MEJCC Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 4 (2011) 23–43 brill.nl/mjcc From Braudel to Derrida: Mohammed Arkoun’s Rethinking of Islam and Religion Carool Kersten King’s College London, UK Email: [email protected] Abstract Th is article examines Mohammed Arkoun as one of the pioneers of a new Muslim intellectualism seeking new ways of engaging with Islam by combining intimate familiarity with the Islamic civilizational heritage (turath ) and solid knowledge of recent achievements by the Western academe in the humanities and social sciences. It will show how his groundbreaking and agenda- setting work in Islamic studies refl ects a convergence of the spatiotemporal concerns of an intellectual historian inspired by the Annales School with an epistemological critique drawing on structuralist and poststructuralist ideas. Infl uenced by Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics and the deconstructionist philosophy of Jacques Derrida, Arkoun evolved from a specialist in the intellectual history of medieval Islam into a generic critic of epistemologies, advocating a concept of so-called ‘emerging reason’ which transcends existing forms of religious reason, Enlightenment rationalism and the tele-techno-scientifi c reason of the postmodern globalizing world. Th is article concludes that Arkoun’s proposals challenge the intellectual binary of the West versus Islam and the historical dichotomy between the northern and southern Mediterranean. Keywords Arkoun , Islam , epistemology , postmodernism , Mediterranean Introduction In the last twenty years or so the literature on the intellectual history of the contemporary Muslim world has begun recognizing a new type of Muslim intellectual (Kersten 2009 : 10). On the spectrum of present-day Muslim thought they are located on the opposite side from the exponents of a narrow and scripture-based interpretation of Islamic revivalism. Aside from being diametrically opposed to the latter’s uncompromising political Islamism, the ideas of these new Muslim intellectuals also diff er from what Fazlur Rahman refers to as ‘classical’ Islamic modernism, as they exhibit a critical but con- structive view of the Islamic tradition. Th eir comprehensive and inclusivist ways of engagement draw on an intimate familiarity with the Islamic heritage, © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI 10.1163/187398611X553733 24 C. Kersten / Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 4 (2011) 23–43 or turath , and an equally solid knowledge of recent advances in the humanities and social sciences developed within the Western academe. In spite of the political antagonisms emerging in the post-Cold War world order, reinforced by the positing of a ‘Clash of Civilizations’ thesis, the writings of these new Muslim intellectuals evince a ‘blending of etic and emic discourses on Islam’ in which assumed binary oppositions such as modernity versus tradition and West versus Islam collapse (Feener 2007 : 273). Th us we also witness a break- ing-down of boundaries and assumed dichotomies between patterns of thought inside and outside the Muslim world (Taji-Farouki 2004: 3) Although this new intellectual trend is far from homogeneous, its manifestations share the commonality of a paradigmatic shift in the understanding of the relation- ship between modernity and Islam that is gaining momentum among increas- ingly better educated Muslims in a rapidly globalizing world. One of the key contributors to the development of these alternative Islamic discourses was Mohammed Arkoun (1928–2010). An ethnic Berber from Algeria, he was introduced to the oral traditions of his native Kabylia region and initiated in Sufi sm by an uncle. After receiving a French and Arabic pri- mary and secondary education in Taouirt-Mimoun and Oran, he then entered the higher education system in Algiers, before moving to France for post- graduate studies at the Sorbonne. Here he obtained a degree (Agrégé ) in Arabic language and literature (1956), followed by a PhD in letters (1968) based on a historical study of the intellectual milieu in medieval Baghdad. On account of this exposure to a variety of educational and cultural experiences, biogra- pher Ursula Günther has described Arkoun as an intellectual and cultural ‘border crosser’ (Günther 2004 : 13). 1 Although he continued to make substantive contributions to the histori- ography of the Muslim world, Arkoun became increasingly concerned with agenda- setting projects; proposing alternative research programs for Islamic and religious studies based on innovative methodologies inspired by develop- ments in other specialties within the fi eld of the humanities and social sci- ences. However, his particular approach and preference for the scholarly article and essay over the monograph in communicating his ideas for the reconfi gura- tion of the study of Islam and the Muslim world pose a challenge when trying to obtain a comprehensive overview of his propositions. 