MULTITUDE OF BLOGSNone of the PDFs are my own productions. I've collected them from web (e-mule, avax, libreremo, socialist bros, cross-x, gigapedia..) What I did was thematizing. This blog's project is to create an e-library for a Heideggerian philosophy and Bourdieuan sociology Φ market-created inequalities must be overthrown in order to close knowledge gap. this is an uprising, do ya punk?
Islam and the West: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (Religion and Postmodernism Series) By Mustapha Cherif
University Of Chicago Press
In the spring of 2003, Jacques Derrida sat down for a public debate in Paris with Algerian intellectual Mustapha Chérif. The eminent philosopher arrived at the event directly from the hospital where he had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, the illness that would take his life just over a year later. That he still participated in the exchange testifies to the magnitude of the subject at hand: the increasingly distressed relationship between Islam and the West, and the questions of freedom, justice, and democracy that surround it. As Chérif relates in this account of their dialogue, the topic of Islam held special resonance for Derrida—perhaps it is to be expected that near the end of his life his thoughts would return to Algeria, the country where he was born in 1930. Indeed, these roots served as the impetus for their conversation, which first centers on the ways in which Derrida’s Algerian-Jewish identity has shaped his thinking. From there, the two men move to broader questions of secularism and democracy; to politics and religion and how the former manipulates the latter; and to the parallels between xenophobia in the West and fanaticism among Islamists. Ultimately, the discussion is an attempt to tear down the notion that Islam and the West are two civilizations locked in a bitter struggle for supremacy and to reconsider them as the two shores of the Mediterranean—two halves of the same geographical, religious, and cultural sphere. Islam and the West is a crucial opportunity to further our understanding of Derrida’s views on the key political and religious divisions of our time and an often moving testament to the power of friendship and solidarity to surmount them.
NEW LINK (and I think it is the only one that works)
Keny Arkana's Le Rage (Rebellion) is The Song of the World after Paris banlieue revolts. what is coming is what is already here!
not only provincialization of europe is coming, west as Nancy says is in a war "againist itself" which depletes the sources of native soil of west. as Haar asks in 'the song of the earth': is another commencement, a non-western one coming? it has already...
“Something . . . happened . . . in the first half of this century, and the second half, hovering between nightmare and parody, is only its shadow. Even so we must take its measure. Not on a small scale, based on the last three or four centuries. . . . But since philosophy, even in its possibility, is at stake, the true assessment, incalculable as it is, of the entire history of the West is needed. And that is another matter altogether.” Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (1989) “Neither an accident nor a mistake” in Critical Inquiry, Vol. 15, No. 2. (Winter, 1989), p. 481, tr. by Paula Wissing
the crimes of west againist west at WW2 isn't solved but muted. the hundred year circle (of Norbert Elias: some events he says give birth after a hundered years;i.e. their becoming an issue for the fate of society) will bring massive destruction of West in the coming century[not a prophesy: I'm not talking of a material destruction(yet there is also the possibility of this) what I mean is that as a civilization there is a fundamental double-bind for west of which Lacoue-Labarthe gone mad about. to talk of this question en mesoi(at the center) is the only way for worlds to live together. if not, if the denial of the singularity of the peoples of "rest" there may happen anything. the logic of camp(Agamben) is a manifestation of this politically incorrect attitude. the finishing of the "centre for philosophical research on the political" is at the end of the spectrum].
what Lacoue-Labarthe sensed of this silence is the unsettling quietness of the coming catastrophe. (I can be accused of being a pessimist, who is not european and who has a hatred of europe; so that sees every right to attack to west for his belated modernization. yet this will be the denial of coeval exposition of worlds to the Earth which is indeed a very Western attitude about the understanding of Being). the war of monotheisms (christianity vs. judaism) is now trans-lated on islam vs. judaism where the same struggle isn't the case. because islam is not a mono-theo-ism, yet only excess came: suicide bombing, an act that is forbidden is being done for the sake of religion. the gesture of explosion is the result of the symbolic violence exposed upon world by western metaphysics at its most radical level. right to dwell, to share a heim of muslim people is denied as if it is natural. turning middle east into a disposable, hegemony sees every right to intervene.
the fold named palestine is the new zenith. revolutionary stance of Islam muted by modernization projects obligated by western educated elites (see bobby sayyid's "a fundamental fear") is retreating in every piece of the fragmented muslim world. the question of urheimat is remembered, the return to the sources started
yet there is also a danger. another absolute, a much more powerful than western metaphysics is also possible. Ottoman State was never an imperium yet what I observe in my country and the muslim world is the claim of the absolute: with a difference; a post-modern one. post-modern empire. ın the street, at tv (also turkey is the most anti-american/western country in statistics) you see The Claim. there are books being published calling Ottomans back: "come back Ottomans" also Arab world is rethinking of Ottomans. with a corrupted historiography written by self-orientalists; Ottomans are pcitured as colonizers in Arab world. what became much more clear for Arabs after 9/11 is that the ones who told them Ottomans are colonizers are the colonizers themselves. at jordan an old man told me that "for long years we are told turks colonized & sold us cheap, yet what we see now is that our kings are the polices of west" how happened this turn? the veto to USA at Iraq war (the one which was about US troops passing from turkish territory) made turkey a center of concern again. the question of being a postmodern imperium of absolute is at hand.
yet burning of the Babylon is unavoidable!
