Neo-patriarchy and the Problem of the Arab Crisis: A Critical Study on Hisham Sharabi’s Works

Abstract

The paper tries to elaborate the ideas of Hisham Sharabi on Neo-patriarchy culture and its relevance to the current situations. He perceived that Neo-patriarchy as one of main causes of the Arab crisis. According to him, the Arab societies in general did not adopt modernism in its real form. Therefore, rather transforming into modern society they turned into “distorted modernism.” The data of this research particularly are Sharabi’s works that were published during 1980s as crucial period of his intellectual journey. The paper found three major conclusions on neo-patriarchy culture postulated by Sharabi: 1) neo-patriarchy culture is the real form of Arab’s failure in transforming its societies into modern one, it reflected such as in authoritarian political system, economic dependent and social-political fragmentation; 2) criticism is pre-conditions for modern Arab societies’ transformation. One of the efforts to achieve real modernism according to Sharabi is to deconstruct some distorted definitions of democracy, civil society, etc., and build fresh meaning of the terms.

Keywords

• neo-patriarchy, arab crisis, distorted modernism, arab criticism