Fadi Bardawil is Assistant Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University. His research investigates the international circulation of critical theory, the genealogies of post-colonial critique, and the traditions of intellectual inquiry and modalities of political engagement of contemporary Arab thinkers. In this episode, Thayer Hastings spoke to Professor Bardawil about his new book Revolution and Disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation (Duke University Press, 2020)  and the circulation of critical theory as an anthropological object amongst Leftists in Lebanon between the 1960s and the present. This conversation emphasizes a generation of engaged intellectuals and political actors who were shaped by the Palestinian Nakba of 1948 and the Naksa of 1967.

* This podcast was recorded on July 14th 2020 and prior to the explosion at Beirut’s port on August 4th 2020.

References

Asad, Talal. 1973. Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. London: Ithaca Press.

Bardawil, Fadi. 2016. The Solitary Analyst of Doxas: An Interview with Talal Asad. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 36(1); 152-173.

Bardawil, Fadi. 2020. Revolution and Disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation. Durham: Duke University Press.

Bourdieu, Pierre, and Jean-Claude Passeron. Translated by Richard Nice. 1979. The Inheritors: French Students and Their Relation to Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gaonkar, Dilip Parameshwar, and Elizabeth A. Povinelli. 2003. Technologies of Public Forms: Circulation, Transfiguration, Recognition. Public Culture, 15(3): 385-397.

Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.

Photo Courtesy: Duke University Press
Music: Oya Marhaba, by TootArd