[I'm really interested in your thoughts on this matter, please leave comments: as you can see the question is a turbulenting one, at some points I'm not really sure]
The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization) by G. R. Hawting
"Hawting has accomplished his task with deep learning and with sharp, detailed arguments. All students of Arabia and early Islam will do well to read this book." Meas Bulletin
"The book is original and challenging and should be read by all scholars interested in the Quran, Islamic origins, and how religions imagine their origins." Religious Studies Review
Book Description Why and under what circumstances did the religion of Islam emerge in a remote part of Arabia at the beginning of the seventh century? Traditional scholarship maintains that Islam developed in opposition to the idolatrous and polytheistic religion of the Arabs of Mecca and the surrounding regions. In this study of pre-Islamic Arabian religion, G. R. Hawting adopts a comparative religious perspective to suggest an alternative view. By examining the various bodies of evidence which survive from this period, the Koran and the vast resources of the Islamic tradition, the author argues that in fact Islam arose out of conflict with other monotheists whose beliefs and practices were judged to fall short of true monotheism and were, in consequence, attacked polemically as idolatry. The author is adept at unravelling the complexities of the source material, and students and scholars will find his argument both engaging and persuasive.
The Ottoman Empire and the World Around it - Suraiya Faroqhi I.B Tauris
In Islamic law the world was made up of the House of Islam and the House of War with the Ottoman Sultan--the perceived successor to the Caliphs--supreme ruler of the Islamic world. However, Suraiya Faroqhi demonstrates that there was no iron curtain between the Ottoman and other worlds but rather a long-established network of diplomatic, financial, cultural and religious connections. These extended to the empires of Asia and the modern states of Europe. Faroqhi's book is based on a huge study of original and early modern sources, including diplomatic records, travel and geographical writing, as well as personal accounts.
The Islamic Leviathan: Islam and the making of State Power
Islamism is often associated with oppositional social movements. However, increasingly, Muslim states too have served as agents of Islamism. They have adopted Islamization strategies, and realigned state ideology and policy-making to reflect Islamist ideals and to fulfill demands of Islamic ideology. They have done so not only as a reaction to Islamist challenges from below but also to harness the energies of Islamism to expand state power and capacity. By co-opting Islamism, they have strengthened the postcolonial state. Pakistan during the Zia ul-Haq period, and Malaysia under Mahathir Mohammad have been at the forefront of this trend, devising Islamization from above strategies that allowed these weak states to effectively alleviate limitations before exercise of state power and to pursue goals such as economic growth. The Islamization of the postcolonial state underscores the importance of religion and culture to state power and capacity.
DISCOVERING ISLAM Making Sense of Muslim History and Society Revised Edition Akbar S. Ahmed
from the Preface In two seminars held in Islamabad in 1985 when presenting some of the ideas in this book I cited the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz and the Islamic scholar Maulana Mawdoodi. I was criticized by the distinguished ‘rightist’ scholars present for the former (‘godless communist’) and ‘leftists’ for the latter (‘agent of Western imperialism’). Neither side was prepared to conduct a dialogue or attempt to understand the other point of view. Western scholars at the seminar criticized me for being too ‘Islamic’, some Muslims for not being Islamic enough. As I believe Islam to be the middle path—the Quranic ummah-i-wast, the middle nation or, to echo Imam Khomeini, nah sharq nah gharb, neither East nor West—and that a Muslim must steer a middle course I was unrepentant. This book will no doubt arouse similar reactions; its middle position will thereby be vindicated.
A literary rather than academic form has been adopted in order to address a wide and general readership. For this purpose footnotes and page references are omitted in the text. The South Asian usage of Arabic (ul for al, etc.) is an anthropological reflex not meant to offend the punctilious Arabist.
The material is largely based on seminars given between 1982 and 1985, and what I learned from discussions with colleagues at various academic centres in Harvard, Princeton, Moscow, Delhi, Jeddah, Tokyo, Istanbul, London, Islamabad and Paris. I would like to acknowledge their hospitality and support.
