ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Ḥammouda’s experience reflects the problematic situation that a lot of contemporary Arab critics faced through their aspiration to make a change but simultaneously to preserve the classical Arab critical tradition Ḥammouda’s genuine and sincere endeavor motivated me to investigate his relentless struggle to face the 20^th century critical trend that overwhelmed the majority of Arab critics, who fully abandoned their heritage and adopted the Western modernist trend. I admired his attempt to integrate between his desire to create a new kind of Arab modernism that combines between the classical Arab heritage and the modernist Western culture. To conduct my research in a scientific objective way, I planned my research in the following way:

Hind Ḥussein Ṭaha defines ‘critical theory’ as an idea through which the critic recrystallizes the opinions of critical heritage that share in their treatment of a specific issue. He composes it through his valuation of his predecessors and efforts. He analyzes them, investigates them, fills their gaps, and corrects their mistakes through an approach of defined procedural steps, and puts them in a consistent regular context in a the form of a unified structure from which the other cognitive fields can benefit such as: sociology, ethics, literature, anthropology, education, psychology, etc.,… without remaining closed on its critical source.

Based on that, we can say that the critical theory is a product of many indirect attempts that preceded linguists and critics who are influenced by philosophy, which is a direct attempt by these two groups to study those lines that were adopted in the theoretical product. Thus, it is an attempt that accompanies the realistic existence of Arabic literature²⁰.

Therefore, we can say that the Critical Theory is subject to a dialectic that appears on three levels:

1) The Subject Relationship, namely, the relationship between the subject of ‘criticism’, the subject of ‘literature’, the subject of general scientific knowledge, the general cultural knowledge, and the applied practical practices.

2) The Theoretical Relationships, namely, the relationships between theories and their kinds, such as the critical theory, the literary theory, and the scientific theories in other cognitive fields.

3) The Deliberative Relationship, namely, the relationship between the critic, the creator and the reader, and requirements that of producing knowledge, culture and creativity that control that relationship.

Based on that, we can say that the Critical Theory, like other theories, exists as a multilateral dialogue²¹.

Jaber ʿAsfour sees that those who call for establishing an Arab theory or theories in criticism should wait long till the conditions of its establishment are achieved, which are: availability of a climate of complete freedom of thought, refusal of the conditions, revaluation of the legacy without obstacles or obstructions, and strengthening of the tools of knowledge production and the relationships of their production in such a way that makes them actually capable of self-creation, besides availability of huge cognitive accumulation which can be built upon. Besides, there should be a fast-moving movement of translation of accurate results, and deep goals, and a feeling of rival treatment with the developed ‘other’ and realization that the theory cannot affiliate with a religion or a state or an individual or a political doctrine, but is affiliated only with its basic formative element²².

There are several reasons for the critic’s return to the text:

1) The Cultural Paradox: The remarkable Arab cultural ironic paradox in this context is that those who called for modernization of the Arab mind and started a new age of enlightenment that gets the Arab nation out of the ages of backwardness and ignorance chose to achieve that goal by adopting the Western modernism and postmodernism to do so. Ḥammouda does not object to the necessity of modernizing the Arab mind and starting a real age of enlightenment, but his objection focuses on the means, and on the choice of Western modernism and postmodernism as a way to modernize the Arab mind in a clear mixture between modernization, modernism, and postmodernism. Ḥammouda sees that the three terms do not agree except in the linguistic root.

2) The Historical Test: Since the 1970s, the Arab modernists have been busy trying to modernize the Arab mind in their own way, but all the Arab intellectuals suddenly realized that the military defeat in 1967 War between Israel and the Arab countries was actually a defeat of the Arab mind in first place. By the end of the twentieth century, the groups of the Arab modernists had already covered the whole Arab region and became dominating masses and groups that narrowly accepted difference and refuses it under the argument that their option is the right option to modernize the Arab mind. When Baghdad fell down, the helpless Arab reaction revealed on all levels that the Arab mind in 2003 was more backward and more torn than what it had been in 1967.

3) Return to the Text was a necessity of survival in an age that threatens with abolition of identities, and calls openly for that to the advantage of a dominating culture. Some national cultures that were aware of the coming danger early, and succeeded in developing of a national modernism or modernisms that rise from their own nationality as India did.

The Arab culture, however, fell in the lure of the Western culture, and turned its back to its own cultural heritage, without being aware of the danger of what was happening. What actually happened was neutralizing the intellectual elite, deactivating them, and pushing them aside from leading the people and creating a popular mass culture. When the culture of the intellectual elite was isolated from the popular culture, the dominating culture dominated the popular culture to reformulate it in its own way, and implant the new affiliation in the name of universality of culture²³

Return to the text means return to the authority that the linguistic text enjoys and emphasizes. This authority requires must have an amount of compulsion on the reader, whether he is an ordinary reader or a critic. This obligation represents a safety valve to the operation, or operations of reception within the same language. Returning to de Saussure, the “authority of obligation” that the sign enjoys and the obligation that the reader should practice depends on the rule of spontaneity or arbitrariness of the relationship between the two ends of the sign. When the critics lead the philosophers into the labyrinth of postmodernism by robbing the ‘referred to’, the result becomes ‘infinite’ in its indication. In other words, it becomes impossible to fix one specific meaning because it is considered authoritative and infinite in its indication. In this sense, the result is no-meaning. In another place, Ḥammouda says that ‘authority of the text’ means what the text imposes or fails to impose on the receiver during the process of reading regarding the obligation or non-obligation to its data.

In his study “al-Khurūj min al-Tīh/Getting out of the Labyrinth”, Ḥammouda explains how returning to the text³³ was the tool of rebellion against the Arab critical labyrinth. He explained how all the new critical approaches in the last two decades of the twentieth century, which gathered under the umbrella of cultural criticism, agreed that ‘return to the text’ is the thread of salvation that is tied to the rock outside the labyrinth. He pointed out that the ‘last return to the text’, loading it with much more than it can carry, also lost the authority of the text and negated its intentionality.³⁴

Return to the text is an attempt to introduce an Arab critical alternative to the Western critical labyrinth that we entered, and the return to the confirm the authority of the text is considered a continuation to the project of al-Maraya al-Muqa’ara, where Ḥammouda adopted the call for ending the boycott with the legacy of Arabic rhetoric³⁵, and he leaves the invitation open to every sincere effort to add new features to complete the theory so that we turn from consuming the modernity of the other to produce true Arab modernism, and we can say that we have developed a protective cultural identity³⁶.

Talking about the text means talking about three main elements: the desired text, its authority and its intentionality (See: Table 1, Table 2 and Figure 1 below). So, what is the text that Ḥammouda calls for and what are its components?

Ḥammouda argues that engagement in a text in the middle area started to appear with the beginning of literary criticism itself and Aristotle dealt with it in his book Poetics. Edward Said tried to define this middle area, the area of the in-between, in which the text that he dreams about should stand. This text is characterized by the following features:

1) A text that does not belong completely to the different realistic, historical, subjective contexts that produced or participated in its production, and does not reject these contexts, at the same time. It starts from the proposition of Michael Riffaterre, in which he sees that the process of reducing the text to the different circumstances and contexts that shared in its production is not more than a legend or a lie³⁸.

2) The New Text Stands between two opposite ends: According to Edward Said the contrast between the texts disappears, “under the burden of myths,” between the new and the old, from the inevitability of the connection of the literary text with other non-literary discourses at the level of the superstructure, and the varied powers of the social relationships of production at the level of the infrastructure, and then, a contrast that looks at the world of the text as a monk’s cell where the “important dimension of the meaning of the text is only the internal dimension only”.

