Literature: The Arab Spring - The End of Postcolonialism (Essay Sample)

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The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism.
Hamid Danish is an Iranian-American professor who have authored over twenty books, among them, the Arab spring: the end of postcolonialism.This book was published on January 1, 2012, by Zed in London.HamidDabishi was born in 1965 in Iran and is a well-respected professor at Columbia University for his comparative literature.This book has a series of events that celebrate the revolutions that happened to various governments in the middle east and north Africa.
Hamid Dabashi main agenda in writing this book was to theoretically analysis to the causes of the middle east revolt as well as North Africa.These uprisings are commonly known as Arab spring and thus the title of this book.These Arab Spring uprising started in the middle east and ran across most of the Arab nations to North African countries of Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia.These revolutions have affected various segments of the society such as the economic aspect as well as the social and economic activities.In this book Hamid celebrates the gains of people united in a common goal as the results have been instrumental in the governing of the nations, the Arab spring led to the toppling of tyrannical governments which is a major area of interest to many scholars such as Hamid.In this book, Hamid is in great support of the Arab spring, and he is not interested in the whole critical work but drives a bias to the revolution and new era politics.For Hamid is a strong way to stand in solidarity with the masses in this revolution and demand better governance. Therefore this book is helpful to any reader who has an interest in middle east politics.This book defines the new way of politicking in the middle east and a new and different era in political arena altogether.
In support of the Arab spring Hamid, says the world is in a hopeful version of itself and that the world keeps discovering itself leading to its reinventions.This has necessitated the Arab spring which has brought new reasoning another way of production of knowledge.Hamid is critical of the colonialists whom he accuses of all this mess in the Muslim world.Hamid is of the view that the world today is fast changing and is experiencing new dispensations by overcoming the mystified colonial consciousness and developing a postcolonial fiction where dominance will not exist.Dabashi is consistently and passionately focused on the issues concerning oppressed people demanding to shape their destinies.He gives a scathing attack on the late Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, and his tyrannical regime.Hamid derives his thinking from great scholars and thinkers such as Rousseau, Hagel, Marx and Judith Butler, who pop up in his book almost on every page.This is perhaps to strengthen his narrative and make acceptable even to the critics.He succeeds in this agenda as they give credence to his work and analysis of the Arab spring via a theoretical debate.
Today most of the Middle East countries have stabilized and are no longer experiencing revolts culminating into violence.The governments have become more responsible and accountable to the people. Therefore, Dabashi notion of a post-colonial fixation via Arab spring have been somehow vindicated.This book, The Arab Spring; The end of postcolonialism has ten chapters which are rather distinct from each other but are interrelated in the arguments that are expressed.Dabashi, however, prefers to deal with a theoretical framework giving more attention to the effects and results of the Arab spring as opposed to the actual happening of the Arab spring.Dabashi favors a radically different and mutually contradictory ways of understanding social change.This is in the general sense of the change, but he goes further to a revolution in particular by quoting prominent writers and thinkers such as Rousseau.Dabashi broadly sympathizes with a Marxist understanding of post-colonial theories by making Marx his primary reference.The central theme of this book is to an announcement of the end to postcolonialism.
Dabashis thoughts to Arab Spring is a mark to an end to postcolonialism ideological formations as they have been in the last twenty years.Hamid's style is a critical analysis of the Arab spring which is both flamboyant and electric.It gives a summary of the season in a general format.The book is composed of ten chapters, but only the first chapter provides a chronology of events in each country and each region and its influence on the wave of protests experienced.In this timeline, he explains the possible causes of unrest in each country and each case. However, the huge percentage of the book is focused on an analysis of the effects of the Arab spring and the world politics at large.Dabashi is determined to show the ideological baggage of European imperialism as the principal causes of this Arab spring.The greatest strength of this book is in its logical arguments and their flow from understanding that revolutions are open-ended processes.These revolutions in all the cases have achieved their goals and intentions as evidenced by these Arab Springs.Hamid carries a theme that the post-colonial era did not overcome the colonial tactics but in fact advanced it by its negation. However, the Arab Spring has overcome these primitive tactics.
In the first chapter of this book, Dabashi gives a chronological account of events in each country the protests occur from Yemen to Morocco to Egypt and other middle east countries.Dashi sets off by noting how the new world is rediscovering itself and reinventing, and this has been occasioned by the Arab spring.The book explains how the world is quickly changing and is coming out of the fixated colonial era.To fully elaborate this revolution he quotes Karl Marx, he also notes that these uprisings have come of age and have indeed gone beyond tribe, race, religion or sect and even the ideologies of pro or into a western.Dabashi explains this notion further by coining a word, postcoloniality, to further explain that the West have become meaningless in to-days world.Dabashi Is of the view that the Arab spring has come at the right time to end these post-colonial ideologies giving way to a new dispensation.There is an unobstructed flow of Dabashis arguments, but there is tension between his regular assertions that Arab people are forging their destinies and his challenge to put that in a broader theoretical context.
One main argument of the book is on the basis that most terminologies in use today need to be rethought and changed as they no longer correspond to the reality of the modern world.Dabashis assertion is that we need a new mode of knowledge production to understand the Arab spring (P.2)He is the view that most people will criticize this Arab spring if they still harbor the old model of thinking, they will fail to understand the bigger picture leading to this uprising.Dabashi argues that the Arab spring and green movement signal such a mode of knowledge production that transcends colonial and post-colonial boundaries.
According to Dashi, the Arab Spring has changed the original geographical boundary between south and north, and this is evidenced by protests in Spain and Greece.These particular revolutions and uprisings have been intensified by the disturbing existing political order that has been practiced for a long time and did not pay attention to its residents.These political order in both Spain and Greece is what the set has been advancing all along and is what Dabashi is opposed to and is celebrating its fall by supporting the Arab spring.Dabashi vision is an end to this post-colonialism depicting the west vs. east or west versus the rest.This according to Dabashi can only be achieved through the production of new knowledge away from the usual colonial west.The writer firmly believes that the Arab Spring symbolizes a revolution with a great potential to create an open-ended dynamic with a cosmopolitan culture.
Dabashi also compares other revolutions that ...