The question of Arab “identity” in Amin Maalouf’s Les Desorientés

Abstract

In Les Desorientés (2013), the Lebanese French author Amin Maalouf calls attention to the chaotic conditions in Lebanon since the civil war and in other Arab countries in the aftermath of the “Arab Spring”. This article argues that Maalouf depicts a situation which could be either apocalyptic or promisingly generative. The protagonist, Adam, is an empathetic observer who sustains a dialogue with different types of otherness and identity, including extremist Islamic and Marxist positions. However, this article draws on the ideas of Peter Václav Zima and Edward Said on subjectivity and exilic identity to suggest that Maalouf here portrays an exilic intellectual who falls short of envisioning any “political” programme that might confront oppressive centres of power. Thus Adam’s final coma and his liminal status between life and death can be seen as epitomizing a reluctance to use exilic privilege productively to resist tyranny and affirm the rights of the subjugated.

Keywords:

• Identity
• subjectivity
• Islam
• extremism
• Arab Spring
• Amin Maalouf

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. All translations from Arabic into English are those of the article author.

2. “Black September (Arabic: أيلول الأسود; aylūl al-aswad) refers to the conflict that was fought between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, and the Jordanian Armed Forces, under the leadership of King Hussein, primarily between September 16 and 27, 1970, with certain actions continuing until July 1971. The civil war determined whether Jordan would be ruled by the PLO or the Hashemite monarchy. The war resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, the vast majority of them Palestinian. Armed conflict ended with the expulsion of the PLO leadership and thousands of Palestinian fighters to Lebanon” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black--September; see also https://www.britannica.com/place/Jordan/From-1967-to-civil-war#ref41508).