3) The New Text allows a double treatment of the text because it exists in the world, as Edward Said says; it is a product of that world on the one hand, and a power that affects it, on the other. Therefore there must be a middle area where it would be possible to deal with the language rhetorically, as Hillis Miller says, without isolating it from other more urgent issues of life. Edward Said is considered the most outstanding writer in cultural criticism, and he is more successful in his identification of that middle area than others. The dream in the middle-area is the common mold among the critical doctrines, despite all their contradictions³⁹.

It is remarkable that the coincidence of the Russian formalism with the communist revolution, was not narrow for a few years for the aesthetic direction of the critical movement, which does not care for the connection with the external realistic contexts of the text and its meaning. When it became certain that the revolution became a new dictatorship that suppresses the proletariat rather than liberating it, and started being tired of the opposite opinion, like all the dominant ideologies throughout history, the formalists partially modified their position in an attempt to conform to the requirements of the new era in a partial concession that recognizes the production of the external contexts and circumstances of the literary text, but they refused to acknowledge that these external contexts or circumstances are historical or social, and they limited these external conditions to the tradition of literature.

But that partial concession did not save the Russian formalist who quickly spread into the European countries, carrying with them the formal seeds that prepared the atmosphere for the emergence of structuralism. At the same time, those who were affected by Marxist principles tried to find a middle area between commitment and formal criticism.

The form shows the requirements that should be contained in the desired text as Hammouda sees them: A text that performs a function or functions in a changing world, and yet, it keeps its aesthetic values; a text is characterized by being a text that does belong as a whole to the different personal, historical or realistic contexts that produced or participated in its production and it does not refuse these contexts; a text that stands between two opposite ends and allows double-treatment

Acknowledgement of a text-authority indicates acknowledgement of the existence of a text, namely, a linguistic entity that the author coined it in order to achieve an aesthetic goal that enjoys an amount of obligation, and he maintains that by that he gives a kind of evidence towards the mess of readings and interpretations that the methods of postmodernism introduced, and this cannot be achieved except through the inspiration of heritage and the creation of a theory that is inspired by reality and reproduction.

The authority of the text, as Ḥammouda sees it, does not mean that he denies it or its existence, but recognition of the existence of meaning to the text that we can extract after reading the text. What is meant here is that versatile, conscious reading by a professional critic who is familiar and acquainted with text signals and its decoding in a way that interacts with them and produces a new reading that differs from the first reading of the text.

Ḥammouda points out the attempts of Roman Jacobson, one of the most prominent Russian formalists who have exercised a strong influence, on the one hand, and who has become one of its pillars, on the other hand, in defining the middle-area, in which the literary text achieves balance between the two opposites.

In that, Jacobson expresses the recent development that the Russian formalism witnessed when some of its members who adopted the principles of the revolution tried to reconcile between the aesthetic of early formalism and the commitment imposed by new ideological affiliations⁴⁰.

In his article on the dominant element, Jacobson rejects the two radical points of view: the point of view that advocates plurality of the functions of the text; or the point of view that advocates plurality vis-à-vis the unilateral view that is satisfied with the text and its internal unity, and the one-sided view, and after that, he defines the middle area⁴¹.

The text for Jacobson is not a purely aesthetic creature, nor is it a multi-functional being. In a way that isolates it from its aesthetic values. When Jacobson turns to defining the middle area, he refuses to agree that the literary work does an aesthetic job, in addition to other non-aesthetic functions because he is occupied with the idea of the dominant element that imposes on the text an interpretation that agrees with that element.

For Jacobson, the literary text performs multiple functions, including aesthetic function, with an essential difference that sees that the aesthetic function is the dominant element that dictates the nature and direction of its interpretation. Jacobson’s words mean one of two: Either, in his defining the middle region, he comes closer to the aesthetic function of the text than to the other functions that are determined by different contexts. This argument may be explained in the light of Jacobson’s early affiliation to formalism, or it means nothing more than replacing the term “dominant element” that he coined with any other equivalent term. According to Ḥammouda, Jacobson’s talk about the aesthetic function is less shy than the talk of a number of contemporary critics⁴².

Hammouda deals with the attitude of the new criticism attitude in the context of his talk about the middle area that combines between the aesthetics of literature that are based on studying of the text from within and the different external contexts and functions, and the possible employments of the text, and that is attributed to the fact that talking about the middle area was unexpected in the first place. Cleanth Brooks, as a critic who approaches the middle area cautiously, talks about the relationship of the text with its author and reader, and the mood of each of them that determines the writing and reading of the text. Criticism that calls for complete separation between the text and its author, his life, hopes, fears and interests is in his view a hollow criticism, but the reader seems to be separated from those who read it, and in spite of everything, literature is written in order to be read⁴³. According to Ḥammouda, Brooks is well aware that what he says is a costly concession that runs counter to everything that Elliott said about the objective theory, namely, the Impersonal Theory, which says that the act of creativity is a constant escape from the Self and a sacrifice of it, but in the end, that act enters it emphasizing the impossibility of separating the text, on the one hand, from its author and reader, on the other.

Then, he ends with two important sentences, in which he admits admitting that “the poem has its roots in history, past and present, and we cannot ignore its place within the historical context.”

What matters to Ḥammouda here is to emphasize the realization of some new critics of the need to search for a middle area in order to repel the accusation against that school that it is deals with the literary text as if it were hung in a vacuum, and the in-between text in its connection with different contexts that share in its production seeks to the following:

1) Addressing a first contemporary reader with the text, who lives with the contexts:

When we call for a text that does not exist in a vacuum and is partly linked to the real contexts that produce it, we talk about addressing that text to a particular reader. Though we do not mean by that the link between the new text and its reader adoption of arguments of reception or the theory of the reader’s reaction on the basis that these arguments essentially invalidate the role of the text and negate its authority, we cannot ignore the historical role of the contemporary reader with the text. The text, in addressing its first reader, was aware of the expectations that the reader would have when reading it. Therefore, the historical horizon of the expectations gains a special importance by one of the poles of the theory of the reader’s reaction, Hans Robert Jaus (1921-1997)⁴⁴. This means that Ḥammouda acknowledges the importance of the role of the reader in interpreting the literary text and criticizes the transfer of the authority of the text to the reader.

2) Existence of the meaning of the text on the one hand, and the existence of multiple readings on the other:

Ḥammouda sees that the middle-area he is trying to define for the new text, first: allows for the existence of a meaning that the text intended, on the one hand, and the existence of multiple readings of the text itself. This means that the text is liable to multiple interpretations, and does not mean that the reader can rewrite the text instead of just reading it. The reader does not read the poem that he wrote, or, as the members of the receiving club say, but he reads a text that has the authority to impose a meaning that it intended; a text that allows him to be somewhat different that is the basis for multiple interpretations. The text is likely to introduce gaps that the reader fills out, and it can provide some unspecified areas that the reader will identifies, but it is never a text whose existence is exclusive to the reader’s awareness of it⁴⁵.

3) The text that refuses idea of ‘ultimate monism’ between the text and the reader, the subject and the Self, the text and the author:

Despite that, this this is a text that is based on duality of the reading-self and the read subject, on the existence of a text that is independent of its author and reader, on the one hand, and the existence of a reader, who can perform a new reading or an original interpretation to the text, on the other.

