Not, not Contemporary: The Eye of the Storm

In order to utter the double negative not, not Arab, a temporal dimension contrary to the one that dominates is implied: one that is other to the static identity claim of being or doing Arab and other than the discourse on Arabism as a set of founding and representational myths. Rather than the present of the actual, this essay proposes the contemporaneous as a present that gives the slip to the dominant and actual. The contemporaneous is argued as rupture with the dominant present and a temporality in which little is held in common and many tongues are spoken.