Abdallah Larouiâs Situated Universalist Critique of Western Modernity

Nils Riecken

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Chapter 3 Abdallah Larouiâs Situated Universalist Critique of Western Modernity

In: Contemporary Moroccan Thought

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Nils Riecken

Nils Riecken
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 144â169

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004519534_004

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Abstract

This chapter introduces the work of the contemporary historian, intellectual, philosopher, and novelist Abdallah Laroui (b. 1933) who has been one of the most important Marxist voices in Morocco, the Maghreb, and the Mashreq. After publishing his first book LâidÃ©ologie arabe contemporaine [Contemporary Arab Ideology] in 1967 he has made significant contributions in Arabic and in French to debates on the concepts of modernity and the Islamic tradition, modernization and decolonization in Morocco, Moroccan and Maghrebi historiography and the concepts of history and time. In this chapter, I focus on what I call his situated universalist critique of modernity as an at once historical, epistemological, and political category. I argue that his brand of Marxist historicism (Arabic tÄrÄ«khÄniyya, French historicisme) reconfigures the spatial and temporal coordinates of Western modernity by placing it within his conception of negative universal history. Specifically, I show how Laroui deconstructs the notion of empty homogenous time that is a key component of Eurocentric accounts of modernity and modernization. Through this critique of temporality, Laroui develops a thoroughly dialectical perspective on modernity that understands modernization and colonization, universalization and particularization, and modernization and traditionalization as braided processes. I demonstrate how Larouiâs negatively dialectical stance, which is grounded in his brand of Marxist historicism, determines his analytic stance regarding the translation of Western modernity into Moroccan life-worlds, but also his critique of liberalism and its relationship with colonialism. I thus make clear that Laroui articulates his understanding of modernization and âcatching upâ in critical distance to models of Westernization and the logic of Eurocentrism. In this way, I present Larouiâs critique of modernity and temporality as a critical analysis of local, regional, and global debates on decolonization and emancipation in the Maghreb and the Mashreq, the relationship between modernity and liberalism on one hand, and colonialism on other, critiques of Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism, and the status of a specific Marxist historicism for historical and political analysis.

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Contemporary Moroccan Thought

On Philosophy, Theology, Society, and Culture

Series:Â Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East, Volume: 186

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004519534

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 24 Oct 2024

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Part 1 Projects in Philosophy and Philosophical Thought

Part 2 Projects in Theology, Theological Politics, and Sufism

Part 3 Projects in the Social Sciences and Cultural Studies

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Chapter 3 Abdallah Larouiâs Situated Universalist Critique of Western Modernity

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Contemporary Moroccan Thought

On Philosophy, Theology, Society, and Culture

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Chapter 3 Abdallah Larouiâs Situated Universalist Critique of Western Modernity