Ḥammouda maintains that the principles of the compromising solution that preserves for the text its existence and, at the same time, builds up bridges with the reader, were introduced by Jean Paul Sartre in one of his studies. His solution acknowledges the existence of things in the text, acknowledges the role of the reader in introducing other things, acknowledges the existence of fixed structures or defining to the meaning within the text, and the existence of other non-defining structures that the writer defines. Thus, the role of the reader becomes: Simultaneous creativity and revelation, as he reveals through his creativity, and creates through revelation.

The degree of creativity that Sartre speaks about means for the reader at the beginning of reading act that “everything waits for someone to achieve it, and that everything has already been actually achieved”.⁴⁶ This is how the reader can read and re-read the text several times fully realizing what has been achieved in the text. At the same time, that feeling is accompanied by an initial objecting feeling that everything is waits for its achievement in the course of reading act. That is the genius of the in-between text that rebels against its being hanging in the vacuum of the new criticism, and which refuses to give up its full authority to a reader of the ‘reception theory’ on the one hand, nor does it give up its aesthetic values, which are guaranteed for it by formal criticism to belong to the contexts of its production and reception, on the other hand⁴⁷.

4) The new text refuses the excess of the past traditional readings of the literary text. The new text refuses those readings because of their adoption of radical attitudes in interpretations of the text that also arouses in their new reader reactions that he is their initiator and engine.

5) The new text refuses total monism with its reader in a melting operation that abolishes its authority:

This is what the advocates of the reception theory adopted. Ḥammouda relies on a study by Walter Slatov, who distinguished between two categories of readers, each of whom deals with the text in a completely different way from the other category. While Slatov adopts the call for an active role by the reader in his interpretation of the text, he refuses the approach of most aestheticians and critics in their talk about the readers as if they were two types:

a) The individual singular unique private reader in all his whims, qualities, personal history, knowledge, needs, and tensions, and deals with the artistic work from a personal point of view only.

b) The general ideal reader with his objective and aesthetic responses.

Slatov maintains that most readers turn themselves during their reading into people who are in-between these two opposites. In other words, they put aside a lot of their circumstances and personal traits that help in limiting their identities to the ordinary affairs of life⁴⁸.

The idea of the ‘hanging text in vacuum’, which has to be read from within is not accepted or possible anymore in the twenty-first century, especially if we are talking about an Arabic alternative that is capable of dealing with the challenges that the Arab culture is facing.

Ḥammouda maintains that when we talk about the new text that stands in the middle-area between the aesthetic values and realistic contexts as a necessity of survival, we do not claim that we are discovering an Arab critical theory. A lot of people had previously dealt with the necessity of connecting between the text as an aesthetic entity and the political and ideological contexts throughout the twentieth century.

Ḥammouda sees that the problems that are raised by the talk about the nature of the promoted and popularized new text are not compared to the size of the problems that are related to the operations of reading, interpretation and evaluation. It is easy to call for a text that achieves this duality at the beginning, namely, during the operation of creativity and its end. However, the real problems start at the interpretive reading of that text, and the treatment of the endless questions that this double nature raises⁴⁹. Ḥammouda points out that what he wanted is a maneuver to introduce a critical hypothesis, which will not probably be completely pure, but can largely support the call for return to the text with its authority and intentionality. He identifies three points:

a) The attitude of the Marxist criticism according to what was written by July Rivkin and Michael Raya that literature, from the Marxist point of view, is not expression of general or eternal thoughts, as the new critics claimed, neither is it as the Russian formalists claimed, an independent world of aesthetic or formal mechanisms acting independently of their natural background in society and history. Literature is the first example of a social phenomenon, and on that basis, it cannot be studied independently of the social relations, economic forms and political realities of the time in which it was written.

b) The fear of a complete adoption of the central saying in Marxist criticism is based on our more important fear of treating the literary text as a document produced by the era, on the one hand, or evidence to its truth, and it can be re-imagined in its light, on the other hand.

Those who rejected Marxism and New Marxists agreed that that formula was the cheap one for Marxism, and our fear here is not different from the fear of the late 20th-century trends that tried to modify that first formula and beautify it by reducing the compulsion of the relationship between the social relations of production at the level of infrastructure, and literature as a cultural product at the level of meta-infrastructure, but unfortunate to the followers of cultural criticism, the successive political events since the early 1990s have become a kind of compulsory discharge of those trends from their meaning and abortion to them.

c) The third point is related to the Arab alternative for which Ḥammouda calls. Despite the principled rejection of Marxism politically and culturally, the way out of the labyrinth must pass through the Marxist Gate in its amended version, at least. This is a position imposed by the recent circumstances of the new international order in which a dominant culture threatens to swallow the national cultures.

The recent developments that are represented by the beginning of the American era, which aspires to impose its cultural and educational model on the world, imposes on us, we in the Arab world, to look at our culture as the last castle of resistance, because, it seems that the United States chose the area of the Arab world to impose its cultural and educational model at beginning of its becoming an Empire.

Therefore, talking about the text as hanging in vacuum, and interest in the aesthetic values of literature has become a kind of a mess or cultural luxury amidst that new awareness, which we are trying to participate in its development by culture and its role as a protective identity. The importance of the connection between literature and the political, economic and cultural circumstances that produce it is confirmed, on the one hand, and they define the reader’s responses, on the other. By that, we come closer to the Marxist commitment without necessarily adopting Marxism, whether in its traditional image or moderated one.

Based on this attitude, Ḥammouda defines the nature of the new text and its function. Above this middle area comes the importance of the guarantees that we have to be careful to define and emphasize the importance of our attachment to them. These are guarantees that protect the text from a complete transformation into a document of the era and a witness to it, in isolation from the aesthetic values of literature. They are the same guarantees that do not equally deny it the right its should exercise in communicating with the various powers that produce it and determine the reader’s reactions⁵⁰.

The New Criticism introduced some early controls. In his article “The Formalist Critic”, Cleanth Brooks emphasized the impossibility of complete separation between the text and its author, despite all objective theoretical claims that the act of literary creation is an operation of escape from the author’s self. Though Brooks speak about one aspect of the relationship, namely, the relationship between the text and its author, he expresses in that the attitude of the New Criticism in general, which is based on neglect of the relationship between the text during its creation and the various contexts that affect it.

Brooks admits that the formalist critic realizes that the text is produced by a human being and addresses other human beings. He also admits a certain intentionality saying that the critic might realize that the text did not happen accidentally. O, the text is entities whose authors intend to write them, driven by various motives, which can be a financial profit, self-expression, or even adoption of a case.

Brooks makes some concessions as a new critic but he keeps holding the principled position of the new criticism in studying the text as a literary text first and foremost. At the outset, Brooks recognizes the importance of the reader and his or her role in the act of interpretation without reaching the exaggerations of the followers of reception in the cancellation of the text. Re-creating the text in the reader’s mind does not mean that the reader writes the text or reads the poem that he or she writes, but it means acceptance of a degree of subjectivity, in principle, conflicts with the objectivity of the new criticism. ‘Subjectivity’ for him is two types:

1) Subjectivity that is linked to multiple whims and interests of the readers.

2) Subjectivity that tempts the reader to try to return to the personal life of the author, his biography, or even his potential psychological state during the creative act.

Brooks does not confiscate the reader’s right to return to those external contexts to study the author’s life or psychological state. This point is considered the essential difference between the new criticism and all the critical schools whose followers stand to the left of the ideological milieu where the text is a witness to the era, reflects it on the one and is taken as a clue, witness or proof to it, on the other.

