Psychoanalysis and the Challenge of Islam

Abstract

As a particular outgrowth of modernity, Islamism has garnered the attention of a great many theorists. In Psychoanalysis and the Challenge of Islam, Fethi Benslama, a psychoanalyst and professor, elaborates upon the precise undergirding apparatus that sustains the logic of Islamism as a recently conceived phenomenon. The book attempts to clearly define the logical progression of Islamism since its point of conception. This point is located in the colonial era, when “traditional” Islam was put under the intense strain of a developed European modernity. The violent break, along with all the baggage that was incapable of being properly allocated and refined by “what Freud called the ‘cultural work’ (Kulturarbeit)” (p. ix), produced an explosive cocktail that has and continues to haunt the project of modernity. Through the use of a unique theoretical style called deconstructionist psychoanalysis, Banslama’s project seeks to account for this pervasive phenomenon. “Islam has never been a major concern for me or my generation. It was because Islam began to take an interest in us that I decided to take an interest in it” (p. 1). This is the way Benslama begins the first section of his book. It marks not only his secular disposition but also the aggressivity associated with the burgeoning Islamist political movements. Islamism is strictly conceptualized as a phenomenon that differs from fundamentalism. It has the capacity to operate through the decomposition of traditionalism – one occurrence associated with this downfall is the “catastrophic collapse of [traditional] language” (p. 4) ...