"Civilisation” as a Concept of Power: Genealogies of Modernity and the Politics of Universalism in Nineteenth-Century Arabic
Invité : Wael Abu-'Uksa, Professeur en Science Politique à l'Université Hébraïque de Jérusalem
Titre : "Civilisation” as a Concept of Power: Genealogies of Modernity and the Politics of Universalism in Nineteenth-Century Arabic
Résumé :
This lecture reconstructs the rise of “civilisation” as a central political concept in nineteenth-century Arabic. Rather than treating civilisation discourse as a straightforward colonial import or a secondary reflection of European modernity, I argue that Arabic-speaking intellectuals and reformers fashioned tamaddun as a comprehensive concept—ethical, social, economic, and political—by reworking a dense premodern semantic repertoire under distinctly modern pressures. Using conceptual history and an onomasiological mapping of the vocabulary of civilisation (tamaddun, ʿumrān, taḥaḍḍur, tamaṣṣur), I show how tamaddun fused with the temporality of “progress” (taqaddum/taraqqī) and became a widely intelligible “collective singular,” capable of organising public discourse around a global scale of advancement and regression.
Placing Rifāʿa al-Ṭahṭāwī’s early theorisation of “civilisation” at the centre, I trace how his encounter with France interacted with medieval Arabic sources—geographers, historians, and philosophers (especially Ibn Khaldūn, al-Fārābī, and Miskawayh)—to produce a modern grammar of legitimacy. Civilisation discourse functioned as an instrument for justifying new institutions, educational programmes, and state practices, while simultaneously reshaping the political imagination through non-religious idioms of civic belonging.
The lecture concludes by foregrounding the ambivalence built into civilisation as a concept of power: it generated universalist and humanist language (citizenship, compatriots, the “human family”), yet it also entrenched exclusionary hierarchies that could legitimise domination externally and reorder authority internally—an ambivalence that remains crucial for understanding how civilisational narratives operate in international order.
Date, horaire : 17 février 2026, 14h00-16h00
Lieu : Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme, 54 boulevard Raspail 75006, Paris (salle B1-01).
Format : hybride / hybrid
(Séance en anglais)
Coordination de l'Axe Moyen-Orient et Proche-Orient (WP6) : Laetitia Bucaille (Inalco), Gilles Dorronsoro (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Alia Gana (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Valentina Napolitano (IRD), Rima Sleiman (Inalco). Avec Jan-Markus Vömel, postdoctorant, programme DÉCRIPT.
Inscriptions au séminaire ouvertes jusqu'au 16 février à 16h :