallah argues, Laroui deploys Marxist forms of historicism as a tool for envisioning a more appealing future that bypasses the colonizing and other problematic tendencies of liberalism. In this way, Laroui seeks to sensitize readers to the contingency of their current circumstances and to open space for envisioning new, heretofore novel, possibilities for a world free of colonialism and domination. This future, Laroui suggests, will adopt many of the ‘principles and dreams’ of European thought, while shaking free of its brutality, domination, and exploitation. Laroui’s Marx...
American Political Science Review, 2019
What is the relationship between interpretive methods and decolonizing projects? Decolonial think... more What is the relationship between interpretive methods and decolonizing projects? Decolonial thinkers often invoke pre-colonial traditions in their efforts to fashion “national cultures”— modes of being, understanding, and self-expression specific to a de-colonizing collectivity’s experience. While the substantive contributions of precolonial traditions to decolonial thought have received well-deserved attention in postcolonial and comparative political theory, this paper focuses on the role that interpretive methods play in generating the emancipatory sensibilities envisioned by decolonial thinkers. It draws on the contemporary Moroccan philosopher Mohammed ‘Abed Al-Jabri’s interpretive method to show that its decolonial potential lies in its “reader-centric” approach. This approach is concerned with transforming its postcolonial reader’s relationship to precolonial traditions, and not only with establishing the truth of historical texts or making use of their insights in the presen...
Redefining the Muslim Community, 2017
17–18). The topics discussed here vary between traditional Ghazālian problems with Avicenna’s phi... more 17–18). The topics discussed here vary between traditional Ghazālian problems with Avicenna’s philosophy, such as the eternity of the world, and other disagreements such as the essence–existence distinction, God’s essence, atomism and occasionalism. Due to the method of focusing on one work, Averroes, slightly surprisingly, appears in the second cluster. By contrast, Suhrawardī’s entry depicts him as choosing between Platonic and Peripatetic (in fact, Avicenna’s) philosophies, even though one might have preferred to present him as being more interested in the dispute between kalām and falsafa. The third cluster is devoted to achievements in the field of logic in post-Avicennian Islamic philosophy (entries 16, 22–3). The fourth thematic cluster (entries 19–21; 24–5; 29) discusses the post-Suhrawardian illuminationist philosophy and its roots in exchange between Avicenna’s philosophy, the philosophy of kalām, mysticism, and the rediscovered Neoplatonism. This tradition is shown to persist until our days. The fifth cluster (entries 24; 26–28; 30) presents the interaction of Islamic philosophy with the Western scientific and philosophical traditions, beginning with the rejection of Copernicus, through an engagement with Henry Bergson and the problems of empiricism, up to incorporating analytic philosophy. All in all, the OHIP is a helpful introduction to Islamic philosophy which is highly recommended – not so much to undergraduate students, as it presupposes considerable knowledge of philosophy on the part of the reader – but to graduate students of philosophy and young scholars who intend to broaden their knowledge about Islamic philosophy, especially its post-classical period.
Postcolonial Studies, 2021
How are emancipatory projects theorized and lived in the heat of political struggle, and how are ... more How are emancipatory projects theorized and lived in the heat of political struggle, and how are they dwelled upon, grieved, and repurposed in the wake of their dead ends? 1 Revolution and Disencha...
This chapter explores the trajectory of turāth (or the premodern Arab and Islamic cultural and re... more This chapter explores the trajectory of turāth (or the premodern Arab and Islamic cultural and religious heritage) as a political concept in modern Arab social and political thought. First, it elaborates a definition of turāth by weaving together an account of its substantive content with its various ideological mobilizations by Arab political thinkers since the mid-nineteenth century. Second, it maps anglophone scholarship on turāth as a politically relevant concept. Third, it provides an overview of how Arab political thinkers engaged turāth to authorize different political projects during colonial and postcolonial periods. Finally, the chapter examines the role that turāth plays in the political theory of the contemporary Moroccan thinker Abdullah Laroui (b. 1933). Ultimately, the chapter shows how the notion of an Arab–Islamic heritage has aided in distinguishing Arab culture from, and relating it to, its European counterpart to assert both its autonomy and its concordance with ...
Author(s): Daifallah, Yasmeen | Advisor(s): Brown, Wendy | Abstract: This dissertation is an exam... more Author(s): Daifallah, Yasmeen | Advisor(s): Brown, Wendy | Abstract: This dissertation is an examination of the work of three twentieth century Arab thinkers and the significance of their thought to questions of political subjectivity and consciousness in political theory. The project analyzes the oeuvres of the Moroccan historian Abdullah Laroui, the Egyptian philosopher Hassan Hanafi, and the Moroccan philosopher Mohamed Abed al-Jabiri for the purpose of understanding how contemporary critiques of Arab-Islamic cultural heritage and ideology constitute a political theoretical tradition aimed at reforming the Arab political subject. Each thinker locates the consciousness of "the Arab self" at the heart of the troubled "Arab condition;" each conceives social and political progress as dependent upon the transformation of that consciousness. Thus, I argue that much of what usually passes as "cultural critique" in contemporary Arab thought should rather be ...
Arabic Thought against the Authoritarian Age
Since the time of al-Nahda, our bodies have been living in one century while our thoughts and fee... more Since the time of al-Nahda, our bodies have been living in one century while our thoughts and feelings inhabit another...this has been the trick played on us by the backward parts of our societies and our psyches for the purpose of perpetuating and exploiting this backwardness 16 .
Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory, 2019
Arab Thought Against the Authoritarian Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Present, eds. Max Weiss and Jen Hanssen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 285-310. , 2017
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
American Political Science Review, 2019
W hat is the relationship between interpretive methods and decolonizing projects? Decolonial thin... more W hat is the relationship between interpretive methods and decolonizing projects? Decolonial thinkers often invoke pre-colonial traditions in their efforts to fashion "national cultures"-modes of being, understanding, and self-expression specific to a de-colonizing collectivity's experience. While the substantive contributions of precolonial traditions to decolonial thought have received well-deserved attention in postcolonial and comparative political theory, this paper focuses on the role that interpretive methods play in generating the emancipatory sensibilities envisioned by decolonial thinkers. It draws on the contemporary Moroccan philosopher Mohammed 'Abed Al-Jabri's interpretive method to show that its decolonial potential lies in its "reader-centric" approach. This approach is concerned with transforming its postcolonial reader's relationship to precolonial traditions, and not only with establishing the truth of historical texts or making use of their insights in the present as is more common in political-theoretical modes of interpretation. It does so through a tripartite process of disconnection, reconnection, and praxis.
Book Reviews by Yasmeen Daifallah
Perspectives on Politics, 2018
Postcolonial Studies, 2021
Revolution and disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the binds of emancipation, by Fadi Bardawil, Durh... more Revolution and disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the binds of emancipation, by Fadi Bardawil, Durham, Duke University Press, 2020, 262 pp., US$ 99.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4780-0675-6, US$ 26.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-4780-0616-9 Yasmeen Daifallah To cite this article: Yasmeen Daifallah (2021): Postcolonial revolutions and their afterlives: the theory and practice of the Lebanese New Left, Postcolonial Studies,
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Papers by Yasmeen Daifallah
Book Reviews by Yasmeen Daifallah