This article is part of the dossier The “New Contemporary”: Arab Thought Recasting Itself from 2011 to Gaza.
What a joy it is to read Suzanne Kassab’s work, be it a canonical book on Contemporary Arab thought or an article inviting readers to engage with new contemporary thought after successive defeats. In both forms, one encounters a rare sensitivity to the current intellectual moment and a heartfelt commitment to making sense of it, despite its resistance to interpretation.
To speak of a new contemporary Arab thought, one must be situated culturally, geographically, intellectually, and generationally in a space long contested. Writing about post-revolutionary intellectuals in Egypt and beyond, I once borrowed Zeina Halabi’s notion of the “aftermath.” An aftermath of a Naksa twice removed—first the 1967 defeat, then that of 2011—even if the content of critique differed greatly. Can one extend the definition of the 2011 aftermath to the post-October 7 world? Certainly, if not only due to their belonging to the same historical period, then it is because they share ontological and epistemological roots. The post-October 7 can be described as the aftermath of the aftermath, a time suspended, where the old (tools of critiques and references of universalism) is dead, and the new is stillborn—a present that is perpetually “condemned to become” (as Louisa Yousfi describes today’s disavowed generation). To make sense of our present, as Prof. Kassab invites, is not only difficult but is an ontological necessity.
This new relationship we have with our dystopian present is the subject of this small intervention, and in its own right, an attempt to do precisely that: make sense of it.
Methodology and critique
When Prof. Kassab argued that “The main goal of critique seemed to be shifting from the debunking of illusions to the stating of the real that was unbelievable.” She succinctly described a feeling of disillusionment, distress, and moral helplessness that plagues our region and beyond. The diagnosis remains: our language, our old world of references, the tools of critiques themselves have proved incapable of adequately expressing our reality and carrying our thought forward. A question that begs to be answered is: how can language remain a valid tool for expression when we are constantly rendered speechless by the dark reality that surrounds us? How do artists, intellectuals, and cultural producers continue creating when vocabularies fall too short?
“I announce to you, my friends, the death of the old language,” (نزار قباني بِتصرّف “انعي لكم يا أصدقائي اللغة القديمة، مجددا.”) again—Nizar Qabbani with a twist.
Indeed, when old tools and old methods fail us, it is important to look at what is being used, despite itself, to channel new contemporary thought. For example, the prevalence of visual arts, including photography, films, mixed media arts, illustrations, and even meme culture, becomes worthy of our attention. Similarly, other ways of using language, such as theatrical productions, podcasts, rap songs, and satire shows become more relevant vehicles of critique. They repurpose words, empty significations, and bend their meaning to the will of the speaker in new formats more adapted to our times and to the multitudes we hold within us. Cultural and artistic production here becomes the antidote to stale political debates and therefore, to use a beautiful distinction made by Benoît Challand, where at-tamthil al-Siasy, political representation, falls shamefully short, and at-taswir al-fanny, artistic representation, flourishes.
The other vehicle of critique is methodologies. A slow erosion of our faith in the supposed moral superiority of the global narrative on justice entailed a distrust in Western methodologies and their conclusions. As a result, we witnessed a turn to local epistemologies and conceptual frameworks—studied in depth by the oeuvre of Dr. Sari Hanafi. This turn is not a wholesale rejection of Western methodologies and a return to harmful dichotomies—dangerously close to self-orientalism. Rather, it is decolonial pride in privileging local methods as opposed to long-held colonial shame that blindingly applies Western methods without contextual awareness. I echo the idea elaborated by Hanafi’s thoughtful and edifying article, where he concludes that “Euro-American knowledge production should be treated as Dipesh Chakrabarty argued, as necessary but not sufficient,” and that an engagement with the global south is necessary where content and methodologies of critique are more relevant.
These linguistic and methodological turns were a natural reaction to the changing global power dynamics. For example, many of the intellectual collectives I have interviewed were created after the 2011 revolutions with a clear intention of social critique, meaning they were born out of historical necessity. I have in mind the following examples: educational YouTubers such as El-Da7ee7 (Ahmed el-Ghandoor), satirical shows such as Akh Kbir (Mohammed Andeel), film makers like Annemarie Jacir (The salt of this sea, Palestine 37), Tamer el-Said (The last days of the city), as well as collectives such as CILAS – The Cairo Institute For Liberal Arts And Sciences for public pedagogy, Safeena 7 for photography, 10 Tooba for urban planning and education. Similarly, novelists such as Nael el-Toukhy (Women of Karantina), Basma Abdel Aziz (The queue), and Mohamed Rabie (Year of the dragon). Most importantly Rappers such as ElRass & the Synaptik and BuKulthum.
Some brilliant lines by Mazen el Sayyid (AKA ElRass) read:
وين بيروح دين المستعمِر لما يستعمَر
وين حيصحى حلمن لما يناموا الاميركان
لما شكله يبلى كيف المعتقد يستعمل
What would happen to the colonizers’ religion if it is colonized?
What would the American dream wake up to when they fall asleep?
How can the belief still be put to use when form wears away?
& سلامي مصارحتي بالعلة لقبيلتي المختلة متل ما بشوفها مش عاساس كيف بدي ياها تشوفني
My Islam is my will to confront my fractured tribe with its ailments,
as I see it—not according to how I want it to see me.
