Inscribing the Arab Self: Butrus al-Bustani and Paradigms of Subjective Reform (original) (raw)

This article attempts to understand But ½rus al-Bustānȭ's Nafȭr Sūriyya as a foundationa l text in the creation of a new discourse of modern Arab subjectivity. More speci cally, the study examines the epistemology that circumscribes al-Bustānȭ's conception of the modern Syro-Lebanese Arab citizen. The article highlight s the nomenclature fundamental to al-Bustānȭ's formula for 'concord and unity' and 'love of the nation' in the wake of the inter-confessiona l violence, or civil war, of 1860 in Lebabnon and Damascus. In doing so, it reveals how conceptions of Arab self-hood are enframed by a binary of 'success' and 'failure'. While identifying native 'failure', al-Bustānȭ displaces it into several different agents in his attempt to salvage his conception of an 'ideal' native subject. Inevitably, the author demonstrates, this ideal national subject that Nafȭr narrates is mired in an inescapable Hegelian, master-slave, struggle with the West.