1 Th is somewhat inelegant translation is taken from Th ériault and Peter 2006 . Th e closest French equivalent would probably be frontalier : ‘the grim Swiss word for those who, materi- ally and psychologically, dwell near or astride borders’ (George Steiner, quoted in Cronin 2000: 44). C. Kersten / Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 4 (2011) 23–43 25 By tracing the intellectual infl uences underlying Arkoun’s academic formation, this article attempts to give a systematic insight into the genealogy of his ideas. Th is will help our understanding of the formulation of what he initially presented as ‘Applied Anthropology’, and eventually expanded into an even more ambitious critique of various modes of religious and rational thought, which he envisions as transcending into the concept of ‘Emerging Reason’. It will show how these agendas are informed by Arkoun’s encounter with the historiography of the Annales School, the multifarious off spring of structural linguistics and anthropology, the new fi eld of semiotics and the philosophical school of deconstruction, while remaining grounded in a Durkheimian-inspired sociology of religion. I suggest that the infl uence of the poststructuralist hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur enabled Arkoun to synthesize these various strands of thought into a new way of engaging in Islamic studies and, eventually, into a generic critique of reason, moving the study of religion beyond hegemonic intellectual binaries of modernity versus tradition and a geohistorical dichotomy separating the North Atlantic from the Middle East and North Africa. Th e New History of the Annales School and Arab Humanism After obtaining a postgraduate degree in Arabic studies, Arkoun moved to Strasbourg to teach at both a secondary school and the university. Th ere he met Claude Cahen, a medievalist specializing in the Crusades who introduced him to the ‘new history’ of the Annales School (Arkoun 2005 : 78ff ). Established at the same university about a quarter of a century earlier by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, the Annales paradigm had by then already progressed from a minor heresy into the main church of French historiography (Burke 1990 : 31). Th e ‘histories of mentalities’ evolving from Bloch’s interest in collective memory, his distrust toward trying to trace the ‘origins’ of historical phenom- ena, and Febvre’s notion of ‘unthinkability’ would eventually resurface in Arkoun’s writings in the guise of postmodernist concepts developed by Foucault and Derrida (Burke 1990 : 9–30; Bloch 2004 : 24; Clark 1990 : 181; O’Brien 1989 : 37). In his earliest work, however, it is in particular the infl u- ence of Fernand Braudel, the towering fi gure of the second generation of now respectable Annales historians, that can be discerned. Arkoun’s arrival in France and subsequent postgraduate studies coincided with a politically and intellectually turbulent era. Apart from the rise to prom- inence of Annales School historiography, Marxist and Existentialist philoso- phers such as Sartre and Camus, developments in structural linguistics and 26 C. Kersten / Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 4 (2011) 23–43 anthropology, semiotics and the emergence of deconstructive discourse criti- cism were defi ning aspects of what can be described as the Aufbruch of the French political, cultural and academic scene during the 1950s and 1960s (Günther 2004 : 27; Benzine 2004 : 94). In fact, Arkoun’s doctoral studies between 1956 and 1968 match almost exactly what O’Brien calls ‘the mile- stone dates in the chronology of dislocation’ characterizing the intellectual upheaval in the postwar era (O’Brien 1989 : 43). Aside from the failed anti- Soviet revolution in Hungary and the equally ill-fated Prague Spring, in the case of France this period was also framed by the Algerian war for indepen- dence and the student uprising of 1968. When the outbreak of hostilities in Algeria frustrated Arkoun’s plans for an ethnographic study of religious practices in Kabylia under the direction of Jacques Berque, Régis Blachère, and Gabriel Le Bras, Arkoun decided to shift his research to a text-historical topic and began working on a study of the intellectual milieu surrounding Miskawayh (932–1030), a man of letters asso- ciated with the itinerant courts of the Shi‘i Buyid viziers at Rayy, Isfahan and Baghdad (Günther 2004 : 32–33). Aside from his concentration on the activi- ties of intellectuals (udaba’ ) rather than the deeds of great men, thus subordi- nating the history of political events to capturing the mood and outlook of a historical period, the infl uence of the Annales School was also evident from the way Arkoun fi tted his analysis into a number of grand rubriques (Arkoun 1982 : 387). Covering such categories as political institutions and mores; social and economic history; portraits; and isolated notations, Arkoun’s breakdown of factors betrays the imprint of Braudel’s distinction between individual historical events, mid-term conjunctures in politics and economics, and the longue durée of civilizational and environmental infl uences. In addition to introducing him to these diff erent speeds of historical time, Braudel’s magiste- rial Th e Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II also gave Arkoun a new spatial awareness.