History, Time, and Temporality in a Global Frame: Abdallah Laroui's Historical Epistemology of History
In this essay I discuss key elements of an original and hitherto neglected contribution by the Moroccan historian, intellectual, and theorist Abdallah Laroui to historical theory in a global frame: his historical epistemology of history and his theory of time and temporalities. I argue that Laroui d...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Wiley
[2015]
|
| In: |
History and theory
Year: 2015, Volume: 54, Issue: 4, Pages: 5-26 |
| Further subjects: | B
Translation
B Islam B epistemology of history B multiple temporalities B situated universalism B Time B Abdallah Laroui |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | In this essay I discuss key elements of an original and hitherto neglected contribution by the Moroccan historian, intellectual, and theorist Abdallah Laroui to historical theory in a global frame: his historical epistemology of history and his theory of time and temporalities. I argue that Laroui develops a relational and dialectical form of translation that allows for translating between multiple forms of representing history and time. His attention to temporal logics across different bodies of historical thought enables him to translate concepts of history and time across putatively given “cultural” differences of “Western,” “Islamic,” and “Muslim” forms of historical thought. By unraveling these representations of difference as situated representations of time, he usefully historicizes the very conditions of observing historical difference. Besides outlining Laroui's approach, which I characterize as a situated universalism, I trace how his outlook on historical theory is shaped by his particular location in a postcolonial Muslim society and in a complex relation to “the modern West.” Laroui understands his own location in postcolonial Morocco in dialectical terms as characterized by the interdependence of the local and the global, the indigenous and the exogenous, and the particular and the universal. It is his confrontation with multiple bodies of historical thought that pushes him toward a concern with problems of location, positionality, conceptual translation, and self-reflexivity leading to his engagement with epistemic frames and situated temporalities. Crucially, his epistemology of history and his theory of time and temporalities constitute a powerful critique of the temporal presuppositions of centrist views of history and time as self-contained beyond the Moroccan context. Laroui's situated universalism, I conclude, helps to rethink the problem of historical difference beyond the limits of centrist accounts and within a global frame. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1468-2303 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: History and theory
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/hith.10776 |