Michael Gilsenan

Broaching the topic of authoritarianism in Arab societies has its risks for Arab intellectuals. How should the questions be formulated? Where, how, and of what can they speak? At different periods it has been a dangerous act for Iraqi, Saudi, Egyptian, Sudanese, Moroccan, and now especially Algerian thinkers and commentators to address such topics head on. Edward Said argues that the Palestinian Authority shows signs of following exactly the same authoritarian route. At one time, from the late Fifties until the wars that began in the mid-Seventies, Beirut offered a unique regional arena of debate, in contrast to other Arab capitals. Laissez-écrire matched the laissez-faire of Lebanon’s unbridled individualism. Elsewhere, France, Germany, Britain and the United States have served as varyingly hospitable destinations, temporary or permanent, for many Arab thinkers. But it would be naive to imagine that mere distance is a guarantor of freedom, or, in extreme cases, life. Hosts, moreover, have their own interests. They have their polite, perhaps unspoken, requirements; their own ideas of what constitutes an appropriate intellectual project, and what does not. Not the least of the virtues of Abdellah Hammoudi’s new book is that it resists censuring, insists on debate, and persists in what is essentially a collective effort to open up the possibility of critical reflection.