Poetics and Politics of Islamic Imaginaries

With a rise in new forms of identity politics, right and left populisms, and a myriad of global crises, this volume is a timely exploration of how contemporary Islamic politics are bound to other sociopolitical imaginaries: nationalism, masculinity, and revolution.

Poetics and Politics of Islamic Imaginaries shows how narratives of culture, masculinist restoration, and revolutionary spirit drive, connect, and reinvent different forms of politics in Muslim majority countries. The book moves beyond Eurocentric and positivist approaches to political formations. Instead, it sees these formations as evolving in specific temporalities and contexts. Gathering scholars in sociology, political science, anthropology, cultural studies, and social and legal history, the volume takes a decolonial approach to stimulate debate on the parallels and differences between various Islamic movements and their claims on the past, present, and future. Through a comparative approach that spans scholarship from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Syria, Pakistan, India, and China, readers gain a clearer understanding of the ways that contemporary Muslim societies understand, renegotiate, and reconfigure the presumed tension between imagination and reality.