From the Power of Identity to the Imitated Text: A Critical Reading of Intellectual Practices in Sudan

The Center for Arab Unity Studies published the book From the Power of Identity to the Imitated Text: A Critical Reading of Intellectual Practices in Sudan by Othman Hassan Othman Hamida.

This book focuses on the mind in terms of its function of thinking and criticism in Sudanese society, and the nature of the ideas produced to find an appropriate formula for self-building, and the development of national culture in light of the contradictions that tear the country apart. It reveals the lack of a highly acceptable approach, and that the awareness of the political elites remained an extension of the inheritance of defects at the level of discourse and practice since the dawn of independence until the December 2018 revolution.

The book is concerned with the problematic of thought and what is related to it, and the questions raised about it in its historical and cultural context, to pave the way to see the nature of contemporary intellectual and cultural discourse, and to extrapolate the intellectual problems involved in its course, and to know the limits of its treatments to the problems that Sudanese society has been suffering from the political and ideological perspective, and the problems that resulted from it. This research shows that the ideological stance has been imprinting the ideas produced on cultural issues with its character- among them is the issue of identity- and its effectiveness was great in the ways of representing different cultural texts to the extent that the mind became subject to the authority of identity in its approaches and products and in defining meanings and connotations, and the inability to define an intellectual position that puts an end to the renewed problems; Such as issues of civilized and cultural identity, or issues of democracy and freedoms, etc., which necessitated criticism and dismantling according to scientific methods.