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Black flags on the horizon : reconceptualizing abnormality in the Middle East
Creator(s)
Glass, Alden D.
Date
May 9, 2018
Department or Program
Politics
Advisor(s)
Davari, Arash
Abstract
Mainstream political science approaches political abnormality through what scholar Mahmood Mamdani has termed "Culture Talk." I argue that due to Culture Talk’s tendency to promote colonial and imperial violence, political science ought to re-imagine abnormality as an opportunity to re-evaluate and critique the methodologies and tools of political analysis. Through a comparison of the United Arab Republic and the Islamic State, I argue that political abnormality ought not be viewed as the result of innate cultural characteristics, but rather seen as a the result of a complicated anti-colonial process of constructing local autonomy through imitation and subversion of Western political and economic institutions.