{"title":"The Arab League and the crisis of Westphalian sovereignty in the Arab world after 2011","authors":"Gamal M. Selim","doi":"10.1386/jciaw_00107_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jciaw_00107_1","url":null,"abstract":"The Arab League’s observance to the norm of Westphalian sovereignty has witnessed significant transformation since the 2011 Arab uprisings. Historically, the Arab League had acted as the primary institutional expression and guardian of the Arab sovereign state system as the core constitutive principle of the Arab regional order. However, in an unprecedented setback to the norm of Westphalian sovereignty in the Arab world, the Arab League has moved, in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings, in the direction of endorsing the principles of regime change and intervention in the domestic affairs of Arab countries as acceptable norms in Arab regional politics. This transformation in the politics of the Arab League, the article contends, has been triggered by concurrent changes in the global and regional balances of power, both of which have been instrumental in bringing the politics of the Arab League under the dictate of a strategic alliance of global and regional actors.","PeriodicalId":36575,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World","volume":"143 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135738074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Prometheus in the Iraqi alley: Muḥammad Khuḍayyir’s twenty-first century adab","authors":"F. Caiani, Catherine Cobham","doi":"10.1386/jciaw_00081_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jciaw_00081_1","url":null,"abstract":"The Iraqi writer Muḥammad Khuḍayyir has in recent years published numerous fictional sketches and articles online. One of the factors that has led to this late flurry of production has been the perilous state of Iraqi culture, especially after 2003. Khuḍayyir has reacted to the threats to the Iraqi cultural memory by writing articles in which he pays imaginative homage to the writers of previous generations (like Mahdī ʿĪsā al-Ṣaqr). The imagery Khuḍayyir uses in his articles is a crucial part of the innovative way in which he tries to preserve a ‘memory of literature’. However, in his fictional sketches, Khuḍayyir evokes a poetics of fire which expresses his scepticism as to whether a recovery of the literature of the past can have real purchase in the current Iraqi cultural landscape. Khuḍayyir’s use of the internet to disseminate his cultural narratives confirms the ambivalent cultural space he chooses to inhabit.","PeriodicalId":36575,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76574276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Art, community and social media in Maysaloun Faraj’s contemporary work","authors":"Maysaloun Faraj, Shakir Mustafa","doi":"10.1386/jciaw_00084_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jciaw_00084_1","url":null,"abstract":"In this joint work, a central argument is that responses to art – such as commentary on paintings – construct narratives that run parallel to these artistic works. The commentaries are not ‘attached’ to the works, and although much of their appeal is due to being inspired by the artworks, they still retain degrees of autonomy and independence. The select paintings by Maysaloun Faraj and the commentary on these paintings by Shakir Mustafa will examine ways of narrativizing art to reflect on the urge to create, receive, interpret and circulate cultural products. What makes such an urge even more telling is the environment in which it emerges. The paintings that inspired commentary appeared on a group Facebook site dedicated to making home a subject for drawings and paintings during the COVID-19 shutdown. In its various physical and metaphorical facets, home thus becomes a locale for scrutinizing issues of belonging to a certain place and the possibilities of creating communal connections beyond that space. Central to our inquiry is investigating the impact of generating and disseminating cultural works in a public domain and at a globally stressful time. That these works are by individuals of Iraqi descent living in the United Kingdom and the United States is significant in showing the nature and extent of discursive dialogues involving multiple cultural backgrounds. Negotiating a culture of origin that is specifically Iraqi in fluid and global settings such as those of the current pandemic will certainly problematize notions of origins and belonging. It becomes difficult at times to draw lines between components of identity, and at times like these, cultural analysis flourishes. In our paintings and commentary, we seek to reflect on the dynamics of belonging and departures, specifically when they occur in a global and communal experience that defies borders.","PeriodicalId":36575,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World","volume":"263 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85495078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shi’i-inherited trauma: Iraqi frames of grief in Zā’iyyat al-wajd (‘Ode to passion’) by ʿAbd ʿAun al-Rauḍān","authors":"Stephan Milich","doi":"10.1386/jciaw_00086_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jciaw_00086_1","url":null,"abstract":"After the fall of the Baathist regime in 2003, Iraqi authors were able to address past experiences of loss, death and suffering in a more explicit manner than before. An outstanding literary attempt of coming to terms with destruction and loss is the novel Zā’iyyat al-wajd (‘Ode to passion’) by the late Iraqi writer, translator and anthologist ʿAbd ʿAun al-Rauḍān (1939–2016), published in 2004. Deeply entwined in this anti-war novel are the acts of mourning loved ones and the making of passionate pleas against the horrendous and meaningless destruction of war. In my reading of this author’s last novel, I pay special attention to past and present traumas experienced by the narrator and how they relate to the violent