Psychoanalysis and the Love of Arabic

Nadia Bou Ali shows how a curious relationship was forged between language and politics, one driven both by a desire for modernity and anxiety about it.

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Psychoanalysis and the Love of Arabic reorients the debates around Arabic and global modernity in relation to psychoanalysis, capitalism and universality. The study offers the first psychoanalytic reading of 19th-century works written during the nahda movement by Ahmad Faris Shidyaq (1805 87) and Butrus al-Bustani (1819 83), showing how a curious relationship was forged between language and politics one driven by both a desire for, and anxiety about, modernity. In analysing the abstractness of national belonging as belonging to the language, author Nadia Bou Ali considers why modern Arabic grammarians fell in love with language again and explores how language became ideated as a 'mirror of the nation'.