However, for the New Critics, this point implies the necessity to separate between the biographical elements or the psychological state of the author and the text and his evaluation. Brooks reveals what his teacher hinted at with some shyness.⁵¹ His proposition embodies the whole attitude of New Criticism towards the literary text in its dangling between self-closure and openness on the external powers that it produced, and in its definition of the delicate balance between the external affiliations of the text and its internal aesthetic values. It actually summarizes the positive and negative aspects of the whole New Criticism.

Hammouda deals with the ‘positive value’ in Brooks’ quotes of “The Literary Work as a Document”, and “it is explicable in the light of the powers that produced it” and “it mirrors the past and affects the future” where it “is possible to consider it a power in itself”. All these statements end the isolation that was connected in the minds of many critics and for many years with the literary text from the perspective of the New Criticism. Brooks’ words, which represent the most of the new critics’ condescension in opening the text, are not considered a real change nor bring us closer to the Marxist “reflection theory” or the relationship between literature as a cultural product at the level of a meta-structure and the social relations of the production at the level of infrastructure. Such a perception is actually impossible, because the new criticism lacks political ideology and even rejects it.

Brooks’s words are nothing more than broad words that he said, and they were necessary to react to the repeated charge to the new criticism that it was dealing with the text as if it were hanging in a vacuum⁵². Ḥammouda believes that the fundamental difference with the new criticism is that the text we are calling for is not related to the different contexts of our Arab reality by accident, because that connection must be an act of choice of survival, which makes dealing with the aesthetics of the literary text a kind of mess in an era of already existing civilizational and cultural conflict.

Ḥammouda reaches a compromise by saying that while we are looking for an alternative Arab theory that can play a positive role in developing a protective identity for the Arab culture, we also hold to the need to link literature with the Arab cultural contexts, and this in itself confirms the point of fundamental difference with the new criticism, and

what we meant in our view that Arab reality goes beyond the aesthetics of new criticism, which for everyone has become a luxury that is incompatible with the new international changes, but at the same time, he agrees with Brooks that returning of the literary text to its cultural context is belittling and reducing to it⁵³.

Ḥammouda returns to the circle of questions about the balance that has to be achieved between the different affiliations of the text, and about which affiliation ultimately dominates its interpretation. He sees that if fear of the new critics of the dominance of the external affiliations of the literary text is not justified⁵⁴, our fear as Arabs is justified. The call to end the isolation of the literary text and to open it to the different contexts that are imposed by historical circumstances on the Arab reality makes us strive for:

- Non-return to the naivety of the reflection theory, and the superficiality of propaganda literature⁵⁵.

- Rejecting of the causes of the text or the forces that produced it, on the one hand, and holding the aesthetic values, on the other, preventing interpretation or analysis from becoming a vicious aesthetic exercise.

- Discarding the idea that the text exists in a vacuum, because a close reading of literary works will probably not restore the sense of the message, a sense that has characterized it as long as that criticism occurs in a vacuum, isolated from historical, philosophical and social contexts.⁵⁶

- The focus of the balance of critical treatment of the text is something that the critic gains with his delicate sense of his contemporary reality on the one hand, and with the fundamentals of good art on the other⁵⁷, and without that mature sense, we cannot achieve balance. Hammouda sees that there are readers who treated the text as historical documents and agreed with or refused the historical facts that the text embodied, and thus, the critical reading of the texts lost a lot, if those readings were critical at all. There are also those who read those texts aesthetically or from within, without much regard for the political context that produced them, and in that way, those texts were treated as if they were suspended in a vacuum. In both cases, the critical balance that we are talking about has disappeared, and between these two contradictory readings, the middle-area exists.

- Ensuring that a particular affiliation does not dominate the interpretation of the text. In his speech about the balance between the affiliations of the texts, Ḥammouda emphasizes his fundamental fear that a particular affiliation may dominate the interpretation of the text at the expense of the other, and if we had to emphasize the importance of the cultural and ideological contexts that produced the text in the age of challenges that Arab culture is facing, that new emphasis on the importance of non-literary contexts had to move us out of the aesthetic concerns of formal criticism, particularly the new criticism, which also impressed a wide range of the Arab intellectuals, including him.

- Attention to the new affiliations of the text should not make us forget the aesthetic nature of literature so that the text will not become a historical document or a propaganda piece⁵⁸.

The form clarifies the nature of the new text and its function as Hammouda sees it. He appointed out that the authority of the text lies in it because includes all the elements of beauty, vitality, continuity, and art; a text that achieves balance between different affinities

There is a prominent place for the intention of the text in the alternative critical project⁵⁹ that faces the mess of reading or interpretation that is based on the death of the author and the absence of the text. The importance of the text- intentionality in the following points:

- The ambition to move beyond the aesthetics of formal criticism and isolation of the literary text from the new criticism in order to reaffirm the authority of the text in the face of the international challenges that surround us on all sides.

- Achievement of the enlightenment that everyone raises as a motto to get out of the darkness of the reactionary life and underdevelopment. Ḥammouda points out the paradox in which some critics fall in: How can they advocate the importance of the text in achieving enlightenment, while at the same time, they are fascinated by critical doctrines that do not acknowledge the power of the text and its ability to mean something, or even acknowledge its very existence?

Ḥammouda chooses two of ʿAbd al-Qāher al-Jurjani’s linguistic units to illustrate his search for an alternative to the labyrinth of Western criticism:

1) A news text in which full agreement between intention and meaning is achieved and ultimately it reaches the reader:

Example: Zaydun dharaba Amran Yawm al-Jum’a Tadiban lahu/Zyad hit Amr on Friday in order to discipline him”.

This sentence is a simple linguistic unit, a short sentence, and though the context that ʿAbd al-Qāher al-Jurjani speaks about, is the context of the significance of the rules of syntax to Nazm (ordering), which is a context that is discussed in Ḥammouda’s book, al-Maraya al-Muqaʿara (Concave Mairrors), the text introduces a simplified pattern to the concept of ‘Intentionality’. The reader does not have to go back to the first speaker and ask him about his intention in the sentence because the meaning that reached the receiver is the meaning that the speaker intended. The intention here cannot be achieved except within the context of the linguistic text; not outside it because we do not feel that we need to go back and ask the speaker what he intended. The value of this linguistic sample depends on the accuracy of conveying the item, on the one hand, and is controlled by the rules of syntax and grammar that are determined by the grammatical parsing marks, on the other⁶⁰,

2) A literary Text that Allows Two Contradictory Readings:

This is a line of poetry by the poet Abu Tammam from his poem “Wasf al-Qalam/ Description of the Pen”: It says:

لُعاب الأفاعي القاتلات لعابه وأري الجنى اشتارته أيد عواسل.⁶¹

Ḥammouda says that this text requires a linguistic simplification that makes it closer to the twentieth century reader, who got accustomed to direct expression and actually, to ‘mental laziness’. The line of poetry bears two different readings, without changing the order of the words or parsing.

1) First reading, which Ḥammouda described as a ‘reading by the hurried receiver’. First, we read the line on the grounds that “Luʿab al-Afaʿi/ Saliva of Snakes” is a sentence that consists of a “Subject” and a “Predicate”, which appears at the end of the first hemistitch (half-line) (its lu’abuhu/its salīva). The second “half” of the line, starts with (Uri al-Jana), a second ‘predicate’ to the same (first) subject “Luʿab al-Afaʿi/Saliva of Snakes). This means that ‘Luʿab al-Afaʿi’ is compared to the “pen of the described person”. “‘Luʿab al-Afaʿi” is also compared to “honey” in the second hemistitch (half-line). This way of reading spoils the meaning of the line.

