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The Algebraic and the Experienced

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Jacques Berque
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Extract

Among the Arabs, wijdân means a particularly rich and moving relationship between essence and existence (and vice versa). In recent periods of their history it has been interpreted as mass movements, emotional violence, and the impulse to change life. Is this but one aspect, one of several effects, or is it the substance of revolutions? Does the concept “to change life” have a value by itself, or is it only a symptom or corollary of more hidden movements which justify such an abstraction?

Etymologically thawra in arabic means “effervescence.” Moreover, it does not just partially include, but surpasses our understanding of revolutions. We have become accustomed to defining them as changes in class relationships. The exercise of a secret logic can be seen which would determine, in the end, the fortunes of production relationships. This is, at any rate, what Marxist doctrine maintained, until recent studies revealed more shades of meaning and completed it. This is not the place to take up in our turn the debate about genesis/structure, structure/superstructure, the predominant factor and its consequences or effects, or “superdetermination,” which is the contingency to use ruses.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 22 , Issue 86 , June 1974 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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Footnotes

*

Excerpt from Langages arabes du présent, to be published by Editions Gallimard in the series “Bibliothèque des sciences humaines.”

References

1 Cf. ‘Adil ‘Awwa, Al-Wijdan, Damascus, 1961.

2 The Lisân defines this root as a synonym of hâj. In physics it is used to describe a volcano beginning to erupt, and hair standing on end (an example can be bound in the h'adith). Al-thawr, "red horizon" (ibid.).

3 Henri Lefebvre, Critique de la vie quotidienne, tome I, 1946; tome II, 1963.

4 Besides certain more intimate phenomena, such as sexual denial, which E. Le Roy Ladurie points out in Le Territoire de l'historien, 1973, p. 316 ff.

5 In the meantime pointing out a recent reaction on the part of social history towards a study of "mentalities."

6 Nevertheless a "destiny" which would not be the same as Antigone's, and which would not have a tragic ending. Would it then only be an objective trend?

7 A. Rimbaud, Illuminations.

8 Might the continuation of this manouvering, without having noticeably changed for centuries, be the aim of various teachings by which society has established and manifested itself? Let us in any case note that its effectiveness contrasts, paradoxically, with its double inadequacy!

9 Also the just rejection of empiricism and the ideological, in that they are outgrowths of opinion, should be noticed. However, empiricism is no more real life than opinion is truth.

10 This word is given the meaning that Ch. S. Peirce gave it, and that Youri Lotman often lent it. However shouldn't this whole theory of the "iconograph ical" be replaced by the Heideggerian perspective of the "unveiling" or, (still in the same spirit) of the eidétique? cf. J. Beaufret, Dialogue avec Heideg ger, t. II, 1973.