Zeyad El Nabolsy
Biographic Data
| ID | 207607 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Zeyad El Nabolsy |
| GIVEN NAMES | Zeyad |
| FAMILY NAME | El Nabolsy |
| SIGNATURE | EL NABOLSY Z |
| AFFILIATIONS | York University |
| ORCID | 0009-0009-7932-4510 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 6 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
African Marxism: The power and limits of polemic 1
Adam Mayer’s book is concerned with analyzing the history of African Marxism, specifically, the history of African Marxism in power. Mayer devotes Chapter 1 to arguing that the history of African M
Can Metaphysical Beliefs Explain the History of Racism? A Response to Shuchen Xiang’s Chinese Cosmopolitanism
Shuchen Xiang’s thesis in Chinese Cosmopolitanism is that racism is primarily a Western phenomenon and that racism never developed in China. According to Xiang, Chinese metaphysics, centered on what she calls processual holism, places an obstacle in the path of racism. Xiang also claims that the rise of racism in the West is to be explained by appealing to the dominance of essentialist substance metaphysics. Xiang holds that substance metaphysics…
James Africanus Beale Horton’s philosophy of history: Progress, race, and the fate of Africa
Many Victorian philosophers of history attempted to explain what they took to be the evident divergence in the level of civilizational achievement that was attained by different peoples. One prominent paradigm for explaining this divergence was the biological-racialist paradigm. According to this paradigm, endorsed by the likes of Robert Knox, Samuel George Morton, Carl Vogt, and James Hunt, what explains divergence is racial difference. In this …
Colonialism as a De-Civilizing Mission: Amílcar Cabral and Ghassan Kanafani on the Place of Colonialism in the Philosophy of History
This paper provides a comparative study of Amílcar Cabral and Ghassan Kanafani. It defends the thesis that both figures were responding to similar historical junctures. Moreover, it shows that they both converged in terms of how they theorized colonialism. For both thinkers, colonialism can be described as an attempt to halt the history of the colonized. A sustained analysis is provided of what the term ‘history’ means in this context. It is argu…
The Concept of “Western Civilization” in Black Marxism: Cedric Robinson as an Ethnophilosopher
Reconciling Hegel with the Dialectic: On Islam and the Fate of Muslims in Hegel's Philosophy of History
The absence of Islam from recent scholarship on Hegel's account of world religions is puzzling. In the first part of the article, we argue that Hegel's neglect of Islam in his systematic account of religious phenomena is not accidental and that he did not think of Islam as a determinate religion. Its size and believers aside, we suggest that it is not possible to assign any determinacy to Islam as a world-historical phenomenon under Hegel's rubri…
Western Marxism: How it Was Born, How it Died, and How it Can be Reborn, written by Domenico Losurdo
Standpoint epistemology, internal critique, and the characterization of Equiano as an Enlightenment thinker
This article shows that Olaudah Equiano’s struggles to escape from the condition of enslavement allowed him to attain a privileged epistemic position in relation to certain domains of knowledge. Equiano utilized this privileged epistemic vantage point to launch an internal critique of some strands of Enlightenment philosophy. In the process of launching this internal critique, Equiano also undermined a claim to ownership that was implicitly made …
Edward Said and Philosophy
This article brings to the forefront Timothy Brennan’s emphasis on Edward Said’s engagement with philosophy. An attempt is made to reconstruct some of Brennan’s claims about Said’s views on the relationship between mental representations and the external world. It is shown that Said rejected naïve or direct realism in favor of representationalism. It is also argued that, despite being seen as a post-modern thinker, Said subscribed to a version of…
The African novel and the question of communalism in African philosophy
Lee for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.Notes1 Jackson uses the term "philosophical thinking" explicitly in her book, see Jackson, The African Novel of Ideas, 185. She also uses the term "philosophical practice", see Jackson, The African Novel of Ideas, 20. Jackson appears to be using these two terms as synonyms, and I will be following her in this practice.2 Jackson, The African Novel of Ideas, 22.3 Ibid., 116.4 Ibid, …
On the Differences between the Classical and the “Western” Marxist Conceptions of Science
This essay aims to provide an account of the differences between what I call the "Classical Marxist" conception of science which was adhered to by Marx and Engels and further developed by Boris Hessen and others on the one hand, and the conception of science which characterizes "Western Marxism" as it developed through the work of the theorists of the Frankfurt School on the other hand. I argue that Western Marxists such as Herbert Marcuse and Ma…
Nasserism and the impossibility of innocence
Lotus and the Self-Representation of Afro-Asian Writers as the Vanguard of Modernity
