Abstract

Contemporary Greeks and Arabs are heirs of a common empire which ruled the lives of their ancestors for long centuries before it ended at the beginning of the twentieth century. These heirs imagined, constructed and experienced their post-Ottoman nations in connection with the existential crises of the empire. Their national selves emerged from political and military struggles, and were fashioned by ideas about enlightenment, modernization, selfhood and emancipation. Their journeys to national statehood were shaped by the different positions they held in the empire; they were marked by different givens and different circumstances. Their post-independence eras witnessed numerous challenges and faced dramatic crises. They were often internally disenchanting and externally checked by geo-political pressures. But they were experienced in total isolation from each other’s situations. Today these journeys are critically reflected upon by the intellectuals of these nation-states but almost never in conjunction with the other’s experiences, despite their geographical contiguity, significant common historical past, and many shared social mores. This study looks at how these two estranged neighbors fared after they parted ways on their independence journeys in their definitions of cultural identity and practices of cultural critique, and compares these journeys, by establishing links that were rarely, if ever, made hitherto. It focuses on the respective contemporary debates on enlightenment and emancipation that look at the early ideas of independence and progress and assess their fate in the post-independence era to our present day. The study aims at revealing the commonalities and specificities of the struggles of these nation-states for enlightenment, emancipation, progress and modernization. It helps us raise a number of questions about the meaning of enlightenment in these post-Ottoman contexts.