History, Time, and Temporality in a Global Frame: Abdallah Laroui’s Historical Epistemology of History.” In: History & Theory 54, no. 4 (December 2015), special issue “Historical Theory in a Global Frame”, 5-26. (original) (raw)
Related papers
History and Theory, 2015
In this essay I discuss key elements of an original and hitherto neglected contribution by the Moroccan historian, intellectual, and theorist Abdallah Laroui to historical theory in a global frame: his historical epistemology of history and his theory of time and temporalities. I argue that Laroui develops a relational and dialectical form of translation that allows for translating between multiple forms of representing history and time. His attention to temporal logics across different bodies of historical thought enables him to translate concepts of history and time across putatively given "cultural" differences of "Western," "Islamic," and "Muslim" forms of historical thought. By unraveling these representations of difference as situated representations of time, he usefully historicizes the very conditions of observing historical difference. Besides outlining Laroui's approach, which I characterize as a situated universalism, I trace how his outlook on historical theory is shaped by his particular location in a postcolonial Muslim society and in a complex relation to "the modern West." Laroui understands his own location in postcolonial Morocco in dialectical terms as characterized by the interdependence of the local and the global, the indigenous and the exogenous, and the particular and the universal. It is his confrontation with multiple bodies of historical thought that pushes him toward a concern with problems of location, positionality, conceptual translation, and self-reflexivity leading to his engagement with epistemic frames and situated temporalities. Crucially, his epistemology of history and his theory of time and temporalities constitute a powerful critique of the temporal presuppositions of centrist views of history and time as self-contained beyond the Moroccan context. Laroui's situated universalism, I conclude, helps to rethink the problem of historical difference beyond the limits of centrist accounts and within a global frame.
Frames of Time: Periodization and Universals in the Works of Abdallah Laroui
Der Islam, 2014
A major point of critique in contemporary debates on universals is that a particular history-a "Western" one-is falsely represented as universal. This problem also underlies Dipesh Chakrabarty's widely discussed call for "provincializing Europe." In this article, I discuss the relationship between universals and practices of periodization, i. e., certain ways of shaping time, in the works of the Moroccan historian and intellectual Abdallah Laroui (*1933). I present Laroui's contribution to this debate by focusing on how his approach makes possible to historicize representations of time from a universalist, dialectical, and post-foundationalist perspective. I discuss how he develops a distinction between time and temporalities in relation to forms of historiography and how he distinguishes between the preservation of memory and tradition as a process of canonization on the one hand and analytic critique and profane politics on the other hand. I argue that by spelling out these temporal presuppositions, Laroui effectively opens up a post-foundationalist view of the social and concepts such as Islam and modernity. I conclude with a brief observation of how Laroui's account of multiple temporalities challenges ahistorical representations of "the human."
History and Theory, 2019
If tradition has often figured as modernity's other, the Islamic tradition has long played the role of the modern constitutive other par excellence. Modern secularizing practices of timing and spacing feed this grounding of the political beyond the conceptual grip of tradition. The works by the Moroccan historian and philosopher Abdallah Laroui (b. 1933) put forward a concept of heterotemporality that distances itself from secularizing practices of timing and spacing, and, importantly, also from theological ones. His critique enables us to understand each of these practices as viewing heterotemporality through one master temporality, a view that represents temporality as, in Laroui's words, "absolute" time. First, this privileged temporality is the homogeneous time of secular progress, and second, it is the homogeneous time of theological truth. Laroui unsettles both practices of timing and spacing by discussing heterotemporality as governed by what he calls the antinomy of the concept of history. For Laroui, this antinomy refers to a specific temporal dynamic that results from the tension between the fundamental discontinuity and incoherence of history, on the one hand, and the production of continuity and coherence through human observers, on the other. Laroui thus reveals that the claims about continuity and coherence that sustain groundings of the political within homogeneous time-either secular or theological-must always be understood in relation to their position within the temporal dynamic of the antinomy of the concept of history. In revealing the temporal dynamic of this antinomy within the Islamic tradition, Laroui reworks the architecture of difference that keeps the secular modern and the Islamic theological conceptually separated from each other.
History & Theory, 2019
If tradition has often figured as modernity’s other, the Islamic tradition has long played the role of the modern constitutive other par excellence. Modern secularizing practices of timing and spacing feed this grounding of the political beyond the conceptual grip of tradition. The works by the Moroccan historian and philosopher Abdallah Laroui (b. 1933) put forward a concept of heterotemporality that distances itself from secularizing practices of timing and spacing, and, importantly, also from theological ones. His critique enables us to understand each of these practices as viewing heterotemporality through one master temporality, a view that represents temporality as, in Laroui’s words, “absolute” time. First, this privileged temporality is the homogeneous time of secular progress, and second, it is the homogeneous time of theological truth. Laroui unsettles both practices of timing and spacing by discussing heterotemporality as governed by what he calls the antinomy of the concept of history. For Laroui, this antinomy refers to a specific temporal dynamic that results from the tension between the fundamental discontinuity and incoherence of history, on the one hand, and the production of continuity and coherence through human observers, on the other. Laroui thus reveals that the claims about continuity and coherence that sustain groundings of the political within homogeneous time—either secular or theological—must always be understood in relation to their position within the temporal dynamic of the antinomy of the concept of history. In revealing the temporal dynamic of this antinomy within the Islamic tradition, Laroui reworks the architecture of difference that keeps the secular modern and the Islamic theo-logical conceptually separated from each other.
