Observing the Secular

Arab Poets Transforming Their Conceptions of Public

Authors

  • Khaled Furani Sociology and Anthropology Department, Tel-Aviv University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v3i1.5

Keywords:

Arab poets, Poetic forms, Palestinian poets

Abstract

This essay examines ethnographically how Arab, mainly Palestinian, poets have been transforming their relation to the public while modernizing poetic forms. Drawing on narratives by poets who work with various literary forms, this study argues that the secular has been vital for this transformation. More specifically, I demonstrate how in poets’ narratives about means and ends of literary agency there lies the articulation of secular subjectivities that poets want either to constitute, contest or explore.

Author Biography

  • Khaled Furani, Sociology and Anthropology Department, Tel-Aviv University

    Khaled Furani is a post-doctoral fellow at the sociology and anthropology department of Tel-Aviv University, and recently completed a book, When Poets Go to Sleep: Secularizing Forms in Arabic Poetry, to be published by Syracuse University Press.

References

Abu, Hanna, Hanna (1994). Rihlat al-Bahth 'an at-Truth [In Search of Heritage]. Haifa: Wadi Publishers.

Adorno, Theodore. 1989. “Lyric Poetry and Society.” In Critical Theory and Society, ed. Stephen Eric Bronner and Douglas Mackay Kellner, 155–71. New York: Routledge.

Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Casanova, Jose. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Connolly, William. 1999. Why I am not a Secularist. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.

Darwish, Mahmoud. 1999. Jidariyyah [Mural]. London: Riad al-Rayyis Books.

Madan, T. N., Ashis Nandy, Stanley Tambiah, and Charles Tylor. 2004. In Secularism and Its Critics, ed. Rajeev Bhargava. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Martin, David. 1978. A General Theory of Secularization. Oxford: Blackwell.

Rabinow, Paul. 1996. Essays in the Anthropology of Reason. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Saqr, Maysoon. 2002. Interview. Al-quds Al-Arabi. November 19.

Scott, David, and Charles Hirschkind, eds. 2006. Powers of the Modern Secular: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Published

2008-09-23

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Furani, K. (2008). Observing the Secular: Arab Poets Transforming Their Conceptions of Public. Postscripts: The Journal of Sacred Texts, Cultural Histories, and Contemporary Contexts, 3(1), 5-29. https://doi.org/10.1558/post.v3i1.5