{"product_id":"static-forms-writing-the-present-in-the-modern-middle-east-paperback-1","title":"Static Forms: Writing the Present in the Modern Middle East - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eShir Alon\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat does it mean to write a literature of the present? In the early twentieth century, Arabic and Hebrew writers faced a parallel predicament. Modern literature aspired to reflect the contemporary moment, yet the Middle Eastern present seemed incompatible with dominant literary forms, especially the novel. Projects of \"cultural awakening\" implied that Arabs and Jews were somehow inhabiting the present wrongly. Arabic and Hebrew writers found themselves grappling with the simultaneous necessity and impossibility of narrating the present--and achieved strikingly similar literary solutions to this challenge. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis book develops a new theory of the emergence of modernist literary forms through a series of parallel readings of Arabic and Hebrew prose. Situating literary production in projects of modernization, settler colonialism, and state building, Shir Alon traces the proliferation of what she calls \"static forms.\" These literary forms articulate a modern present experienced as stuck, suspended, or absent, embodying the lived temporalities of Orientalist fantasies of origin, regimes of productive and reproductive labor, and the routine violence of occupation. \u003ci\u003eStatic Forms \u003c\/i\u003epositions writers such as Mahmud al-Masʿadi, Sonallah Ibrahim, Elias Khoury, Adania Shibli, S. Y. Agnon, Y. H. Brenner, and Yishayahu Koren as innovators and theorists of global modernism, writing the present as a series of suspensions of modernity's narrative of progress.\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eShir Alon is an assistant professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 264\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.6 x 9 x 6 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e October 28, 2025\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52704506741043,"sku":"9780231215947","price":70.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0300\/5595\/6612\/files\/hBdpHPbUvF9780231215947_6ffcabf9-e77d-428b-9a70-03558e9f6150.webp?v=1763355627","url":"https:\/\/www.vysn.com\/en-ca\/products\/static-forms-writing-the-present-in-the-modern-middle-east-paperback-1","provider":"VYSN","version":"1.0","type":"link"}