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„Since 2011, ’the political’ has (again) become ubiquitous in all forms of Arab culture. At the same time many critics have questioned the role of writers and intellectuals. Did they play a role in stoking the popular uprisings? If not, and literature had indeed become somehwat disconnected from social change, what is its relevance? [...] Frederike Pannewick, Georges Khalil and Yvonne Albers’ timely volume approaches these questions through a sustained discussion of the term iltizam (engagement). Building on the pioneering work of Verena Klemm, the book presents twenty-two essays that track literary commitment from the 1940s to the present day. The authors represent a German-Arab network of literary scholars whose research has been developed concomitantly over decades. [The book] opens onto sociological questions of historical memory and the role literature might play in working through collective experiences, making [it] relevant beyond the field of literary studies. [...] The first section of the book, “Of poetics and Politics: Revolution and Literary Commitment,“ starts in the present with three articles on the Egyptian revolution of 2011. [...] The volume’s second section, “Roots of a Discourse: Historical Concepts of Literary Commitment,“ focuses on the watershed year of 1967. [...] The books third section, “Refiguring iltizam: Literary Commitment after 1967,“ focuses on what became of commitment in a literature that is sometimes interpreted as uncommited and de-politicized. [...] [The book] presents a number of fresh analytical angles and new, previously undiscussed, authors, espacially in the fourth and final section of the book, “Commitment or Dissent? Contemporary Perspectives.“ Here, the volume returns to the present with seven articles on literary and artistic works produced since the 1990s. They probe globalization, cultural disorientation, the impact of new social movements and political questions after the financial crisis, and the fragmentation of literaty forms in the age of social media. [...] The most exciting aspect of Commitment and Beyond is its ambitious attempt to connect contemporary changes in artistic production - confusing and multi-facetted as they may be - to the history of the 20th century, pushing other disciplines in Middle East studies to consider how historical events and figures are continuously reinterpreted.“
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