2) Second Reading, which Ḥammouda described as a reading in which the meaning is achieved. It is the reading that the poet intended and achieved in the line, and it cannot be achieved unless the meaning of the word “luʿabuhu/ its salīva” symbolizes “ink”, which the described person uses, and its predicate is “‘‘Luʿab al-Afaʿi”. In other words, when the pen of the described person writes dispraise poetry (hijaʾ), its “ink” becomes a snakes’ ‘poison’. “Uri al-jana/ honey” becomes a second predicate for the same previous subject. Thus, the poet describes the person that the poem is about in his poem. When he writes a “praise”, his ink is like “honey” and when he writes “dispraise, his ink is like a poison. In this way of reading, the meaning becomes clear and understood. Irrespective of what al-Jurjani says about the “intentionality” of the “author”, what concerns Ḥammouda is to emphasize that the importance of the intentionality of a specific meaning is achieved in this line of poetry⁶².

Ḥammouda sees that ʿAbd al-Qāher al-Jurjani connects “intentionality” with the speaker of the text, namely, the author, on the one hand, and connects between them and the meaning, on the other hand, and by that:

-He confirms very early in the history of critical thought that link between form and content so that form becomes the meaning and meaning becomes the form.

Ḥammouda here disagrees with al-Jurjani in his linking between the intent and the writer of the speech, and so, even if the poet does exist, we cannot ask him what he intended in this line. ʿAbd al-Qāher himself realizes that well because he concentrates in everything that he wrote about the ‘Circle of Conveyance’ on “the Purpose for which the speech was written” as if the poet here is the beginning point only, when the combination between the speech and its speaker takes place. And since we are only dealing with speech, the speech or the text becomes the only way through which we can determine the author’s intent. The speech is arranged in a specific order or way, and if this arrangement disappears, the meaning changes even if the words remain in their place and order.

Abu Tammam’s line introduces a unique sample about misreading of a meaning that he specifically intended, though the words and their order were not changed. ʿAbd al-Qāher emphasizes his critical attitude, which simples “refusal to consider the state of the hearer”⁶³, and this refusal to consider the words of the hearer is the safety-valve against the mess of post-modernist reading.

Ḥammouda determines that the Context that ʿAbd al-Qāher Jurjani speaks about is the Context of the Relationship between Word and Meaning, or the language and the objects that it describes. Hammouda had previously dealt with it in his work al-Maraya al-Muqaʿara The Concave Mirrors, but he repeats here ‘reading between the lines’ themselves in the context of ‘intentionality’. He discusses his focal statement of “Refusing to consider the state of the hearer/ listener” or the ‘receiver’, according to the term of modern criticism, which is the statement whose invalidity he proved by depending on full ‘wrong reading’ of the intended meaning in Abu Tammam’s line of poetry. The issue as ʿAbd al-Qāher defines it is not an issue of ‘meaning’ that the author or the text intended; it is first and foremost an issue of order and structure of meaning⁶⁴. Al-Jurjani’s words are a critical and linguistic precedent, not less clear or definite than a lot of Western things that we were fascinated with in the modern age in the field of the inseparable link between content and form, between a meaning that the author intends and a form, structure and order, which that meaning imposes.

Ḥammouda points out the concept of ʿAbd al-Qāher al-Jurjani about the Connection Circuit, where there is a message that is concerned or intended or even intended by its sender, and how the message imposes a certain specific form, and order⁶⁵.

Ḥammouda sees that the Russian structural Formalists did not stop at the point of intentionality a lot because they took the issue of the meaning of the text as a for granted issue and then they went beyond it to study the manifestations and mechanisms of its realization.

The New Critics who were pioneers in coining the term of “Myth of Intentionality” established the legitimacy of studying the text from within on the basis of neglecting the what the author intended. However, denial of the author’s intentionality did not mean for them ‘denial of the text intentionality’.

He adds that there is no contradiction between recognition of the intentionality of the text and denial of the author’s intentionality, because showing interest in the author’s intentionality in the analysis of the text means opening the text onto external contexts that are incompatible with the closure and analysis of the text from its inside. Besides, recognition of the text intentionality by accepting the intention that is achieved in the text itself rather than the intention that haunted the author’s imagination, confirms the study of the text from within, and isolating it from external contexts, first the poet’s biography and his personal experience and the different powers that affected his production of the text. He draws on Brooks and his definition of ‘intentionality’⁶⁶.

Ḥammouda introduces four views about of intentionality:

1) Intentionality is one of the threads that can lead us outside the labyrinth.

2) The text that loses its intentionality gives space to the mess of readings.

Therefore, it is important to use the term the “Author’s Intentionality”, which has become one of the main tools of criticism in the second half of the twentieth century, because the moment that the text loses its intentionality, the door opens wide to the mess of readings and endless interpretations. Ḥammouda sees that the problem started in the second half of the twentieth century with the theory of reception and the strategy of deconstruction which hit the aspect of intentionality in its two levels, the level of the author and the level of the text.

3) There is no disagreement as to the impossibility of defining the author’s intention, but in imagining an alternative Arabic critical formula, Ḥammouda can only reject intentionality in this specific sense, and to agree with the views of some critics, first and foremost Hirsch⁶⁷, about the unilateralism of the meaning to which the determination of the author’s intention can lead.

If there is a definition to the author’s intention, the possibilities of plurality of meaning, which are considered to be the basis of the richness of the literary text and its ability to connote more than one meaning, in comparison with the denotation of the meaning in the light of the author’s intention.

Since we cannot return to the author’s intention, even if it exists, nothing remains for us except the linguistic analysis of the text, and the linguistic analysis is the key that opens the door to plurality of interpretation.

4) Ḥammouda asserts that intentionality is the focus of disciplined interpretations, and that discipline is not meant to establish a single meaning of the text, since that meaning is what the author intended because that reading is a the reading of transparency, and linguistic position that characterizes news texts that introduce scientific facts, does not accept explanation or interpretation.

Discipline here means interpreting the literary text in the light of a possible intention that is achieved in the text, which opens the door in front of healthy plurality of interpretation, provided that the authority of the text and its intentionality can bear plurality.

In Ḥammouda’s view, the Western referrals specifically represent a strong rebellion against those who call for a horizon of reader’s expectations and the strategy of interpretation for the group as controls, and instead of trying to read the text in the light of a horizon of expectation that the reader brings to the text and projects it, and then tries to justify it with evidence from the text, it would be more useful to read the text in the light of intentionality that expressed.

No matter how different the readings and interpretations of the single text may be in this case, they cannot provide a reading quite the opposite to what the text intended, and when that happens, the probability is one of two: either the author does not know how to use his tools, primarily language, or the necklace of criticism is completely broken. And the second possibility is what the theory of receiving and the strategy of deconstruction embodied⁶⁸.

Al-Jurjani here is speaking about a small linguistic unit that is smaller than a large unit, which is the ‘text’. He sees that the objective reader can apply what he sees about the word, and the sentence on the larger unit, which is the text as a whole, and what al-Jurjani refused in the fifth century of Hegira, applies in its literality to the critical scene today. al-Jurjani’s talk about “excessiveness” and “weirdness” and “increase of aspects” does not differ from contemporary vocabulary of “exaggeration”, “ambiguity”, and “plurality of indications”. Ḥamouda deals with the term “showing off”, which is tendency to ‘exhibitionism’ and points out that this is what Barthes was doing, and when Ḥassan and Derrida were doing in their intention to emphasize the creativity of the critical text – to draw the attention to the critical text far from the literary texts that they dealt with. Driven by these showbiz tendencies, modern and post-modernist critics intended to be ambiguous and evasive. Ḥamouda does not find difficulty in translating the term “tamwih/ camouflage” in al-Jurjani’s text into the term “indeterminacy”, which has become a trademark to postmodernist criticism. See: Ḥammouda, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (2003), p. 320-321.

