Table of Contents

Introduction: The Arab Spring: The End of Postcoloniality
1. Decentering the World: How the Arab Spring Unfolded
2. Towards Liberation Geography
3. A New Language of Revolt
4. Discovering a New World
5. From the Green Movement to the Jasmine Revolutions
6. The center cannot hold
7. The End of Postcolonialism
8. Race, Gender, and Class in Transnational Revolutions
9. Libya: The Crucible
10. Delayed Defiance
Conclusion. The People Demand the Overthrow of the Regime

Promotional Information

In this landmark book, Hamid Dabashi argues that the revolutionary uprisings from Morocco to Iran and from Syria to Yemen were driven by a 'delayed defiance' - a point of rebellion against domestic tyranny and globalized disempowerment alike - that signifies no less than the end of Postcolonialism.

About the Author

Born in 1951 in Ahvaz, Iran, Hamid Dabashi was educated in his hometown and Tehran before moving to the United States, where he received a dual Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He is currently the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Dabashi has written 20 books, edited four, and contributed chapters to various others, in addition to authoring over 100 essays, articles and book reviews. An internationally renowned cultural critic and award-winning author, his writings have been translated into numerous languages, including French, Spanish, Russian and Portuguese. A committed teacher for nearly three decades, Dabashi is also a public speaker, a current affairs essayist, a staunch anti-war activist, and the founder of Dreams of a Nation, a Palestinian film project dedicated to preserving Palestinian cinema. He has four children - Kaveh, Pardis, Chelgis and Golchin - and lives in New York with his wife and colleague, the Iranian-Swedish feminist Golbarg Bashi. Hamid has been a columnist for the Egyptian al-Ahram Weekly for over a decade, and is now a regular columnist for Aljazeera, by far the most global outlet on Arab affairs; and he has had a regular column at CNN. His essays on these venues are regularly translated into Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, etc. Hamid has appeared extensively on CNN, BBC, Aljazeera, and a number of other news media in Latin America, Japan, Russia, India, the US and the EU, and has travelled and lectured extensively in the Arab world, from Morocco to Egypt to Palestine to Syria.

Reviews

The Arab Spring is enormously enlightening and original, a landmark work of a political and historical convulsion of immense proportion and significance. The book is so rich, careful and systematic in making its case that I expect it to define a new paradigm regarding the nature of revolution itself.
*Alamin Mazrui, Rutgers University*

No one is better place to examine these crucial questions than Hamid Dabashi. Acclaimed scholar, critic and cultural observer, Dabashi has an intimate knowledge of the region, its geopolitics, history and societies, and the interpretive power to see clearly into the face of the revolution.
*Dr Michael Sosteric, The Socjournal*

Embracing the poetic justice of the Arab Spring, Hamid Dabashi seizes upon and expresses the lyrical. He recounts philosophically an open-ended non-linear story, which is still in the making.
*Elia Suleiman, filmmaker*

Dabashi provides a revolutionary, imaginative and open-ended reading of what will turn out to be a founding moment of the twenty-first century.
*Fawwaz Traboulsi, author of A History of Modern Lebanon*

The depth and richness of Dabashi’s perspective contrasts with the barrenness of the modernization paradigm dominant in the West’s academy and media as much as in liberal, nationalist and socialist Arab accounts. It offers a fresh look at some deeper resources of Arab societies and cultures.
*Haifa Zangana, writer and activist*

This book is an important contribution to our understanding of the Arab Spring. It deserves to be warmly welcomed and widely read.
*Jack Farmer, Socialist Review*

It is believed that the difference between a pundit and an expert is that the former observes the horizons from the seat of a plane at 40,000 feet while the latter surveys the same ground from a low flying helicopter. Dabashi is that rare hybrid of a pundit and and an expert who deftly and seamlessly transitions between vividly detailed vignettes of the events on the ground and broad vistas of global, historical trends. Get ready for a smooth and breath-taking flight!
*Mahmoud Sadri, Texas Woman's University and the Federation of North Texas Area Universities*

A refreshing, thoughtful and historical reading of the dramatic changes sweeping the Arab world.
*Marwan Bishara, senior political analyst, Al Jazeera*

This illuminating and beautifully written book, by a brave intellectual and a brilliant scholar who knows the terrain like the back of his hand, traces the genealogy of this unique moment and offers a bird’s eye view of the horizons it promises.
*Sinan Antoon, poet and novelist*