Arabic Criticism and the Transformations of Acculturation: From Assimilation to Deconstruction – A Reading in the Paradigms of Reception and Transcendence"

Abstract

This presentation examines the transformations that Arab criticism has witnessed in the context of its relationship with global intercultural exchange, tracing its transition from a position of reception and influence to a position of transcendence and the reconstruction of its critical identity. The study is based on a central problematic concerning the extent to which Arab criticism is capable of actively interacting with foreign references and surpassing the logic of passive importation towards a critical practice capable of questioning the Other and establishing its own propositions. It proceeds to review the stages of this transformation through three central moments: first, assimilation, where Arab criticism treated Western thought as a complete epistemological reference, resulting in a consumptive and imitative mode of reception; then active reception, representing the moment when Arab critical projects began to reinterpret heritage and deconstruct Western centralities; and finally, transcendence and deconstruction, a moment in which some critics seek to construct an independent conceptual apparatus based on a dual reading of the Self and the Other, and to practice a discursive efficacy that questions epistemological references not as absolutes but as systems open to critique. The presentation concludes that Arab criticism is no longer a passive reader of Western culture but has begun to raise its own questions and engage in what may be termed “critical interculturality,” which does not merely settle for appropriation, but seeks instead to transcend and reproduce meaning.