According to Ḥammouda, ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjani presented the fundamental interpretation controls, primarily carrying the linguistic text and literary text of the different interpretation, as if he were predicting the chaos of reading in the twentieth century, highlighting a very precise and specific picture of the critical landscape in the twentieth century⁶⁹.

Ḥammouda points out that al-Jurjani was sharp in his rejection of the anarchy of interpretation, violent in his judgment on those who did not know the controls of interpretation, and, therefore, he concludes his words with a sharp verdict in his revolt against arbitrary interpretation⁷⁰. Ḥammouda sees that his final rejection of the chaos of reception there is a confirmation of the authority of the text.

The form clarifies the form of ‘intentionality’ from Hammouda’s point of view. It is one of the threads that can lead us out of the labyrinth, an intentionality that refuses the confusion of readings, and interprets the literary text in the light of a probable intention that is achieved in the text, from which the possibilities of multiple interpretations and enlightenment emanate.

Since Ḥammouda tried to offer an authentic Arab alternative, ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjani’s theory of “Nazm/System/Order” was the best thing to hold on in order to achieve his purpose. He pointed out to it in more than one place in al-Maraya al-Muqaʿara/ Concave Mirrors. For example: “Nazm constitutes a component in a linguistic theory, whose characteristics are not less clear than any modern linguistic theory.

In fact, the concept of “Nazm/System/Order” constitutes the backbone of an

Arabic linguistic theory that is no less integrated - in terms of consistency at least than any modern linguistic theory, including the de Saussure’s Theory, which was adopted by linguistics as a starting point for infinite linguistic and critical ramifications”⁷¹

In another place, he said: “After all we’ve given, I don’t think we need to reiterate that from the third century to the end of the fifth century, the Arab mind developed a linguistic theory that is not very different in its components from the vocabulary and details of modern linguistics, which de Saussure founded at the beginning of the twentieth century⁷².

It is possible to summarize the most important points of Nazm Theory in the following points:

· The words are the pots of meanings and their role is to serve them.

· The mind controls the meeting of the meanings of words, and they are organized as required.

· In Nazm, it is necessary to take in consideration the meanings of syntax, which means that the order of the words should be according to the syntactic rules.

· It is not important to know the terms of syntax but it is important to know the meaning of those terms.

· Metaphor and other forms of Majaz (figures of speech) are requirements of Nazm.

· Speech has no system or order, until the words are connected to each another, and connection is done by grammatical methods and tools.

· Nazm does not mean joining words randomly; it is necessary to track the effects of meaning and consider the parts together.

· Nazm is nothing but arranging the words according to Syntax.

In addition to the above, Ḥammouda talked about six additional elements in The Concave Mirrors in his pursuit to prove the existence of an Arab critical theory.

These elements are:

· Literature between imitation and creativity

· Creativity in language

· Honesty and Lying

· Plagiarism (or Intertextuality).

· Talent or Imitation

· Form and Content

There is no doubt that what Ḥammouda initiated opened for the Arab criticism a vast window of civilization that does not deal with blind prejudice with what is ‘Arab’ and ignores anything that is below it. Ḥammouda was aware of the seriousness of the situation but he did not stand against modernization. On the contrary, he saw it as our destiny which is imposed by the imperative historical circumstances of the Arab civilization, but being modernized is something and turning that into a Western modernism is something else.

It must be noted that death did not help Ḥammouda in accomplishing the promise of building an Arab integrated model, but his proposal shows a sincere intention to theorize a critical Arab modernist alternative, which has many features, the most important of which is to revive the critical heritage and reveal its critical categories that are loaded with the potential or producing its concepts and tools of creation, which can be applied to classical and modern poetry, and making it meet, to some extent, the critical studies that the West introduced⁷³.

Ḥammouda emphasized the inevitability of fusion with the culture of the Other and not to take an antagonistic attitude to modernization or modernity in themselves, but without letting that fusion drive us into the lap of the Western modernism in total ignorance of its fix on the one hand, and the particularity of the Arab culture, on the other.

This leads us to conclude that he was able to deal with the terms of Western criticism and its theories in a daring spirit with its positive and negative aspects. When he studied the Arab criticism, he immunized himself and his culture, and consequently, his critical perspectives regarding the attitude of alienation and subordination, indicating strong confidence in the critical efforts that the Arabs introduced, without introversion or enclosure.

Perhaps the most important reason for the success of the main features of the alternative model is that ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Ḥammouda is the most moderate voice, and the initiator of the most prominent alternative model of this stage⁷⁴. His critical trilogy was an important link that can be added to the efforts of his predecessors’ books: Dr. Muḥammad Mandoor, al-Naqd al-Manhaji inda al-ʿArab; ʿIzz al-Din al-Amin, al-Usus al-JamʿAlī ya fi al-Naqd al-ʿArabi; Mustafa Naṣef, al-Naqd al-ʿArabi Nahwa Naẓariya Thaniya, and the attempts of: Zaki Najib Mahmoud and Shukri Ayyad un their attempts to establish an Arab Stylistics science, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dasouqi’s attempt to establish Arab Aesthetics science; Jaber Asfour and Olfat al-Rubi writings. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Ḥammouda, however, was the only one who came from the field of English and American studies, and his close knowledge of the European and American critical movements since Aristotle to the present day has enabled him to look at the Arab critical heritage from a new cultural intellectual perspective, which gives his books a taste that is distinct from Arab scholars⁷⁵.

Some considered Ḥammouda to have delivered a severe blow to the modernist thought and trend, because he revealed the reality of modernity. ʿAbd al-Quddous Abu Ṣaleḥ pointed out that Ḥammouda wrestled with modernists on their land and in their courtyard, even though he was the son of Western culture, from where he derived his knowledge, by virtue of his specialization as a professor of English literature, and consequently, they were not able to describe him as “uneducated” or “ignorant”⁷⁶.

Hussein Naṣsar agrees with ʿAbd al-Qaddus on that, as he saw that Ḥammouda, despite his specialty in English literature, was more familiar with Arabic literature than many specialists, and his knowledge is like that of English literature. He learned English criticism, learned about its doctrines and schools, and followed its influence on Arabic literature, which is an advantage that few people had. This education enabled him to confront the modernists, and thus, he became one of the most important ones who stood by the Arab heritage and its authenticity⁷⁷.

Dr. Khaled Fahmy considers Ḥammouda’s project that is represented in his three critical books to be the most important intellectual and cultural achievement of all time in the past 10 years, and judgment of his project should be taken as the true son of the American culture, prior to his transition to the Arab heritage project.

“The poles of modernism succeeded in silencing lots of those who disagreed with them by accusing them of ‘ignorance’ and inability to absorb the new, and isolation from what is happening in the horizons of the contemporary European culture in general, and the horizons of the critical thought in particular. These are charges and competitions, with which the poles of modernism waved against everyone who thought about playing on the string of cultural specificity, and cognitive bias to the human cultures, but how can they silence Ḥamouda and the poles of modernism, headed by Jaber ʿAsfour, who know that Ḥammouda was a graduate from Cornel University and an expert in one of the European foreign languages, and an analyst of its literature for more than a decade!”. See: Zarfawi, ʿOmar (2015), Majallat al-Lugha.

