When a coterie becomes a generation. Intellectual sociability and narrative of generational change in Sayyid Qutb's Egypt

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F68378009%3A_____%2F21%3A00553885" target="_blank" >RIV/68378009:_____/21:00553885 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0329379" target="_blank" >http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0329379</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65067-4_8" target="_blank" >10.1007/978-3-030-65067-4_8</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

When a coterie becomes a generation. Intellectual sociability and narrative of generational change in Sayyid Qutb's Egypt

Original language description

Departing from the case study of Egyptian intellectuals, focusing particularly on Sayyid Qutb, this chapter explores the relationship between narratives of generational change and cultural renewal. It argues that the observation of intellectual sociability is a productive angle from which to understand the conditions under which generational claims result in the effective reshuffling of the intellectual leadership, aesthetic norms, and principles of intellectual authority. The biography of Qutb (1906–1966), a poet and literary critic who abandoned his literary activity in the mid-1950s to pursue a career in Islamic activism—allows us to observe how the generational narrative articulates with his shifting intellectual networks. As a public intellectual, Qutb was at the forefront of two literary confrontations in early- to mid-twentieth century Egypt in which he made generational claims in order to place himself in the literary tradition that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, and later to cut himself off from that tradition by announcing the emergence of a new generation dedicated to political Islam. At the core of these competing uses of generational rhetoric, this chapter argues, is Qutb’s shifting relationship with the senior literary generation, some of whom he had considered his mentors. Departing from the case study, the chapter then argues that collectives defined as generational tend to emerge in tandem with the reshuffling of social bonds that a writer maintains with his seniors, switching from a bond of transmission to one of confrontation. The change announced in the generational narrative is effective when followed by the concrete action of shifting one’s intellectual solidarities from masters to peers, as this is the moment when the masters are abandoned to history and peers are promoted as the new literary generation. Depending on the particular set of relationships in which a writer finds himself, the notion of generation may act as a narrative of either change or tradition.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

C - Chapter in a specialist book

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50902 - Social sciences, interdisciplinary

Project

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Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2021

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Book/collection name

Methodological approaches to societies in transformation. How to make sense of change

ISBN

978-3-030-65066-7

Number of pages of the result

24

Pages from-to

187-210

Number of pages of the book

295

Publisher name

Palgrave Macmillan

Place of publication

Cham

UT code for WoS chapter

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