The Arab Spring: Delayed Defiance And The End Of Postcolonialism

Description

This pioneering explanation of the Arab Spring will define a new era of thinking about the Middle East. In this landmark book, Hamid Dabashi argues that the revolutionary uprisings that have engulfed multiple countries and political climes from Morocco to Iran and from Syria to Yemen, were driven by a 'Delayed Defiance' - a point of rebellion against domestic tyranny and globalized disempowerment alike that signifies no less than the end of Postcolonialism. Sketching a new geography of liberation, Dabashi shows how the Arab Spring has altered the geopolitics of the region so radically that we must begin re-imagining the moral map of 'the Middle East' afresh. Ultimately, the 'permanent revolutionary mood' Dabashi brilliantly explains has the potential to liberate not only those societies already ignited, but many others through a universal geopolitics of hope.

Author description

Born in 1951 in Ahvaz, Iran, Hamid Dabashi was educated in his hometown and Tehran before moving to the United States, where he received a dual Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He is currently the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Dabashi has written 20 books, edited four, and contributed chapters to various others, in addition to authoring over 100 essays, articles and book reviews. An internationally renowned cultural critic and award-winning author, his writings have been translated into numerous languages, including French, Spanish, Russian and Portuguese. A committed teacher for nearly three decades, Dabashi is also a public speaker, a current affairs essayist, a staunch anti-war activist, and the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian film project dedicated to preserving Palestinian cinema. He has four children - Kaveh, Pardis, Chelgis and Golchin - and lives in New York with his wife and colleague, the Iranian-Swedish feminist Golbarg Bashi. Hamid has been a columnist for the Egyptian al-Ahram Weekly for over a decade, and is now a regular columnist for Aljazeera, by far the most global outlet on Arab affairs; and he has had a regular column at CNN. His essays on these venues are regularly translated into Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, etc. Hamid has appeared extensively on CNN, BBC, Aljazeera, and a number of other news media in Latin America, Japan, Russia, India, the US and the EU, and has travelled and lectured extensively in the Arab world, from Morocco to Egypt to Palestine to Syria.

Table of contents

Introduction: The Arab Spring: The End of Postcoloniality 1. Decentering the World: How the Arab Spring Unfolded 2. Towards Liberation Geography 3. A New Language of Revolt 4. Discovering a New World 5. From the Green Movement to the Jasmine Revolutions 6. The center cannot hold 7. The End of Postcolonialism 8. Race, Gender, and Class in Transnational Revolutions 9. Libya: The Crucible 10. Delayed Defiance Conclusion. The People Demand the Overthrow of the Regime