history of contemporary Iraq. Moreover, I explore the role of religious tradition, family life, more intimate and private forms of mourning and storytelling for coping with life in a still precarious present.","PeriodicalId":36575,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World","volume":"15 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82873207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Author’s response","authors":"Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt","doi":"10.1386/jciaw_00099_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jciaw_00099_7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36575,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World","volume":"45 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84296849","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gentle breeze or impending storm? Mahdi Issa al-Ṣaqr’s East Winds, West Winds in its postcolonial context","authors":"P. Starkey","doi":"10.1386/jciaw_00082_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jciaw_00082_1","url":null,"abstract":"It is remarkable that despite devoting two full chapters to Mahdi Issa al-Ṣaqr’s works in their book on the Iraqi novel titled The Iraqi Novel: Key Writers, Key Texts, Fabio Caiani and Catherine Cobham scarcely mention his late work Riyāḥ Sharqiyya, Riyāḥ Gharbiyya (English translation, East Winds, West Winds) at all. Clearly, this understated, carefully crafted novel deserves more attention than it has hitherto received. The present article accordingly attempts to fill this gap by presenting an account of the work in terms both of its thematic content and of the author’s fictional technique and attempts to ‘place’ it in the larger context both of the development of the Iraqi novel as a whole and of the Iraqi political situation that forms a backdrop to the events of the work.","PeriodicalId":36575,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World","volume":"2014 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72400273","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s suitcase: Carrying modernism and exile across borders from Palestine into Iraq","authors":"S. Mejcher-Atassi","doi":"10.1386/jciaw_00085_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jciaw_00085_1","url":null,"abstract":"In ‘The Palestinian exile as writer’, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra gives a brief description of his suitcase that he carried over from his life in Palestine before the Nakba of 1948 to his life in Iraq thereafter. Reading his suitcase as a literary trope, I aim to unpack his suitcase and to re-vision, in fragments, what it contained. At the same time, I aim to show the limits of what can be recovered and explore silences in the archive. Drawing on studies in global modernism in addition to archival research and the close reading of Jabra’s autobiographical writing, I argue that Jabra and his Palestinian co-wanderers did not come to Iraq and all the other places they turned to after 1948 empty-handed; rather, they carried suitcases filled with past experiences as well as dreams and expectations for the future, which placed them at the avant-garde of cultural and intellectual life.","PeriodicalId":36575,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76349540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy, Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt (2021)","authors":"A. Sullivan","doi":"10.1386/jciaw_00098_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jciaw_00098_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: The Paranoid Style in American Diplomacy, Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt (2021)\u0000 Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 309 pp.,\u0000 ISBN 978-1-50362-791-8, p/bk, $26.00","PeriodicalId":36575,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87898028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Iraqi women (re)writing their stories: An overview of short stories and novels by Iraqi women in English translation","authors":"Ruth Abou Rached","doi":"10.1386/jciaw_00087_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jciaw_00087_1","url":null,"abstract":"Since the 1970s, Iraqi women writers have engaged with translation as part of their creative expression and literary activism. Until recently, little has been written on how stories by Iraqi women writers have been mediated in English translation. This gap is surprising in view of Iraq’s high international profile for decades. In this article, I revisit the times and places in which Iraqi women stories – and their politics of counter-hegemonic solidarity – have been mediated into Arabic–English translation using analytical frameworks of feminist translation that focus on paratexts and paratranslation. In doing so, I hope to add to the growing scholarship on Iraqi women’s writing, with a focus on how Iraqi women’s stories are presented in translation. By exploring the ways by which Iraqi women’s stories have emerged in Arabic and English, I draw attention to how Iraqi women writers do tribute to the lives of Iraqi women, men and children in past and recent contexts of publication.","PeriodicalId":36575,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87552668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Iraq after the Invasion: From Fragmentation to Rebirth and Reintegration, Saad Jawad (2021)","authors":"Edmund Ghareeb","doi":"10.1386/jciaw_00100_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jciaw_00100_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Iraq after the Invasion: From Fragmentation to Rebirth and Reintegration, Saad Jawad (2021)\u0000 Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 291 pp.,\u0000 ISBN 978-3-03072-105-3, h/bk, $139.99","PeriodicalId":36575,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Contemporary Iraq and the Arab World","volume":"74 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86353592","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}