Deconstructing Hegemony: Contemporary Middle East Literature, Theory, and Historiography

Deconstructing Hegemony is mainly informed by the deconstructionist approach, as it unravels literature, theory, and history writing, in addition to ideology, lexicon, media, and politics. The readings are also informed by, among others, Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Abdelwahab Elmessiri, and Noam Chomsky. Deconstruction, or questioning oppositions, as the recurrent approach, pairs with contrapuntalism or counterpoint; epistemology or theory of knowledge; hermeneutics or interpretation; ecocriticism or literature and nature; geopolitics; cartography or map-drawing; demography or population; marginalization or minority studies; as well as normalizing discourse or stigmatizing difference or any deviation from 'set' standards. In Part I of this book, El-Meligi analyses case studies in deconstructive literature by comparing works of Eastern and Western authors such as David Grossman, Mourid Barghouti, and Louise Erdrich. Part II probes deconstructive theory, philosophy, historiography, and lexicon that pertain to the geopolitical term, the Middle East. Among the writers analysed are Chomsky, Pappé, and Finkelstein. See more