Mahmoud Amin El Alem (1922–2009) (alternative spelling: Mahmud Amin al-'Alim) was an award-winning Egyptian cultural critic and leading Marxist theorist.[1][2] He was a leading public intellectual in Egypt in his day.[3] El Alem was also the head of the administrative board of Akhbar el-Yom[4] and editor of several newspapers and magazines, including Rose al-Yūsuf, ar-Risala al-gadida, Magallat al-musawwir, and Qadaya fikriyya.[5]

Career

In the 1940s, El Alem rose to public prominence as a famous Egyptian communist leader.[6] However, due to his political activism, he was arrested and convicted multiple times.

El Alem was expelled from the King Fuad University in 1954 for his political positions, which prevented from defending his doctoral thesis.[6][5] Thereafter, he became a political prisoner from 1959–1963 because of his refusal to dissolve the Egyptian Communist Party into the Socialist Union set up by then President Gamal Abdel Nasser.[6] Alongside Ismael Sabri Abdallah and Fouad Mursi, Al Elem later sought to support Arab nationalism through building an alliance between communists and nationalists to face the economic and political challenges of the Arab world.[6]

His 1955 book Fi al-Thaqafa al-Misriyya (On Egyptian Culture), co-authored with 'Abd al-'Azim 'Anis, applied Marxist literary criticism to contemporary Egyptian cultural works.[7]

El Alem was later appointed head of the National Theater Committee and became Director of Akhbar el-Yom Press Company.[6]

Once Anwar Sadat assumed the presidency of Egypt, El Alem strongly opposed the Egyptian "Infitah" (policy of economic liberalization). He also opposed the peace policy with Israel. Consequently, El Alem was once again imprisoned.

Upon his release, he moved to Oxford, where he taught at St. Anthony’s College at Oxford University. He later accepted the invitation of his friend Jacques Berque to take charge of a chair on contemporary Arab thought in Paris; he became a lecturer at the University of Paris VIII (1974–1985) and at the École Normale.[5] In Paris, he also launched "The Arab Left" newspaper, which published debates among left-wing activists.[6]

El Alem returned to Egypt after President Anwar Sadat died in 1984.[5]

Legacy

Development of Marxist Thought in Egypt

El Alem's work and life continue to be of interest today to scholars of Egyptian Marxism and Egyptian history post-independence.[7][8] His "seminal work," On Egyptian Culture, has been called "a mainstay of late twentieth-century Arabic literary criticism" (323).[7] He participated in intellectual feuds with Taha Husayn[7] and also took on such Arabic literary giants as Naguib Mahfouz.[8][9]

Historian Albert Hourani summarized El Alem's intellectual stance in On Egyptian Culture as follows:

"Culture...must reflect the whole nature and situation of a society, literature must try to show the relationship of the individual with the experience of his society. A literature which flees from that experience is empty; thus the writing which reflected bourgeois nationalism is now devoid of meaning. New writing must be judged by whether it adequately expresses the struggle with the ‘octopus of imperialism’ which is the basic fact about Egyptian life, and whether it mirrors the life of the working class. Seen in this light, the question of forms of expression becomes important. A gap between expression and content, [El Alem and 'Anis] suggest, is a sign of a flight from reality..."

Awards

Written works

  • Fi al-Thaqafa al-Misriyya (On Egyptian Culture), co-authored with 'Abd al-'Azim 'Anis (1st edition, 1955)

References

  1. ↑ Halabi, Zeina G. (2017), The Unmaking of the Arab Intellectual: Prophecy, Exile, and the Nation, Edinburgh University Press, p. 10, ISBN 978-1474421393
  2. ↑ Khouri, Malek (2010), The Arab National Project in Youssef Chahine's Cinema, American University in Cairo Press, p. 64, ISBN 978-9774163548
  3. ↑ Haeri, Niloofer (2003), Sacred Language, Ordinary People: Dilemmas of Culture and Politics in Egypt, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 134, ISBN 0230107370
  4. ↑ Talhami, Ghada Hashem (2007), Palestine in the Egyptian Press: From al-Ahram to al-Ahali, Lexington Books, p. 173, ISBN 978-0739158630
  5. 1 2 3 4 Mahmoud Amin El Alem, Ibn Rushd Fund, retrieved 18 July 2018
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Slim, Ben Taleb (2009), Mahmoud Amine El Alem : théoricien de la gauche arabe, Attariq Al Jadid
  7. 1 2 3 4 Ghanayim, Mahmud (1994). "Mahmud ʾAmin al-ʿAlim: Between Politics and Literary Criticism". Poetics Today. 15 (2): 321–338. doi:10.2307/1773168. ISSN 0333-5372. JSTOR 1773168.
  8. 1 2 Hourani, Albert (1991). A History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belnap Press of Harvard University Press.
  9. ↑ Ismat, Riad (2018-12-14). Artists, Writers and The Arab Spring. Springer. p. 26. ISBN 978-3-030-02668-4.
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