Psychoanalysis and the Challenge of Islam

Abstract

As a particular outgrowth of modernity, Islamism has garnered the attentionof a great many theorists. In Psychoanalysis and the Challenge ofIslam, Fethi Benslama, a psychoanalyst and professor, elaborates upon theprecise undergirding apparatus that sustains the logic of Islamism as arecently conceived phenomenon. The book attempts to clearly define thelogical progression of Islamism since its point of conception. This point islocated in the colonial era, when “traditional” Islam was put under theintense strain of a developed European modernity. The violent break, alongwith all the baggage that was incapable of being properly allocated andrefined by “what Freud called the ‘cultural work’ (Kulturarbeit)” (p. ix),produced an explosive cocktail that has and continues to haunt the projectof modernity. Through the use of a unique theoretical style called deconstructionistpsychoanalysis, Banslama’s project seeks to account for thispervasive phenomenon.“Islam has never been a major concern for me or my generation. It wasbecause Islam began to take an interest in us that I decided to take an interestin it” (p. 1). This is the way Benslama begins the first section of his book.It marks not only his secular disposition but also the aggressivity associatedwith the burgeoning Islamist political movements. Islamism is strictly conceptualizedas a phenomenon that differs from fundamentalism. It has thecapacity to operate through the decomposition of traditionalism – one occurrence associated with this downfall is the “catastrophic collapse of [traditional]language” (p. 4) ...