The research for this book started in the late nineties when I became interested in new Arabic writing and the effects of new media and communication technologies on culture and politics in the region. When the Arab uprisings erupted in 2010, I was in the process of completing my first book, Trials of Arab Modernity. Once completed, I moved from the affects of modernity to digital affects, from the body of the disoriented Arab traveler in nineteenth-century Europe to Arab bodies making a scene and shaming dictatorial regimes in squares, on streets, and online. This led me to explore exposure, scene making, and leaks, tracing a genealogy in Arabic writing, communication, and critique of power starting in the classical period. While my first book ended with the euphoria we were all experiencing at the start of the uprisings, this book confronts the violent and unsettling state that has engulfed the region since then. Such confrontation made writing this book all the more difficult, if not painful at times, requiring much support and encouragement that I would like to acknowledge here.
I thank Transnation/Translation series editor Emily Apter for taking on this project and for believing in its potential after hearing my mal-élevée talk, “The Leaking Subject,” at the Sorbonne in 2015. Her vision and mentorship over the years showed the way for intellectual risk taking and academic rigor. I’m grateful to Princeton University Press and Anne Savarese, Thalia Leaf, Ali Parrington, Stephanie Roja, Aimee Anderson, and all those at the press for their hard work on this project.
The institutional support I received over the years was key to researching and writing this book. My gratitude goes to Europe in the Middle East/Middle East in Europe (EUME) and the Forum for Transregional Studies in Berlin for providing me a fellowship in 2012–2013 that allowed me to lay the book’s foundations. I’m particularly grateful to Georges Khalil, Friederike Pannewick, Angelika Neuwirth, Barbara Winckler, and Christian Junge. I also thank the American Council for Learned Societies (ACLS); the fellowship they awarded me in 2015–2016 allowed me to complete the manuscript. I thank the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, which made accepting these fellowships possible. I’m also grateful to Dennis Washburn, Associate Dean for International Studies and Interdisciplinary Programs at Dartmouth College for supporting this book’s production. I would like to thank the Journal of Arabic Literature (JAL) for publishing an earlier version of chapter 3 as “Fiction of Scandal,” and Georges Khalil and Friederike Pannewick for reprinting it in their anthology Commitment and Beyond: Reflections on/of the Political in Arabic Literature since the 1940s, and Tarik Sabry and Layal Ftouni for including a subsequent version of this essay in their anthology Arab Subcultures: Transformations in Theory and Practice.
In Austin, my deepest gratitude goes to Kristen Brustad and Mahmoud al-Batal: their culture of care and pioneering spirit created an opening that moved students and scholars of Arabic into a new dimension from which there is no turning back. I’m also grateful to have found in Austin the beautiful and brilliant Yoav Di-Capua, my friend and intellectual companion, who will be with me always. Together we thought freely and radically, crossing disciplines, genres, and traditions, and together we were able to foster an intellectual community and train students who are now leaving their mark on the field. I also would like to thank my Austin colleagues Kamran Ali, Benjamin Brower, Tracie Matysik, Judith Coffin, Kathleen Stewart, Ann Cvetkovich, Peter Rehberg, Neville Hoad, Samy Ayoub, Hannah Wojciehowski, Joseph Straubhaar, Elizabeth Richmond-Garza, Mia Carter, Brian Dougherty, and Blake Atwood for their support and engagement.
At Dartmouth, my new home, I’m grateful for the friendship and support of Jonathan Smolin; his vision and determination inspires and moves mountains. I’m also grateful to Susannah Heschel, whose brilliance and energy makes me want to think deeper and do more. I also thank Graziella Paratti, Michelle Warren, Gerd Gemunden, Silvia Spita, Barbara Wil, Bruce Duthu, Elizabeth Smith, Lynn Higgins, Kevin Reinhardt, Chad Elias, yasser alhariri, Jessica Smolin, Michelle Warren, Klaus Milich, Katherine Hornstein, Victor Witowski, Keith Walker, David LaGuardia, Nirvana Tanoukhi, and Eman Morsi for their warm welcome and support.
I thank my interlocutors who read, edited, and provided suggestions at the various stages of the project. I’m eternally grateful to Michael Allan, Yoav Di-Capua, Camille Robcis, Hatim el-Hibri, Zeina Halabi, and Anna Ziajka Stanton, who edited the manuscript. This book couldn’t have been completed without their generous engagement. I’m also grateful to my friends and guardian angels, Moneera al-Ghadeer, Muhsin al-Musawi, and John Borneman. I also thank Chafica Omari in Beirut for giving me the space to heal and write when I needed it the most, and Fawz Kabra and Tom Eccles from CCS at Bard College for allowing me to see my work as art. I also would like to thank my dearest friends and family Arwa, Aziz, Ahmad, Sinan, and Rami Shaibani; their encouragement and generous support over the years allowed me to devote the time needed to research and write this book; I’m so lucky to have them in my life. I’m also grateful to my family and friends in Beirut, New York, Hanover, and Berlin.
I would like to thank my esteemed colleagues and dear friends in the field who invited me to give talks at various stages of the book’s development. My deepest gratitude goes to Brian Edwards at Northwestern; Orit Bashkin at the University of Chicago; miriam cooke and Ellen McLarney at Duke; Marwan Kraidy at the University of Pennsylvania; Nadia Yaqub, Sahar Amer, and Zeina Halabi at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Walid Raad at Cooper Union; Milad Doueihi at the Sorbonne; Andrea Khalil at Queens College-CUNY; John Borneman at Princeton; Camille Robcis at Cornell; Nadia Al-Bagdadi and Aziz al-Azmeh at Central European University; Nadia El Cheikh and Bilal Orfali at the American University of Beirut; Muhsin al-Musawi at Columbia; Carole Rizkallah al-Sharabati, Karim Bittar, and Fadia Kiwan at Université Saint-Joseph; Christine Tohme at Ashkal Alwan; Ina Blom, Stephan Guth, Rana Issa, and Teresa Pepe at the University of Oslo; Carol Bardenstein at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; Michael Allan and Bish Sen at the University of Oregon at Eugene. I’m also grateful to the invaluable feedback I received at various conferences, talks, and workshops from Tracy McNulty, Timothy Murray, Jonathan Culler, Deborah Starr, Rayya al-Zein, Omar Ghazzi, Abdelkarim al-Amry, Sangita Dasgupta, and all the colleagues and students who engaged my work.
The most painful and heartfelt acknowledgement of all is for my mentor, friend, and Austin colleague, the heroic Barbara Harlow (1948–2017), to whom I dedicate this book. Barbara’s passion, generosity, engagement, and curiosity inspired me and pushed me forward. I remember the many evenings when I stopped by her house after leaving my office at night, sat at her kitchen table, and told her about what I had just read or wrote. When she fell ill in the summer of 2015, Barbara was reading and commenting on drafts of chapters from her hospital bed. She was so excited about the book, and she’s the one who said, “It’s time to send out the manuscript, it’s done!” After her recovery and what appeared briefly as a return to normal life, Barbara was readmitted to the hospital in January 2017 and passed away soon after from an unstoppable leakage. Barbara, this book is for you.