This essay has two aims. The first is to show that the editors of Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings and some of the writers who contributed to it (especially Ismail Ezzedine, Anar Rzayev, Tawfick Zeyad, Abdel Aziz El-Ahwani, Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Alex La Guma, Adonis, Salah Dehni, Luis Bernardo Honwana, Ghassan Kanafany, and Tozaburo Ono) attempted to reconceive of nationalism in a way that would make international solidarity constitutive of the new national…
Using the Concepts of Hermeneutical Injustice and Ideology to Explain the Stability of Ancient Egypt During the Middle Kingdom
This paper argues that the relative stability of ancient Egyptian society during the Middle Kingdom (c.2055 - 1650 BC) can in part be explained by referring to the phenomenon of hermeneutical injustice, i.e., the manner in which imbalances in socio-economic power are causally correlated with imbalances in the conceptual scheme through which people attempt to interpret their social reality and assert their interests in light of their interpretatio…
Amílcar Cabral's modernist philosophy of culture and cultural liberation
This article argues that Amílcar Cabral adhered to some of the essential elements of the philosophical discourse of modernity. This commitment led Cabral to endorse an anti-essentialist, historicized conception of culture, and this in turn led him to conceive of cultural liberation in terms of cultural autonomy as opposed to the preservation of indigenous culture(s). Cabral’s attitude towards languages is employed as a case study in order to demo…
Aristotle on Natural Slavery: An Analysis Using the Marxist Concept of Ideology
Aristotle's account of natural slavery as presented in his Politics is often treated by historians of philosophy as an account that can be analyzed purely internally in terms of its argumentative structure without referring to social factors. Against this view, Aristotle's account of natural slavery is seen to be ideological according to at least one variant of the Marxist concept of ideology, and cannot be understood without reference to Aristot…
Aristotle on Natural Slavery: An Analysis Using the Marxist Concept of Ideology
Aristotle's account of natural slavery as presented in his Politics is often treated by historians of philosophy as an account that can be analyzed purely internally in terms of its argumentative structure without referring to social factors. Against this view, Aristotle's account of natural slavery is seen to be ideological according to at least one variant of the Marxist concept of ideology, and cannot be understood without reference to Aristot…
Amílcar Cabral's modernist philosophy of culture and cultural liberation
This article argues that Amílcar Cabral adhered to some of the essential elements of the philosophical discourse of modernity. This commitment led Cabral to endorse an anti-essentialist, historicized conception of culture, and this in turn led him to conceive of cultural liberation in terms of cultural autonomy as opposed to the preservation of indigenous culture(s). Cabral’s attitude towards languages is employed as a case study in order to demo…
Using the Concepts of Hermeneutical Injustice and Ideology to Explain the Stability of Ancient Egypt During the Middle Kingdom
This paper argues that the relative stability of ancient Egyptian society during the Middle Kingdom (c.2055 - 1650 BC) can in part be explained by referring to the phenomenon of hermeneutical injustice, i.e., the manner in which imbalances in socio-economic power are causally correlated with imbalances in the conceptual scheme through which people attempt to interpret their social reality and assert their interests in light of their interpretatio…
Aristotle on Natural Slavery: An Analysis Using the Marxist Concept of Ideology
Aristotle's account of natural slavery as presented in his Politics is often treated by historians of philosophy as an account that can be analyzed purely internally in terms of its argumentative structure without referring to social factors. Against this view, Aristotle's account of natural slavery is seen to be ideological according to at least one variant of the Marxist concept of ideology, and cannot be understood without reference to Aristot…
Using the Concepts of Hermeneutical Injustice and Ideology to Explain the Stability of Ancient Egypt During the Middle Kingdom
This paper argues that the relative stability of ancient Egyptian society during the Middle Kingdom (c.2055 - 1650 BC) can in part be explained by referring to the phenomenon of hermeneutical injustice, i.e., the manner in which imbalances in socio-economic power are causally correlated with imbalances in the conceptual scheme through which people attempt to interpret their social reality and assert their interests in light of their interpretatio…
Amílcar Cabral's modernist philosophy of culture and cultural liberation
This article argues that Amílcar Cabral adhered to some of the essential elements of the philosophical discourse of modernity. This commitment led Cabral to endorse an anti-essentialist, historicized conception of culture, and this in turn led him to conceive of cultural liberation in terms of cultural autonomy as opposed to the preservation of indigenous culture(s). Cabral’s attitude towards languages is employed as a case study in order to demo…
Nasserism and the impossibility of innocence
Lotus and the Self-Representation of Afro-Asian Writers as the Vanguard of Modernity
