Desiring Arabs (Hardcover)

~ Joseph A. Massad (Author)
Key Phrases: sexual question, youthful boys, bacchic poems, Abu Nuwas, Gay International, Taha Husayn (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

With this scholarly, intellectual history, Columbia professor Massad critiques how Arabs have narrated their sexual desires in scholarship and literature and attempts to explain recent changes in such narratives as a response to, and to some degree an internalization of, pervasive and pejorative Western views of Arab sexual desire. Collecting a number of modern Arab scholars' thoughts on sexuality, Massad initially analyzes how these scholars have described nonnormative or "deviant" sexual behavior in an effort to teach their contemporaries about the often fluid sexual mores of earlier civilizations. He then notes that, starting in the late twentieth century, racist representations of Arab sexual desire and chauvinistic Western notions of human (and gay) rights began to permeate the discourse and transform cultural notions of deviance in the Arab world. Finding that recent Arabic novels reflect a "sexual taxonomy" that ultimately represses nonnormative sexual behavior by anchoring it to binary notions of hetero and homo, Massad urges resistance to narrow Western notions of sexual identity and encourages fresh consideration of the relationship between sexual activity and sexual identity in Arab culture. Driscoll, Brendan

Review

"A pioneering work on a very timely yet frustratingly neglected topic.... I know of no other study that can even begin to compare with the detail and scope of [this] work." - Khaled El-Rouayheb, Middle East Report "In Desiring Arabs, Edward Said's disciple Joseph A. Massad corroborates his mentor's thesis that orientalist writing was racist and dehumanizing.... Massad brilliantly goes on to trace the legacy of this racist, internalized, orientalist discourse up to the present." - Financial Times" --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 472 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (June 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226509583
• ISBN-13: 978-0226509587
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #878,132 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars thoughtful extension of said's thesis, January 26, 2009

By	farinel (pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Desiring Arabs (Paperback)

The work at hnd is thoroughly researched and passionately argued. It provides a summary of how Arabic speaking scholars viewed their own literary tradition and how their views changed under western influence and later in reaction to such influence. The summaries of poetry, novels, and films are very helpful but the core of the book is theoretical, a challenge to the imposition of european based theories of sexuality on the diversity of experience and sexualities among men in the former Ottoman empire.The book rightly challenges the sexual typology developed by liberationist rhetoric and corrects the frequent attempts to waylay medieval and other authors writing in Arabic into the 'gay' camp. From both an historical and anthropological perspective the book makes sense (to me at least) because it testifies to the gap between labels and the polymorphous and elusive nature of sexual desire. It also respects the differences in people and cultures over time.

7 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Byzantine Veil all over again, January 13, 2008

By	sam - See all my reviews

Like the Byzantines who viewed unveiled women as prostitues or lower class women and thus succeeded in creating the veiled Arab woman simply by implying they are a lower class if unveiled, Western literature of the last 1000 years referring to the Arabs as sodomites and pederasts and now, incredibly as homophobes, has imposed its mores and culture on their fluid concepts of Arab sexuality.

An excellent read.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Arab Sexuality, December 6, 2008

By	Amos Lassen (Little Rock, Arkansas) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Desiring Arabs (Paperback)

Massad, Joseph A. "Desiring Arabs", University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Arab Sexuality

Amos Lassen

There has been a great interest in Arab culture since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 yet few people are able to tell is about the nature of sexuality in the Arab world. Columbia professor, Joseph Massad, in this scholarly work gives us his critique of the topic and shows how Arabs have, in the past, included sexual desire in literature and how the recent changes have brought about an internalization of such ideas and the view of the West on Arab sexuality. This is an area that has not been looked at by modern scholarship, especially in the realm of what many once regarded as "deviant" sexual behavior.
Massad gives us a history of ideas as they pertain to the western capitalist ideas of what is sexuality and shows that the sexuality of the Arab people must be looked at historically while considering the changes of the world. Massad looks at both modernity and tradition and he shows that the early Arab writings were both racist and dehumanizing and the result is controversial. Culture affected the colonial system's ideas on sexuality and we clearly see that here.
Westerners have traditionally looked at the Arab world as decadent and licentious until the West was engaged in the modern movement for sexual freedom. As the West became more open sexually, the Middle East seemed to move in the other direction. Massad looks at Arab writing so that he can trace (from the 19th century to the present) the changes in Arab attitudes. That area of the world that was once looked at with sexual disdain has become somewhat of an enigma to the West. The book seems to point to the West as being the source for everything that is wrong in Arab culture and Massad goes on to show that there was a change in Arab views on and practice of human sexuality. However these views are not universal in the Arab world and some resisted this change.