Author of the book Yoav Di-Capua (EUME-CNMS Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung 2017/18) in conversation with Margaret Litvin (EUME-CNMS Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung 2017/18).
Tue 15 May 2018
“New Books” auf TRAFO: No Exit. Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre and Decolonization
»The fact that Arab intellectuals had used a version of the intellectual apparatus that Sartre authored in order to decolonize their societies. His ideas were constitutive of the Arab project of decolonization. When the person who has given you the DNA of your liberation project flips on you, or appears to flip on you, it’s very different from some random superstar intellectual who lands in the Middle East and cannot say that you are right. There is a personal level here that is the context. But also – the betrayal is not everything. I also want to say, there was something else in the Arab world. There was an intellectual project that was looking forward, that was hopeful, and that was working in many ways. If we only focus on the betrayal we forget this. And this is a story that is forgotten today in the Arab world. All people remember is the betrayal, for the most part.«
Read the complete conversation here →
Image: Yoav Di-Capua: No Exit. Book cover, cropped.
