Amāra: Concept, Cultural Practice and Aesthetic

Abstract

El-Desouky explores the aesthetic force of the concept of amāra as a form of cultural practice, with emphasis not so much on its sociological or anthropological provenances but on its revelatory function in literature as a dimension of Egyptian social reality. The chapter offers analyses of literary representations of amāra and how they tend to focus on the image and role of the intellectual and the tension inhering in the mediatory function. The analysis will focus on two encounters in modern Egyptian literature between the intellectual fragmentary speech of truth and the larger social imaginary, and on the absence of the pivoting tally that is dramatized in these encounters. An example from the public life of intellectuals will also be offered.