The articulatory practices of Islamism : a focus on space and subjectivity

• Main Author: Mura, Andrea
• Published: Loughborough University 2010
• Subjects: 320.557; Discourse : Modernity : Islamism : Tradition : Transmodernity : Universalism : Dualism
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.551303

This doctoral research, The Articulatory Practices of Islamism: A Focus on Space and Subjectivity, inquires into the role played by tradition, modernity and transmodernity qua symbolic reservoirs of Islamist discourses. By tackling Islamism from the theoretical and methodological perspective of discourse theory, my thesis will make a case for including within contemporary analyses of Islamism both a semiotic differentiation of Islamist articulatory practices (discourses) and a speculative assessment of their spatial representations and subjectivity formations. While the general framework of this study will be laid out in the Introduction (Chapter I), Part I of the thesis offers an examination of tradition, modernity and transmodernity in order to provide the reader with a conceptualisation of these key research categories. In addition to offering a reading of tradition and modernity crucial to a discourse-centred critique of Islamism, Chapter II will examine in detail the discourses of nationalism and pan-Islamism. Here the objective will be to uncover their deployment of two speculative paradigms in the construction of space and subjectivity; that is, dualism and universalism. Chapter III will then examine the emergence of key transmodern discourses such as globalism , universalism and virtualism tackling their relationship with globalisation. In Part II, I outline the main argument forwarded by my research. I will do so by examining the way three case studies engage with tradition, modernity and transmodernity. The discourse of three leading Islamist figures will be presented accompanied by textual examination and speculative analysis, the objective being to distinguish different discursive trajectories. I will strive to differentiate between a territorial trajectory of Islamism (Hasan al-Banna) in chapter IV; a transitional trajectory (Sayyid Qutb) in chapter V; and a transterritorial trajectory (Osama bin Laden) in chapter VI. Such an endeavour will help me to develop my main line of argument through an assessment of the role of symbolic reservoirs in the differentiation of Islamist discourses and in their construction of space and subjectivity. My conviction is that, while enlarging the space of academic debate on Islamism, such a theoretical approach could bring a new perspective to analytic inquiries into other discursive formations (liberalism, communism, anarchism etc), so helping analysts to differentiate between distinct trajectories within their respective discursive universe.