Unmaking of the Arab Intellectual

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.

• List of StillsNote on Translations and TransliterationAcknowledgementsPrefaceIntroduction: In the Beginning Was the WordChapter 1. Requiem for the EnlightenmentChapter 2. Elegy for the IntellectualChapter 3. The Banality of ExileChapter 4. Ruins of Secular NationalismChapter 5. The Political RemainsNotesBibliographyIndex

'The Unmaking of the Arab Intellectual is one of those rare works that manages to describe an aesthetic formation — in this case, a generation of contemporary Arab writers — in order to reflect generatively on the intersections of history, politics and culture. Accessible and eloquent, this brilliant book forges new ways of relating to literary pasts and futures.'