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ID: 184733

Mihyar’s precarious journey: imagining the intellectual in modern Syrian literature / Istanbulli, Linda

Istanbulli, Linda	Journal Article
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Summary/Abstract

This article investigates the representations of the literary persona of Mihyar in three works by Syrian authors. First established as a central figure in Arab literary culture by Adonis in his influential 1961 poetry collection The Songs of Mihyar of Damascus, Mihyar embodies the worldviews of the progressive intellectual of the 1950s and 1960s. As it examines Adonis’s Mihyar as well as his ensuing remobilisation in Haydar Haydar’s Banquet for Seaweed (1983) and Rosa Yasin Hasan’s First Draft (2011), this article calls attention to the implications of their literary re-makings in relation to fluctuating cultural and political conditions. I argue that both Adonis and Haydar assume the persona of Mihyar to model their idealised version of the public intellectual in their own image, whereas Hasan incorporates the figure of Mihyar into her novel to dismantle him entirely. By so doing, First Draft interrogates the totalising models of sovereign paternalism that a previous generation of intellectuals had produced and the genealogy they had constructed for Arab modernity. Hasan’s work speaks to the preoccupations of a new generation of Syrian writers who share an overwhelming sense of disillusionment with both the grand narratives that had governed the cultural field and the epistemological frameworks that had given rise to these narratives.

Key Words

Hadatha ; Arab Intellectual ; Arab Modernity ; Syrian Literature ; Syrian Novel ; Syrian Literary History

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ID: 095109

Necessary nudes: Hasatha and Muasira in the lives of modern Lebanese / Scheid, Kirsten

Scheid, Kirsten	Journal Article
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Publication

2010.

Summary/Abstract

In his studio in Beirut in 1929, the young artist Moustapha Farroukh (1901-57) envisioned a composition to change his society. He hoped his oil painting would incite broad support among his fellow Lebanese for a revolution in conventional gender relations and women's participation in the urban social order. He titled the picture The Two Prisoners and based it on a European convention for representing the East: the Nude odalisque (Figure 1). The resulting painting exemplifies the complex role Arab intellectuals of the early 20th century played in the formation of modern art and universal modernity. Leading artists in Mandate-era Beirut felt compelled to paint Nudes and display them as part of a culturing process they called tathq?f (disciplining or enculturing). To a large extent, tathq?f consisted of recategorizing norms for interaction and self-scrutiny. Joseph Massad has revealed that one crucial component of tathq?f was the repudiation of behaviors and desires associated with the Arab Past, such as male homosexuality. An equally important component was the cultivation of "modern," "masculine" heterosexual eroticism and a dutiful feminine compliance associated with ?ad?tha (novelty) and mu???ira (contemporaneity). This was accomplished through the use of a genre that was deliberately new and alien in both its material media and its impact on makers and viewers.

Key Words

Nudes ; Hadatha ; Muasira ; Modern Lebanese ; Lebanese

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