"Our inheritance was left to us by no testament" – René Char
The Modern Arab State: A Decade of Uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (book release)
Amro Ali, “Kinetic Karama: Bargaining for Dignity in the Pursuit of a New Arab Social Contract” in The Modern Arab State: A Decade of Uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. Eds. Youssef Cherif (Berlin: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2021).
My chapter contribution looks at the triumph of karama (dignity) over sharaf (honour) as a form of ethical logic since 2011 in the Arab world. The text engages with Friedrich Nietzsche, Erich Fromm, and Frantz Fanon in exploring the idea of individual dignity as a legitimizing narrative, in which karama was not reborn as a theoretical concept or an enhanced individual virtue, but a self-contained movement and a story that expands the moral imagination.
