Arguing the Archive
Taha 'Abd al-Rahman, Muhammad 'Abid al-Jabiri, and the Future of Islamic Thought
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/cis.30824Keywords:
Contemporary Islamic thought, Islamic philosophy, Morocco, Muslim intellectual history, New Muslim intellectualsAbstract
This article analyzes an argument between the Moroccan philosophers, Taha 'Abd al-Rahman (b. 1944) and Muhammad 'Abid al-Jabiri (1936 – 2010). In the 1990s, 'Abd al-Rahman claimed that al-Jabiri had misread Islamic intellectual history by failing to grasp its connection to the Arab-Muslim community. After showing that the differences between 'Abd al-Rahman and al-Jabiri cannot be reduced to differences in European philosophy, this article proposes that a theory of the archive better conceptualizes their differences than MacIntyre’s notion of “tradition,” a common theoretical posture in Islamic studies. The archive, as elaborated by Jacques Derrida (to whom these thinkers are also compared), emphasizes the importance of difference, or an encounter with alterity, and repetition to Muslim intellectual history. The significance of these themes is demonstrated by showing how 'Abd al-Rahman and al-Jabiri read the debate between Matta ibn Yunus (d. 940) and Abu al-Hasan al-Sirafi (d. 979) on grammar and logic.
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