Exploring the "long 19th century," this volume delves into the transformative events and cultural shifts that shaped modernity from the late 18th to the early 20th century. It examines how political revolutions, industrial advancements, and social reforms influenced art, literature, and philosophy. Through a multidisciplinary approach, the book highlights key figures and movements, offering insights into the complexities of this dynamic period. Readers will gain a deeper understanding of the historical context and its lasting impact on contemporary society.
Arabic Literature in a Posthuman World explores Arabic literary production after the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. 23 specialists of modern Arabic literature analyze the many ways in which contemporary Arab authors view and comment on a world that is dramatically changing and disintegrating, a world full of violent conflict, social instability, ideological vacuum and political collapse where there does not seem to be any place for humanity any more. The spread of new technologies and media added, this world not only appears inhumane, but also posthuman, a world of monstrosity in which mankind no longer controls its own destiny. Authors react to this with a writing of a new quality that makes the old humanist project of an Arab nahḍa appear as a failed utopia. A first section focuses on the increased interest that authors assign to the past as a shaper of the present. The other sections highlight the many subversive techniques with which the writers try to reassert humanity against the overall trend of de-humanization. The spectrum spans from ‘Contested Spaces over Science Fiction and Dystopia’ and methods of ‘Countering/Resisting Fragmentation’, ‘Dispersal’, ‘Loss’, ‘Oblivion’, to ‘Satire and Rap’. The volume is the first to explore what Ihab Hassan’s term posthuman(ism), widely debated only in and for Western contexts so far, may mean in other parts of the world.
Wie ‚funktionieren’ die wichtigsten Sprachen der Islamischen Welt? Was kennzeichnet, was verbindet, was unterscheidet sie voneinander? Welche Schwierigkeiten hat man zu meistern, wenn man diese Sprachen erlernen möchte, und welche Welten eröffnen sich den Lernenden, wenn sie eine solide Sprachkompetenz erwerben? Stephan Guth (IKOS, Oslo) bietet anhand von linguistischen Kurzporträts einführende Überblicke über ausgewählte islamwissenschaftlich relevante Sprachen. Behandelt werden neben den an islamwissenschaftlichen Instituten vertretenen ‚Basissprachen’ des Islams – Arabisch, Persisch, Türkisch – auch seltener gelehrte, aber dennoch in Vergangenheit und/oder Gegenwart bedeutsame ‚islamische’ Idiome wie Urdu, Indonesisch, Swahili, Berber, Hausa und Somali. Neben Grundinformationen über Sprecherzahlen, Verbreitung und grammatische Strukturen vermittelt die Darstellung Einsichten in die Sprachgeschichte sowie in die sich mit Kenntnis der betreffenden Sprache erschließenden Literaturen (und Oraturen) – und somit in die Lebenswelten der sie sprechenden Menschen. Dank der in der Islamischen Welt anzutreffenden sprachlichen Vielfalt ermöglicht der Band gleichzeitig einen ersten Einstieg in die Allgemeine Linguistik. Vor allem aber ist Sprachkenntnis das Tor zur Beschäftigung mit Geschichte und Kulturen der betreffenden Regionen.
Since the emergence of the modern Arab intellectual in the 19th century, Arabic literature has always followed and critically commented socio-political and cultural change, but also contributed to bringing it about. Focusing on crucial moments and factors as well as figures, ideas and organs, the two volumes of From New Values to New Aesthetics edited by Stephan Guth and Gail Ramsay approach the close connection between literature and socio-political and/or cultural history, between ‘scribe’ and ‘writer’, from two angles. While volume 1 (From Modernism to the 1980s) revisits the history of post-World War II modernism, trying to identify turning points in modern Arabic literature up to the 1980s, the contributions in volume 2 (Postmodernism and Thereafter) are explorations into what from today’s perspective appears as pre-‘Arab Spring’ literature.