Dr. Ahmed Zalat, however, referred to another achievement of Ḥammouda’s achievements, which is his pride in Arab literary heritage and his demand that this heritage should be the starting point for Arabic literature to the establishment of an Arab critical theory that harmonizes between the inherited old, and the useful new⁷⁸.

Muḥammad Iqbal al-ʿArawiy considered Ḥammouda as an exception in the arena of literary criticism, because he digested the Arab critical heritage, absorbed the contemporary critical methods, and that rarely happens, and his project aimed to highlight the disadvantages but did not aim to restore any construction. Certain parties sought to draw him into accusations and charges so that he will be thought to be a rejecter of the new culture that was coming from the West, which was inappropriate because he advocated the use of the critical heritage and focused on authenticity. He did not deal with the Western culture as a pupil with his teacher, but rather dealt with it as a peer-to-peer⁷⁹.

Omar Zarfawi felt that Ḥammouda’s return to the critical arena confounded the modernist critical landscape in the Arab world and shook the ground under the feet of its pioneers. Most of the criticism that was directed to Ḥammouda and his critical achievements in the writings of critics and scholars was more akin to reactions that do not parallel the act itself. ʿAlī Harb’s comment can be seen as true about him: “The one whom we criticize may break through us with his words, especially if our criticism does not match his words in terms of strength and brightness”.

He adds that we cannot deny that Ḥammouda’s actions have taken their toll and have resonated in the critical academic communities. After these expressions that are charged with meanings of exclusion and symbolic violence, we see ʿAbd al Karim Darwish say in a subsequent study: “This book has rich values with its clever, point-rich explanations, and criticism, and ironic irony”⁸⁰.

Walid Qassab points out that Ḥammouda’s distinction is due to what he wrote, especially in the al-Maraya al-Muhaddaba/ the Concave Mirrors, citing his statement that “the architects are offering old wines in new bottles.” The credit goes to him for dropping the structural project and its atheistic background.

Muḥammad Ṣaleḥ al-Shantiy reveals another aspect of Ḥammouda’s achievements, which is his critique of the critical doctrine that gave rise to modernity, which modernists called the term “Postmodernism,” which completely eliminates the idea of religious, value or moral constants, because everything they have is relative and variable, and they see concepts like the civilizational self, identity, and causality are things that have no place in the world od postmodernism.

Hassan bin Fahd al-Huwaymel pointed out that Ḥammouda had dug four years in the worlds of knowledge in the people’s language, and through the controversy of its scientists, which was sufficient period to explore roots, to establish questions, to edit texts issues. When he chose confrontation, he attacked the structure of the modernists in its foundations, and he was attacked by the Arab modernists for what he had caused to them in uncovering the corruption of their modernity.

Abd alʿAzīz Ḥammouda played a clear role in the Arab literary and critical trajectory. In his critical trilogy, he sought to respect the components of the Arab life and to record its aspirations and visions away from dependency. His knowledge of the other was also an entrance for benefit. He succeeded in identifying the foundations of the alternative theory, and his proposal was popular as his proposal was introduced by an academic with a long history of studies, in the fields of English literature, graduate studies and humanities at Arab universities.

Ḥammouda’s books carry successful contents as they discuss important issues that researchers and critics read and started to exchange. Some of the factors of success are:

1) His three books were published in one of the most popular and widely published Arabic periodicals (The World of Knowledge). Most of the people of this board are known to be secular and modernist, headed by Dr. Fouad Zakaria⁸¹

· Al-Wattar, Aḥmad Adnan Hamdi (2007). Al-Khitab al-Naqdi inda Hamoudeh.Dirasa fi al-Manhaj wa al-Naẓariya. Dissertation. See: nasershehan.blogspot.co.il/p/blog-page_6.html

· Suleiman, Mabroukeh Afḥima (12/12/2007). ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Ḥammouda wa al-Hawiya al-Waqiya: Dirasa Naqdiya li Thulathiyatihi al-Naqdiya. Faculty of Humanities. University of Serta. Dissertation.

See: su.edu.ly/hom/system_su/master_student/coderesult.ph

· Masabḥiyyeh, Nassira (26/6/2010). Abd al-Aziz Hamoudeh: al-Turath bayn al-Taghrib wa al-Ta’sil al-Markaz al-Jami’I bi Souk Ahras. See: alalamy.hooxs.com/t 18959-topic.

· Ben Arabi, Mabruk; Ben Abd al-Sadiq Mohammad; Mohammad, Shasha; Ben al-Suki, Mohammad; al-Makki, Eliwa (2010-2011). “al-Khitab al-Naqdi inda Hamoudeh: al-Maraya al-Muhaddaba wa al-Maraya al-Muqaʿara Namuzajan”. A Study by a group of researchers. Supervised by: Waqqad Mas’ud. See Blog: Zad al-Naqid by Masud Waqqad at: menbar39.blogspot.co.il/p/20102011-u.html.

· ʿUlaishat, Khayriyeh (24/4/2012). Naqd al-Tatbiqat al-Arabiya li al-Manahij al-Naqdiya al-Arabiya inda Abdelaziz Ḥamouda. Al-Mu’atter: Rahmani Qaddur. University of Mohammad Boudiaf al-Masila bi al-Bawaba al-Wataniya li al-Ishar an al-Turuhat.

· Gharbiy, Asmahan (2012/2013). Naqd al-Ḥadatha wa Ma Baʿd al-Ḥadatha. University of Qasidi Mirbah wa Raql. Faculty of Humanities and Languages. Department of Arabic Language and Literature. Algeria. b u.univ-ouargla.dz/master/pdf/garbi-ismahane. pdf?idmemoire=u285

· Hamdi, Slaiḥa (2013). Al-Khuruj min al-Tīh li ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz: Dirasa fi Badaʾil al-Naqd al-Mu’asser. See: http://virtue/campus.univ-msila.dz/Faculte-ll/images/Flldoc/documents/bible/master2013.pdf

· Ḥamrit, Rima (2014/2015). al- Ḥadatha wa ma Baʿd al- ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz: Dirasa fi Badaʾil al-Naqd al-Muʿasser. See: al-Hadatha. Qiraʾah fi Kitab al-Maraya al-Muhaddaba li ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz: Dirasa fi Badaʾil al-Naqd al-Mu’asser. See: Ḥammouda. A partial part of the requirements for the M.A. Degree. Faculty of Humanities and Languages. Department of Arabic Language and Literature. Algeria. Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. University of Mohammad Bu Dhyaf al-Masila.

Khazazneh, Aḥmad (2014/2015). Dirasat Mustalah al-Nass fi Kitab al-Khuruj min al-Tīh (Dirasa Fi Sultat al-Nass)li al-Ductor ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. Supervised by: Dr. Bal-Qassem Malkiyyeh. University of Qassdy Mirbah wa Raqla. Faculty of Humanities and Languages. Department of Arabic Language and Literature. Algeria.

2) Dr. Ḥammouda was awarded the State Recognition Award by the Supreme Council for Culture, which is chaired by Jaber Asfour, the strongest of Ḥammouda’s opponents⁸². In addition, he received the Mecca Poet in Criticism Award in 2000 from the Yemani Cultural Foundation for his book al-Maraya al-Muhaddaba/ The Concave Mirrors, in addition to winning the Mḥammad Hassan Al-Fiqqi Award from Saudi Arabia, shared with D. Hassan Ben Fahd 2006⁸³.

