Joseph Massad |
What do psychoanalysis, liberalism, and Islam have in common? A recent lecture at Stanford University with the curious title, “Psychoanalysis and the Other of Liberalism,” purported to answer that question. Delivered by Joseph Massad, an associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University and co-sponsored by Stanford’s Abassi Program in Islamic Studies, the talk was attended by approximately a dozen graduate students who sat around a long, rectangular table with several circulated chapters of Massad’s tentatively titled forthcoming book, Islam In Liberalism, in hand.
Massad began by describing his book, which he explained is not “concerned with liberal trends in Islam,” but with “how Western liberalism constituted itself and, in constituting, created an object called ‘Islam’ as its ‘Other.’”
