The Atomic Future: Technology, Labor and World Peace in the Thought of ʿAli Rashid Shaʿath

Abstract

In 1946, one year after the atomic bombings of Japan, Palestinian thinker ʿAli Rashid Shaʿath (1908–1967) published a book entitled Min al-binsilin ila al-qunbula al-zarriya (From Penicillin to the Atomic Bomb). An accessible work of popular science, it contains highly optimistic reflections on the future and predicts the following two events as a result of nuclear technology and energy: a workers’ utopia and world peace. This article situates Shaʿath’s voice within a global conversation about the atomic age, which led to new forms of futuristic and utopian thinking. Analyzing broader Arab articulations of the future through Shaʿath’s writing, we critically engage his embrace of atomic technology as a mode of emancipation.