Concept-Resignification as Democratizing Practice in Arab Political Thought

• In Event: Reading Texts Rhetorically

Abstract

This paper explores how two contemporary Arab thinkers, Abdullah Laroui (b. 1933) and Abdurrahman Taha (b. 1944), deploy a set of conceptual and narratological practices to posit a critique to postcolonial authoritarianism and offer a democratic political vision in its stead. These two thinkers are often considered to lay at opposite ends of the Arab intellectual spectrum: while Laroui is a systematic proponent of deepening and indigenizing colonial modernity which he considers a fait accompli rather than a “proposition to be endorsed or refuted,” Taha’s oeuvre theorizes an alternative modality of social and political organization based on the ethical and self-purificatory teachings of the Islamic tradition. Rather than focus on their oft-discussed philosophical and ideological differences, I examine what they have in common: namely, their mobilization of conceptual-rhetorical practices like concept-coinage, concept-resignification, and conceptual juxtaposition to enact the political subject (democratic in Laroui’s case; anti-tyrannical in Taha’s) of which they speak. Specifically, I explore Laroui’s re-signification of concepts to stage shocking and compelling conceptual distinctions for his Arab readers. These include his recasting of “sunna” (conventionally connoting the authoritative precedent of prophet Muhammad’s life) to mean the glorification of the Arab, Islamic, or national past, and his juxtaposition of it to “reform,” the latter re-signified to mean dialectical (including revolutionary) historical progression. In a similar vein, Laroui re-signifies “ummiya”, meaning illiteracy (from the root for “mother, u-m-m) to connote all modes of primordial belonging, then juxtaposes it to “democracy” as the civic mode of collective life. Taha, on the other hand, is a masterful concept-crafter. He erects his vision for “human trusteeship of the world” on a rich and complex edifice of neologisms. Vaguely familiar because lexicographically derived from the Quran, these concepts provide their Arab readers with a revelation-based, tyranny-delimiting political vocabulary that pitches itself as a more authentic alternative to its Euro-Atlantic counterpart.

Author

• Yasmeen Daifallah, University of California, Santa Cruz