Tehran 1979—Damascus 2011

Abstract

This epilogue attempts to answer the following question: Was Adonis's journey from nationalism to Islamism, passing by way of Nasserism, socialism, and extreme leftism, a matter of organic and systematic progress (which one might explicate) in his intellectual convictions, his political positions, and his ideological outlook? Or was it merely a matter of his adapting to historical occasions as they arose—a matter of conforming to the strongest cultural and political winds of the moment? It does so by presenting a short but detailed narrative about Adonis's writings on the Iranian and Syrian revolutions. The intent in relating this history is to bring the story of Arabic modernism as close as possible up to the present as well as to investigate its afterlives, its ability to adapt itself to new conjunctions.