Abstract

This chapter introduces the book's argument, situating it in relation to debates about Arab modernity in literature and culture. Presenting it as a somatic condition embodied in texts from the nineteenth century onward, the chapter explains the shift in emphasis from modernity as progress and innovation to modernity as accidents and ruptures. Drawing on theories of affect in order to complicate the question of representation and cultural exchange in the East/West encounter, this chapter introduces the centrality of experience and the body as a new site of investigation hitherto ignored by contemporary scholarship. Finally, the chapter presents the different parts of the book, emphasizing the philosophical and disciplinary stakes and implications of the project.

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