The Social Imaginary of Culture/Civilization in the Arabic Literary Tradition

Charles Taylor’s contribution to social imaginaries offers an interpretive framework for better understanding modernity as secularity. One of its main aspects is conceiving of human society in linear, homogenous time (secular time). Looking into the Arabic intellectual tradition, I will argue in my paper that Taylor’s framework can help us understand major social and intellectual transformations. The Ottoman and Arabic modernization process during the 19th century has often been understood by focusing on certain core concepts. One of these is tamaddun, usually translated as “civilization.” I will be mostly talking about the works of two “pioneers” of Arab modernity (which is traditionally referred to as an-nahḍa, the so-called Arab Renaissance): the Syrian Fransīs Marrāsh and the Egyptian Rifāʿa aṭ-Ṭahṭāwī. First I will focus on Marrāsh’s didactic novel “The Forest of Truth” (1865), as it offers a complex view of tamaddun, which has sometimes been construed as merely a social and political reform program. The category of "social imaginary,” however, is useful in grasping the wider semantic scope of this concept, which is reading it as a signifier for human history conceived of in secular time, as Taylor defines it. This conceptualization of human history functioning within the immanent frame can also be observed in the introduction to “The Extraction of Pure Gold in the Description of Paris” (1834), a systematic account of a travel experience in France that was written by the other “pioneer,” aṭ-Ṭahṭāwī. Finally, in translating tamaddun as “the modern social imaginary of civilization/culture,” the talk aims to consider this imaginary as a major factor in the emergence of the “secular age.” Furthermore, it suggests the importance of studying (quasi-) literary texts, such as historiographical, geographical, and self-narratives in the Arabic literary tradition, in order to further elaborate continuities and ruptures in social imaginaries.

Offenbarung und Tradition : eine religionsphilosophische Betrachtung

von Israel Nobel

Col nidre : Text und Melodie nach der Tradition ; für eine Singstimme mit Begleitung der Orgel oder des Pianoforte

von Moritz Deutsch

Das Wesen des Judentums : nach Bibel, Talmud, Tradition und religiöser Praxis kritisch dargestellt

von Dr. J. Goldschmidt, Gr. Rabbiner zu Offenbach a. M.

Geschichtliches Handbuch : chronologische Reihenfolge der heiligen jüdischen Tradition von Moses 1540 v. Chr. G. bis zum Schluss des Talmuds 500 n. Ch. G. ; ein Zeitraum von 2040 Jahren ; nebst Anh. üb. d. spätere Entwicklung derselben u. e. Schlussworte an Aug. Rohling

von Heinrich Ellenberger

Ostdeutsches Judentum : Tradition einer Familie

von Heinrich Kurtzig. Mit e. Vorw. von Erdmann Graeser

Philosophie der Geschichte oder über die Tradition

[Verf.: Joseph Franz Molitor]

König Nebucadnezar von Babel in der jüdischen Tradition : ein Beitrag zur Untersuchung der haggadischen Elemente unter Vergleichung arabischer, syrischer und patristischer Quellen

Bern, Univ., Diss., 1906