MESA Book Awards
Fadi A. Bardawil
Duke University
2021 Nikki Keddie Book Award Honorable Mention
Fadi A. Bardawil
Revolution and Disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation
Duke University Press
Bardawil uses lively close reading of a small run 1960s Lebanese leftist journal and interviews with activists and intellectuals to produce a novel model of social and political implication and retreat. His model, which can be tested in other contexts, is embedded in a fairly fierce argument about methodology in intellectual history. Bardawil engages meaningfully with some giants of the field in unexpected ways. This vivid book, stimulating in intellectual style and argumentation, is bound to produce debate and reaction. His book makes for exciting and energetic reading, recalling the scholarship of Nikki Keddie.