The unmaking of the Arab intellectual

The Unmaking of the Arab Intellectual examines the figure of the intellectual as prophet, national icon, and exile in contemporary Arabic literature and film. Staging a comparative dialogue with writers and critics such as Elias Khoury, Edward Said, Jurji Zaidan, and Mahmoud Darwish, Halabi focuses on new articulations of loss, displacement, and memory in works by Rabee Jaber, Elia Suleiman, Rawi Hage, Rashid al-Daif, and Seba al-Herz. She argues that the ambivalence and disillusionment with the role of the intellectual in contemporary representations operate as a productive reclaiming of the 'political' in an allegedly apolitical context. The Unmaking of the Arab Intellectual invites us to engage in a practice of criticism that is inherently retrospective and evaluative, putting into question the very foundation of what constitutes the modern Arab intellectual legacy. It suggests a methodology to understand the evolving relations between intellectuals and power; authors and texts and generates a politics of reading that locates the political in the hitherto uncharted contemporary era.