This paper challenges the common opposition between periodizations as a heuristic means for historians, on the one hand, and as a political element in narratives of groups and origins on the other. It conceives periodizations as elements within wider social uses of time and, thus, the symbolic production of the political. I demonstrate this by analysing the works of the Moroccan historian and intellectual Abdallah Laroui (*1933) on modernity, historical representation, time and difference. First, I look at how Laroui spells out the relation of particular and general periodizations. Then I compare his approach to Dipesh Chakrabarty's in his book Provincializing Europe. I interpret their discussion of time and temporalities as a response to a general problem in the theory of history, as well as an expression of a certain way of experiencing a globalised modernity in (post)colonial contexts. I argue that the core of their critique is the challenging of hegemonic representations of time and the breaking up of unified time into multiple temporalities. Finally, I look closer at the various articulations of this Denkfigur (figure of thought), especially regarding the postcolonial context and Walter Benjamin's notion of empty, homogenous time.
Relational Difference and the Grounds of Comparison: Abdallah Laroui's Critique of Centrism
ReOrient, 2016
This article examines how the Moroccan historian and intellectual Abdallah Laroui (born in 1933) develops a critique of centrist modes of representing difference. I argue that Laroui himself is situated within hegemonic, hierarchical, and centrist practices of comparison that treat the difference between “Europe” on one hand and “Islam” and “Arab culture” on the other as foundational. Despite being situated in this context, the article argues that Laroui’s practice of comparison can be read differently and may open the possibility of the unsettling of such centrist practices. Whereas centrist practices of comparison fixate the relationship between universal and the particular, Laroui points out that any comparative observation stages a historically situated account of the relationship between the particular and the universal. In this way, he reveals that the grounds of comparison are never as flat and homogeneous as centrist practices of comparison imply, and draws attention to the historical-epistemological and political conditions under which difference is relationally produced. Through studying Laroui’s discussion of the logic of the concept of history and the concept of modernization in contemporary debates among Arab intellectuals, I analyze the conceptual form of Laroui’s version of historicism (Arabic tārīkhāniyya, French historicisme) as a particular form of historicist Marxism. This historicist method challenges what I call centrist architectures of difference produced by centrist modes of representation. It leads Laroui to develop a critical method that I characterize as a situated universalism, steering between relativism and abstract universalism.
This article examines how the Moroccan historian and intellectual Abdallah Laroui (born in 1933) develops a critique of centrist modes of representing difference. I argue that Laroui himself is situated within hegemonic, hierarchical, and centrist practices of comparison that treat the difference between “Europe” on one hand and “Islam” and “Arab culture” on the other as foundational. Despite being situated in this context, the article argues that Laroui’s practice of comparison can be read differently and may open the possibility of the unsettling of such centrist practices. Whereas centrist practices of comparison fixate the relationship between universal and the particular, Laroui points out that any comparative observation stages a historically situated account of the relationship between the particular and the universal. In this way, he reveals that the grounds of comparison are never as flat and homogeneous as centrist practices of comparison imply, and draws attention to the historical-epistemological and political conditions under which difference is relationally produced. Through studying Laroui’s discussion of the logic of the concept of history and the concept of modernization in contemporary debates among Arab intellectuals, I analyze the conceptual form of Laroui’s version of historicism (Arabic tārīkhāniyya, French historicisme) as a particular form of historicist Marxism. This historicist method challenges what I call centrist architectures of difference produced by centrist modes of representation. It leads Laroui to develop a critical method that I characterize as a situated universalism, steering between relativism and abstract universalism.
Contributions to the History of Concepts, 2019
The puzzle this article examines is how one can study the concept of modernity within the history of its universalization as a process of translation. For this purpose, I look at how the contemporary Moroccan historian and intellectual Abdallah Laroui has critically engaged with the history, politics, and epistemology of translating modernity (Arabic ḥadātha, French modernité) into his intellectual and political setting of Morocco, North Africa, and the Middle East during and after the colonial period. I read him as making a critical intervention into existing modes of timing and spacing the concept of modernity and, thus, what I describe as the politics of historicity. In conclusion, I make a methodological plea for framing the history of concepts across political borders in terms of translational practices.
Marxism and Historicism in the thought of Abdullah Laroui
2017
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