This essay has two aims. The first is to show that the editors of Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings and some of the writers who contributed to it (especially Ismail Ezzedine, Anar Rzayev, Tawfick Zeyad, Abdel Aziz El-Ahwani, Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Alex La Guma, Adonis, Salah Dehni, Luis Bernardo Honwana, Ghassan Kanafany, and Tozaburo Ono) attempted to reconceive of nationalism in a way that would make international solidarity constitutive of the new national…
On the Differences between the Classical and the “Western” Marxist Conceptions of Science
This essay aims to provide an account of the differences between what I call the "Classical Marxist" conception of science which was adhered to by Marx and Engels and further developed by Boris Hessen and others on the one hand, and the conception of science which characterizes "Western Marxism" as it developed through the work of the theorists of the Frankfurt School on the other hand. I argue that Western Marxists such as Herbert Marcuse and Ma…
Edward Said and Philosophy
This article brings to the forefront Timothy Brennan’s emphasis on Edward Said’s engagement with philosophy. An attempt is made to reconstruct some of Brennan’s claims about Said’s views on the relationship between mental representations and the external world. It is shown that Said rejected naïve or direct realism in favor of representationalism. It is also argued that, despite being seen as a post-modern thinker, Said subscribed to a version of…
The African novel and the question of communalism in African philosophy
Lee for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.Notes1 Jackson uses the term "philosophical thinking" explicitly in her book, see Jackson, The African Novel of Ideas, 185. She also uses the term "philosophical practice", see Jackson, The African Novel of Ideas, 20. Jackson appears to be using these two terms as synonyms, and I will be following her in this practice.2 Jackson, The African Novel of Ideas, 22.3 Ibid., 116.4 Ibid, …
Reconciling Hegel with the Dialectic: On Islam and the Fate of Muslims in Hegel's Philosophy of History
The absence of Islam from recent scholarship on Hegel's account of world religions is puzzling. In the first part of the article, we argue that Hegel's neglect of Islam in his systematic account of religious phenomena is not accidental and that he did not think of Islam as a determinate religion. Its size and believers aside, we suggest that it is not possible to assign any determinacy to Islam as a world-historical phenomenon under Hegel's rubri…
Western Marxism: How it Was Born, How it Died, and How it Can be Reborn, written by Domenico Losurdo
Standpoint epistemology, internal critique, and the characterization of Equiano as an Enlightenment thinker
This article shows that Olaudah Equiano’s struggles to escape from the condition of enslavement allowed him to attain a privileged epistemic position in relation to certain domains of knowledge. Equiano utilized this privileged epistemic vantage point to launch an internal critique of some strands of Enlightenment philosophy. In the process of launching this internal critique, Equiano also undermined a claim to ownership that was implicitly made …
James Africanus Beale Horton’s philosophy of history: Progress, race, and the fate of Africa
Many Victorian philosophers of history attempted to explain what they took to be the evident divergence in the level of civilizational achievement that was attained by different peoples. One prominent paradigm for explaining this divergence was the biological-racialist paradigm. According to this paradigm, endorsed by the likes of Robert Knox, Samuel George Morton, Carl Vogt, and James Hunt, what explains divergence is racial difference. In this …
Colonialism as a De-Civilizing Mission: Amílcar Cabral and Ghassan Kanafani on the Place of Colonialism in the Philosophy of History
This paper provides a comparative study of Amílcar Cabral and Ghassan Kanafani. It defends the thesis that both figures were responding to similar historical junctures. Moreover, it shows that they both converged in terms of how they theorized colonialism. For both thinkers, colonialism can be described as an attempt to halt the history of the colonized. A sustained analysis is provided of what the term ‘history’ means in this context. It is argu…
The Concept of “Western Civilization” in Black Marxism: Cedric Robinson as an Ethnophilosopher
African Marxism: The power and limits of polemic 1
Adam Mayer’s book is concerned with analyzing the history of African Marxism, specifically, the history of African Marxism in power. Mayer devotes Chapter 1 to arguing that the history of African M
Can Metaphysical Beliefs Explain the History of Racism? A Response to Shuchen Xiang’s Chinese Cosmopolitanism
Shuchen Xiang’s thesis in Chinese Cosmopolitanism is that racism is primarily a Western phenomenon and that racism never developed in China. According to Xiang, Chinese metaphysics, centered on what she calls processual holism, places an obstacle in the path of racism. Xiang also claims that the rise of racism in the West is to be explained by appealing to the dominance of essentialist substance metaphysics. Xiang holds that substance metaphysics…
Philosophy (12 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Law (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Law (6 works) · African cultural and philosophical studies (4 works) · Colonialism (4 works)