Egypt in Turmoil: Coup, Counter-Revolution and Ideological Contention
Venue: RUC, Building 18.2.
Time: Wednesday September 18, 10.00-12.00
The Arab Uprisings and the Egyptian revolution have gone through severe convulsions this summer, from the ouster of President Mursi to the following clamp-down on Muslim Brotherhood supporters, sectarian violence and the return of harsh state repression and censorship.
Across the Middle East and in the West, people have disagreed heavily on the meaning of the 30 June coup. Its effects have reverberated throughout the Arab countries and drawn new lines of contention between self-styled secularists, liberalists and Islamists.
Two of Denmark’s leading authorities on Egypt – both former directors of the Danish-Egyptian Dialogue Institute in Cairo - discuss the events and put the latest ideological contentions in the Arab uprisings into perspective.
Introduction by Sune Haugbølle, director of SIME (ISG, RUC).
Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen (Copenhagen University):
"Mihna! Islamist interpretation and reactions to the coup in Egypt"
Rasmus Alenius Boserup (Danish Institute for International Studies):
"Remaking Rebellion: Comparing Repression and Rebellion in Egypt and Algeria”
Islamism and Secularism after the Arab Uprisings
Thursday, 11 April 2013 from 15.30—17.30 building 25.2
Panel Discussion
Islamic movements have made political gains in the aftermath of the Arab Uprisings. The apparent sea change in Arab politics has effects globally, among Islamist groups in the West as well as in our public debates about Islam, ideology, and global politics. This panel of international experts on the Middle East and Islam will evaluate and debate these changes. Each speaker will give a 20 minutes presentation with the headings: Islamic Movements in the Middle East, Islamism in Western Europe, Media in the Middle East, Secularism and Islamism leaving 30 minutes for Questions and Answers at the end of the seminar.
The panel consists of:
Lecturer Dr. Reinoud Leenders, War Studies Department, Kings College, London
Dr. Lorenzo Vidino, Center for Security Studies, Zurich
PhD fellow Donatella Della Ratta, Copenhagen University
Associate Professor Dr. Sune Haugbølle, Roskilde University
The panel discussion will take place under the auspices of the research group “Secular Ideology in the Middle East” at Roskilde University, Department of Society and Globalisation (ISG), building 25.2, and is open to the public.
Is there a Secular Middle East?
Friday 22nd February 2013 14.00-17.00, Roskilde University, building 25.1.
Round-table debate and launch of Secular Ideology in the Middle East
In their fascination with Islamism, have scholars of the Middle East ignored secular subjectivities? Is secularism becoming a new form of political subjectivity in contrast to Islamism, as many commentators think? How can we conceptually and ethnographically challenge the discourse of a new culture clash? What is the relation between liberalism and secularism? And what is the use of re-thinking ideological categories?
Speakers:
Associate Professor Sune Haugbølle, Roskilde University
Reader Laleh Khalili, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University
Research Fellow Samuli Schielke, Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin
Assistant Professor Andreas Bandak, University of Copenhagen
Post-doctoral fellow Anders Hastrup, University of Copenhagen
Intellectual History of the Arab Left
Friday, July 6-7, 2012 American University in Beirut
The Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies (CAMES) and the University of Copenhagen are organizing a conference entitled "Intellectual History of the Arab Left," on July 6 and 7, 2012, in West Hall, Auditorium A at the American University in Beirut.
2:00 - 2:15 pm: Welcome note
2:15 - 3:00 pm: Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, Recasting the Intellectual History of the Arab Left: Global Radical Networks in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1870-1925
3:00 - 3:15 pm: Break
3:15 - 4:00 pm: Sune Haugbolle, Whither a secular left? Decontestation of Secular Leftism in War-Time Lebanon
4:00 - 4:15 pm: Break
4:15 - 5:00 pm: Jens Hanssen and Hicham Safieddine, Al-Akhbar and Lebanon's new political culture (2005-2011)
5:00 - 5:30 pm: Break
5:30 - 7:30 pm: Keynote speaker: David Scott, Thinking Through Intellectual Generations: Tradition, Memory, Criticism
Saturday, July 7, 2012
9:00 - 9:45 am: Samer Frangie, The Tragic Self: Yasin al-Hafiz's Autobiographical Writings
9:45 - 10:00 am: Break
10:00 - 10:45 am: Michaelle Browers, Mahmud Amin al-Alim: Pragmatic Commitment and the Legacy of the Critical Left from Egypt's 1952 Generation
10:45 - 11:00 am: Break
11:00 - 11:45 am: Fadi Bardawil, Militant Self--Fashioning: Socialist Lebanon's Political and Ideological Imaginary
11:45 am - 1:30 pm: Lunch
1:30 - 2:15 pm: Manfred Sing, The Leftist Critique of takhalluf: Revisiting Cultural and Psychological Approaches to the Study of Arab Societies
2:15 - 2:30 pm: Break
2:30 - 3:15 pm: Benjamin Geer, How Nationalism Hobbled Feminism and the Left in Egypt: Latifa al-Zayyat's The Open Door
3:15 - 3:30 pm: Break
3:30 - 4:30 pm: Suzanne Kassab, A Post-Colonial Tragedy of Enlightenment? Some Caribbean and Arab Thoughts
The Arab Left: Mapping the Field
September 30 - October 01. 2011 Orient Institut Beirut (OIB)
This two-day workshop will bring leading researchers in the field of the Arab left together in an attempt to map the field, identify crucial research areas, and discuss the possibility of setting up a transnational research network. The invited speakers will present their ongoing research on leftist thought, social movements, political parties, and cultural identity, while other sessions will be devoted to discussing the methodological, theoretical and practical challenges involved in studying the Arab left as an integrated research agenda. The workshop is co-organised by Dr Sune Haugbølle, University of Copenhagen, Dr Anders Hastrub, director of the Danish Institute in Damascus, and Dr Manfred Sing, OIB.
Theoretical Background
The historiography and ethnography of the Arab left is in its infancy, having been overshadowed by Islamism in recent decades. It was truncated by the decline of the left from the 1970s and subsequent rise of Islamist groups.
In the last decade, new scholarship has begun to challenge the once prevalent thesis that Arab nationalism and leftism are largely irrelevant in today's Islamising Arab countries. These scholars stress that while most leftist movements are marginalised today, their enduring importance for modern Arab societies cannot be overestimated. Intellectual and social historians now return to aspects of leftist history, like the many Arab Communist parties that have been understudied since the last comprehensive works about the Arab left were written in the 1970s. Anthropologists study how leftism and secularism as social identities are informed by historical memories of the period from 1950s to the 1970s, when leftist ideologies generated transnational networks and shared vocabularies and aesthetics.
The ubiquity of new leftist discourses and movements in the Arab uprisings in 2011 makes it even more pressing to advance historically founded research in order to assess the transformations of Arab leftism, and suggests the possibility of a paradigmatic change in Middle East studies. Historians of social, political and intellectual history must join forces with other social scientists in an encompassing project to map the history and current-day transformations of Arab leftism.