3) His books are taught in universities and colleges in Arabic language courses⁸⁴. His books fill a gap in the Arab Library and fill a gap needed by students and researchers in a field that people do not frequently deal with.

4) Several academic studies have touched on his critical trilogy, and his critical project has been discussed in several university studies⁸⁵.

5) In one of his articles, “The Death of Modernity,” Jaber ʿAsfour referred to what Ḥammouda introduced: “I have come to be careful of the use of the term Modernity. What Ḥammouda has introduced to the Arab culture, though he was the son of Western culture, is considered a gift of gold in the rhetorical heritage.”⁸⁶

Dr. Abd al-Qāder Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Qāder Rubaʿi also presented a study titled: “Qira’ah fi Lughat al-Khilaf al-Naqdi al-Muasser Howl al-Hadatha wa ma Baʿd al-Ḥadatha Unmothaj ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Ḥammouda wa Wahab Rumiyyeh” at Conference of Traditions of Disagreement in the Arab Culture, which was held at the University of Kuwait in 2002. See: File of Autobiography of Dr. ʿAbd al-Qāder Rubʿi from International University of Islamic Sciences. At: https://www.wise.edu.jo/sites/default/Files/rba3e.docx.

6) His project opened the door to many critical professors and they began to enter the battle that Ḥammouda had fought with intelligence and wisdom. Among these, for example are: Dr. Abraham Awad in his book, al-Maraya al-Mushawaha: Dirasa Hawl al-Shiʿr al-ʿArabi fi Dhuʾ al-Itijahat al-Naqdiya al-Jadida.⁸⁷

7) Discussion of his critical project at several symposiums and conferences, including the “Conference on Translation and Intercultural Interaction” in Cairo, organized by the Higher Council for Culture⁸⁸ and Association of World Islamic Literature.

At this conference, he was honored as a thinker who introduced a great service, and a genuine critical project in a difficult time. They also called for the completion of the critical project that was launched in his trilogy, and stressed the importance of translating his critical project into foreign languages⁸⁹. The Literary Studies Division of the Egyptian Writers’ Union also organized a symposium on the Ḥammouda monetary trilogy⁹⁰ and in several international literary forums⁹¹.

8) Its prevalence and its large readership. A certain percentage of them were the result of the major debates that took place on the pages of Literature News newspaper with the critic Jaber ʿAsfour and other authors, and ʿAsfour continued writing even after his death in Majallat al-ʿAraby after Ḥammouda’s death⁹². In addition to that, we can add that violent article written by Yumna al-Eid that was published in Majallat al-Ḥayat.

Hammouda’s articles in newspapers and magazines supported the basic features of his theory:

Criticism has occupied a wide range of Ḥammouda‘s interests. He had a leading position and a distinctive role in the literary arena, and the viewer of the articles that he left sees multiple images and various colors⁹³. Ḥammouda published several works that I thought I would include in the supplement because they are too many. The tracker of his essay writing can conclude:

1) Ḥammouda is a first-class essayist whose essays contain intellectual richness, extensive knowledge, and cultural familiarity.

2) His creative writings are diverse and cover several fields.

3) He is interested in the American theater in particular.

4) His contribution to creating objective awareness in art, criticism, politics and sociology.

5) His quest to pass on his experiences to his nation and his Arabic language.

6) His establishment of theoretical rules on which critic’s practice is based, because he considers the critic in one of his definitions to be a messenger who comes from the field of aesthetics to the field of literature.

7) His career from the 1960s to the post-1990s reflects experience in ideas, emotions, books and life, and highlights his intellectual and critical development.

8) His essays constitute an addition and enrichment. Therefore, it is important to collect them in one or more books in a chronological order.

I think that it is important to study Essay Literature in Ḥammouda’s writings. This is an aspect that still needs to be studied and researched, because it has not received sufficient attention from the qualified and competent people. His articles reflect the stages of his development, and what he was when writing the trilogy is the ultimate outcome of everything that he was.

There is no doubt that his writings are considered a record of his literary and intellectual life, and by knowing them, we know the stages of his life, we realize his interests and the development of his thoughts; we get to know his personality, and guess its features in its different stages. A number of his articles were used in this study to show signs of his critical theory.

Criticism of criticism is defined as a field of study that is based on the assessment of criticism according to scientific criteria, dealing with its theoretical and methodological problems, and finding solutions to and interpretations to them without being satisfied with their description or recording them as they appear in reality.

It is not a fixed or familiar field, but a well-developed field of writing in which writing is still limited⁹⁴. According to al-Daghmoumi, criticism of criticism is an act of investigation and testing, a reorganization of the critical material, far from any claim of practicing literary criticism. It is actually conducts another critique, whose connection to literature is indirect⁹⁵.

The study is falls within the frame of a criticism of criticism that started to move cognitively in directions that lead to the establishment of methods, and it has gained an academic character, or a debating nature that starts from doctrinal convictions that judge criticism through a critical model, or has affiliation with a formative method and analyses a critical practice in the light of another critical model, or has a reading trait whose purpose is to looking for a certain system in the reading text, or wants to be, a qualitative epistemology that suggests to the criticism of criticism a testable entrance.

All of this has promoted the concept of criticism of criticism (“critique de critique”) and raised it to the degree of cognitive entity among the entities of the human sciences. Thus, criticism of criticism has become a discourse of inquiry that aims at deconstruct the critical text in order to return it to its constituent elements, and to demonstrate the process through which it was established in a serious attempt to determine the mindset that produced it.

Ḥammouda’s critical project represents an achievement in its contents and new method. At the critical level criticism of criticism (critique de critique), it introduces scientific criteria that enable the researcher to identify the theoretical and methodological problems, and to find solutions and interpret them without being satisfied with describing or recording them as they appear in the practical reality.

According to Nabil Muḥammad al-Ṣaghir, the explicit and implicit motive on which Ḥammouda’s “discourse of criticism of criticism” and his critical alternative were based, was a religious nationalist motive.

According to Ḥammouda, the national tendency is attributed to the Arab setback (1967 Naksa War), which pushed the Arabs to adopt the Western thought and lifestyle, but his view about the Arab intellectual, the thinker and individual after the 1967 War setback is unilateral, and he imagined that he desired the Western modernity and that pushed him into at the arms of the West.

al-Saghir considers this view inadequate, and he sees that, after the military defeat, rather than intellectual defeat, several projects emerged whose identity was shaped by the Arab heritage, its criticism, literature, and philosophy.

Ḥammouda’s religious side, however, was employed when he dealt with the concepts of structure, deconstruction, and the self. He argued that the structure abolishes the Self in its sets, and deconstruction places the person in a nihilistic position, and he sees in this attitude a lot of exaggeration, and a reaction to Hammouda’s influence by his tendency to the criticism of the criticism of cognitive bias by Ṭaha Jaber ʿAlawaniy and ʿAbd al-Wahab al-Masiriy.

To sum up, Hamaouda succeeded in his discourse to dig up and dive into various texts from different references and backgrounds, to reconstruct them, and to establish a major dynamic movement in the studied critical texts⁹⁶. In his tracing of the course of criticism, Ḥammouda moves from formalist theories to the structural theory, and to the post-structural and the post post-modernist theories. The second level of his criticism, however, is represented in his reading of the Arabic critical texts, which is included in the criticism of applied criticism⁹⁷.

The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

Ghneem, N. (2022). ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Ḥammouda’s Modernist Critical Theory as a Combination of Classical Arab Heritage and Modernist Western Culture. Advances in Literary Study, 10, 234- 273. https://doi.org/10.4236/als.2022.102019