Identity and Alienation in Arab Consciousness

Abstract

In this study the author explores the meaning of identity and its dialectical relationship with language. Hanafi argues that identity metamorphoses into alienation when the self is internally divided between what it is and what it must become. He then differentiates between different forms of alienation, and emphasizes the strong relationship between identity and freedom, maintaining that the shift from linguistic pluralism to the level of culture leads to the disintegration of nations, unless these are absorbed into a wide-scale civilizational project that meets the historical challenge. Signs of this happening, he argues, were evident in the Arab revolutions that produced a new language that restored identity and put an end to alienation.