& اسلامي سلاح تهذيب الخيال
لقاوم لعنة بابل بتطويع الكلام
مش احصنة وسيوف
My Islam is a tool to refine the imagination,
to resist the curse of Babel through the disciplining of language,
not through horses and swords.
In a few bars, we already witness a sober analysis of the interaction between colonial hegemonic ideas and an invitation to rethink one’s identity within a contested Arab contemporaneity. El Rass confronts everyone: a Western audience unwilling to understand, his “tribe” unwilling to self-criticize, and ultimately his self-unwilling to settle for prepackaged identity. In many ways, it perfectly exercises Abdelkibir Khatibi’s double critique of the other and of the self.
Who critiques when representation fails?
These intellectual and cultural producers have many factors in common: first, a turn towards Arabic (even if their references are from several linguistic cultures), second, a transcultural identity blurring local and global elements, and a great mental agility that masters and eloquently blends different cultural repertoires, and third, a disinterest in the political arena as such. Since governments at home and abroad are complicit in restricting definitions of “justice,” “representation,” “freedom,” and so on, these new intellectual and cultural producers are creating worlds where they can redefine these terms and gather together communities who share these definitions. When we agree on what these central concepts mean, only then can social and political actions become a possibility.
The descriptions, in fact, reveal deeper insights regarding new contemporary thought and its agents. They show that they no longer follow the maxim: the role of intellectuals is “to speak truth to power,” instead, they are simply speaking, telling the truth (as Kassab showed), and privileging their peers as audience (fellow subalterns from the global South, as Hanafi argued). This could be due to heavy censorship at home and abroad, or simply a dissatisfaction with structural injustice that the current system entrenches, which led them to actively create alternative socio-political microcosms.
If we read these instances of cultural critique as an ensemble, we notice a new relationship to our present as well as our social roles. Artists and intellectuals resist labels to a fault, whereas scholars writing about them (including this author) cannot but create labels to organize thought and create meaningful knowledge. We wonder then how can these two instincts interact without cancelling each other out. How can we embrace ambiguity in scholarship and consider it less as a scientific imperfection and more as openness to dialogue and involvement of the voices on the ground. Befriending uncertainty allows us to account and better understand the superimposition of social roles that characterizes current cultural producers. For example, an artist can be an activist and an academician all the while doing consulting on their free time. Separation of social roles that once characterized the field is no longer relevant, which brings forward a blurring of boundaries between fields, further enriching the conversation. For example, the boundary between cultural and political, local and exilic, art and activism, and so on, becomes ever more porous.
A Meta-critique?
A question that has haunted me as a young(er) scholar was: whether we first had to make sense of and make peace with our past in order to create a better present, much in the way that therapy enables healing through narration. Or can we, instead, draw a meaningful future using the tools and knowledge already at our disposal, without waiting for such reconciliation? I still do not have a definitive answer, and I believe much of the knowledge production in the SWANA region is indirectly trying to answer it. Indeed, our need to define and understand, periodize and categorize Arab intellectual thought is the same instinct that forces us to turn to intellectuals in times of crisis: to make sense of and validate our experience of post-coloniality and of a shared Arab contemporaneity. Difficult as this reality may be to accept, it remains one of the few grounds that brings us together.
These attempts, however, continue to tether us to the past: past thought production, past definitions of the intellectual, past battles fought on behalf of our elders. Nevertheless, I have noticed a change in our relationship to our historical self. Recent global events such as the war in Gaza, and dare I mention the recent Epstein files that exposed realities where we only hoped conspiracy theories, acted as time warps. They helped us reread our past with new lenses and somehow validated (to use psychotherapy terms) many of our analytical instincts for which we had no vocabulary. For example, they uncovered indifference to international law and exposed corrupt elites deciding on behalf of entire populations behind closed doors. Perhaps what we need most during this current historical moment is less dwelling on the past and a more useful engagement with the present, through an active reimagining of the future. I imagine it should be done through a widening of our political imaginary and repertoires of actions. In this sense and perhaps unknowingly, cultural and intellectual producers act as psychotherapists for their audiences; by untying contradictions, creatively depicting paradoxes, and holding a mirror to their societies.
Taking Kassab’s invitation seriously means accepting that critique now operates under conditions of epistemic confusion and moral exhaustion, and that this loss is not a weakness to be overcome, but the very ground from which new political imaginaries can be forged. Rather than asking how language can survive under conditions of extreme cruelty, it may be more fruitful to ask what a language of survival, a vocabulary of ṣumūd, sounds like. What form does such an engaged political imaginary take, and how can a constructive mode of self-critique be practiced on a collective scale?
Alaa Badr is a postdoctoral researcher in political and cultural theory at the Collège de France. She holds a PhD from the political and social sciences department at the European University Institute, entitled “Contributions towards the Remaking of the Arab Intellectual field.”
Cover photo: A fireball erupts following an Israeli strike near a tent encampment sheltering people displaced by war in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on March 25, 2026. Violence has persisted in Gaza despite a ceasefire which came into effect on October 10, with both Israel and Hamas regularly accusing each other of violations. (Photo by Eyad Baba / AFP).
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