Sonja Hegasy | Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (original) (raw)

Papers by Sonja Hegasy

Albert M, Hegasy S. Politics. In: Gertel J, Hexel R, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, eds. Copying with ... more Albert M, Hegasy S. Politics. In: Gertel J, Hexel R, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, eds. Copying with Uncertainty. Youth in the Middle East and North Africa. London: Saqi Books; 2018: 241-259

Albert M, Hegasy S. Politik. In: Gertel J, Hexel R, eds. Zwischen Ungewissheit und Zuversicht. Ju... more Albert M, Hegasy S. Politik. In: Gertel J, Hexel R, eds. Zwischen Ungewissheit und Zuversicht. Jugend im Nahen Osten und in Nordafrika. Bonn: Dietz; 2018: 287-308

The Social Life of Memory, 2017

In this chapter Hegasy discusses relations between media and academic history-writing in the afte... more In this chapter Hegasy discusses relations between media and academic history-writing in the aftermath of Morocco’s Equity and Reconciliation Commission (ERC) since 2004 in respect to its contested follow-up processes. Engaging historians at all stages, the ERC has set in motion an apparatus to deal with memory of the past, symbolically as well as materially. By introducing a notion of the “journalist-historian,” Hegasy focuses on entwinements between historiography and journalistic contributions, and especially how their shared interest in subdued accounts of conflict and violent pasts has given rise to what she calls a “new historiography.” This chapter sheds light on three main actors of history writing: producers of official knowledge (like the Historiographe du Royaume and the daily Le Matin du Sahara), universities as a semi-official space, and independent private media.

Geschichte als Ressource, 2017

In: Heike Liebau, Christophe Kohl, Barbara Christophe (Hrsg.) Historische Authentizität. Berlin: ... more In: Heike Liebau, Christophe Kohl, Barbara Christophe (Hrsg.) Historische Authentizität. Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 97-137.

Changing Values among Youth, 2007

Memory Studies, 2019

Remembering past injustices has been regarded as central to overcoming intra-societal conflicts w... more Remembering past injustices has been regarded as central to overcoming intra-societal conflicts with the end of World War II. Since, memory has increasingly been charged as a means to achieve reconciliation. But only in recent years have archives, and here especially human rights archives, in the Mashreq and Maghreb moved from being semi-functional repositories for academics to become important loci for political activists to reappraise violence and injustice. The role of the archive in preserving or erasing personal memories is critically investigated by such activists. This article covers an emergent discourse on the memory milieus of violent conflict, war, and occupation extant in this region. In a selective overview covering Morocco, the Western Sahara, Lebanon, and Egypt, it asks what the visibility of violent experiences means for the wider social context and how traumatic pasts are re-socialized through private and public archiving initiatives. The author investigates the arc...

Islam, State, and Modernity, 2017

American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 2018

Mohammed Abed al-Jabri (1935-2010) is one of the most original Arab philosophers, thinkers, and s... more Mohammed Abed al-Jabri (1935-2010) is one of the most original Arab philosophers, thinkers, and social theorist of recent times. Al-Jabri, who held the post of Professor of Philosophy at University of Rabat (Moroc- co), is the author of over 30 books—mostly on Arab Islamic thought—of which the best-known are works like Critique of Arab Reason (1984-2001, 4 vols.), Arab Political Reason (1990), An Introduction to the Noble Qur’an (2006), and Democracy, Human Rights and Law in Islamic Thought (2009). Though al-Jabri is “one of the most original and multifaceted philosophers and intellectuals of our time” (p. xii), commands considerable influence on the Arab world, and is regarded as significant and influential as the Irani- an Abdolkarim Soroush, the Egyptian Hasan Hanafi, and the French Mo- hammed Arkoun, he has remained insufficiently recognized in the West or Euro-American scholarship. The volume under review, first of its kind in English, is thus dedicated to exploring and highlig...

This article presents the results of a quantitative survey among 622 young Moroccans in 2003/04 o... more This article presents the results of a quantitative survey among 622 young Moroccans in 2003/04 on concepts of legitimacy under Mohammed VI. The article regards itself as a contribution to the debate about authoritarianism in the Middle East and the production of social consent in Muslim states. It explores changing state–society relations with quantitative as well as qualitative means. The findings show that traditional sources of legitimacy are declining whereas modern rationales and a ‘youthful sprit ’ rise as reasons for accepting the young king’s authority. The habitus of youth needs to be regarded as a major contributing element to the stability of the Moroccan monarchy today. The results show clearly that processes of political modernisation and democratisation are more crucial to women than men.

In making a claim for “the social life of memory,” Nikro and Hegasy offer a dynamic approach to t... more In making a claim for “the social life of memory,” Nikro and Hegasy offer a dynamic approach to the particular research field of social memory-studies. In their introduction they emphasize how recent revolutionary and protest activities in Lebanon and Morocco bear comparative rifts in their respective postcolonial histories. Nikro and Hegasy argue that in the wake of the Arab Spring, seismic shifts have emerged along the seams of history and memory, so that the past has become a more open, proliferating field of inquiry. Discussing Pierre Nora’s notion of lieux de memoire, they rework his accompanying notion of “between history and memory,” to focus on how people engage the nexus of personal and public memory as emerging modalities of social production.

© ZMO 2014 Introduction Between 1975 and 1990 the Lebanese population went through a bloody civil... more © ZMO 2014 Introduction Between 1975 and 1990 the Lebanese population went through a bloody civil war whose repercussions are obviously still weighing severely on society up to today. Nearly twenty-five years after its end, the conflicting parties cannot agree on a single narrative of events. Memory of the civil war is still organized according to sectarian divides. Militia leaders have meanwhile become venerated members of the political elite. Remembering the mutual assault and debating its causes has been regarded by many in Lebanon as a form of keeping the destructive forces alive. »No vanquisher – no vanquished« or »It was a war outsiders fought on our territory« are the most commonly heard phrases. Looking back and researching events of the war is regarded as a threat to the minimal balance acquired after the conflict. This has led to the victims being unheard and left on their own. Against this form of forgetting, human rights activists have started projects to extract memorie...

To exemplify this position on cultural globalisation in the argument that follows, I might have c... more To exemplify this position on cultural globalisation in the argument that follows, I might have chosen various prominent Arab intellectuals – figures such as Gamil Mattar, Burhan Ghalyun, Samir Amin, and Ahmed Abdallah. But I have decided to address my argument to Sherif Hetata, a renowned Egyptian novelist and medical doctor. Hetata is western educated (as a psychologist) and economically well off. His freedom of movement is not restricted. He has access to an English-speaking audience and represents a secular current in Egypt. Still, he wrote in The Cultures of Globalisation (eds. Fredric Jameson and Masao Miyoshi, Duke University Press, 1998): “What the World Bank calls structural adjustment is a potential economic genocide.”

This article refutes a common approach to studying democratization in the Arab world using exampl... more This article refutes a common approach to studying democratization in the Arab world using examples from Morocco and Egypt. Egypt is commonly regarded...

Zugl.: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 1996 u.d.T.: Hegasy, Sonja: Die sozio-kulturelle Opposition

The Social Life of Memory, 2018