Why are the Arabs not free?; the politics of writing.9781405161718 Why are the Arabs not free?; the politics of writing. Safouan, Moustafa. Blackwell Publishing 2007 106 pages $24.95 Paperback Critical Quarterly DS39 According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. Egyptian psychoanalyst Safouan (a former student of Jacques Lacan Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan (French IPA: [ʒak la'kɑ̃]) (April 13, 1901 – September 9, 1981) was a French psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, and doctor, who made prominent contributions to the psychoanalytic movement. ), the root of the problem of Arab despotism despotism, government by an absolute ruler unchecked by effective constitutional limits to his power. In Greek usage, a despot was ruler of a household and master of its slaves. , which he blames for the "general and comprehensive defeat of the Third World," is a problem of language. He argues that classical Arabic Classical Arabic, also known as Koranic (or Qur'anic) Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in the Qur'an as well as in numerous literary texts from Umayyad and Abbasid times (7th to 9th centuries). is a dead language and thus the written language of culture and power is divorced from the vernacular language of the common people. Just as the decision of Dante to write The Divine Comedy Divine Comedy: see Dante Alighieri. Divine Comedy Dante’s epic poem in three sections: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. [Ital. Lit.: Divine Comedy] See : Epic in the vernacular and other developments in European linguistic humanism paved the way for the Renaissance and European global success, so the Arabic world needs to lay hold of their own vernaculars in order to gain a voice against corrupt and despotic Arabic rulers. ([c]20072005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR) |
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