Universality of human experience

Sometimes, if not often, literature does not recognize any national or local barriers, and it is a mistake that should be warned of falling into it, in the name of the global, some believe that the contemporary person’s situation in general is required to be global, for example in literature, the writer tries to go into the surreal or irrational experience, or it is believed that the age imposes on him the direction to pessimism and individualism even though it is subject to a certain society Its development in a stage that other societies may not simulate as long as it passes through its development in a different stage.

This idea presented by the Egyptian thinker Fouad Zakaria is neither strange nor new, which we re -propose today. Because the same reason requires it to be prevalent in the contemporary cultural discourse, with a sign of a fundamental error that should not be made. It has been observed in literature, in terms of meaning, that existential and absurd experience is the most sincere expression of human situation in our time. Others went on to believe that it imposes pessimism and extremist liberalism. However, all of them are nothing but repercussions of a special situation for a society in a specific stage of its development, and they should not be circulated or imposed on societies living in different historical and social conditions.

The global error lies in ignoring the privacy and contexts of societies

That is why it is necessary to review the idea of ​​the world, while emphasizing that it is essentially a noble idea that seeks to unify humanity on common values ​​such as justice, freedom and tolerance, but the error in this idea lies in ignoring the privacy of societies and historical contexts. The truth is that every society lives its “modernity” differently. The societies of Arab countries are busy with questions of identity and freedom from tyranny before they are preoccupied with questions of tampering, non -existence and meaning. Likewise, countries that have gone through social or political revolutions find themselves facing the challenges of rebuilding the social contract, while stable societies are looking to update their moral and intellectual systems.

The real global does not mean bringing in an intellectual, political or literary model, but rather recognition of the diversity and respect of human experiences. Societies do not go through the same crises, and do not search for the same solutions. World means dialogue between different experiences, not to become one experience as a standard that is measured on, and an attempt to impose it as a template ready on societies that do not belong to the historical context itself. Respecting the cultural and social peculiarities, with openness to other human experiences, is the way to a real universality, where the difference becomes enriching, not disrupted.

In the literary field, we find that existential and absurd currents that dominated Western literature after the two world wars, arose from the experience of nihilism left by humanitarian disasters. While the Western person’s sense of loss and disintegration, and the fading moral values, was reflected in the works of Camus, Sartre and others. However, countries that did not go through this experience, or who were living at the time under colonialism or internal repression, cannot express themselves in this way. The tampering experience is not a cosmic experience, but rather an experience related to a special cultural history.

When Arabic literature tried to simulate absurdity, a superficial imitation often came, because it did not arise from the historical predicament itself. The Arab reader did not live the feeling of nothingness as much as he lived the sense of oppression under occupation and tyranny. Therefore, the novel that imitated the absurd experience was not an influence like the novel that expressed the crisis of its existence in the context of political repression. Likewise, pessimism and individualism were stemming from the collapse of major ideologies in the twentieth century, and the rise of consumerism, which emptied life in the meaning of the Western man. But our societies, which suffer from social and political crises, have not seen a choice. On the contrary, we find it often heading towards the search for collective solutions, and a deeper meaning of life in the face of injustice and darkness.

* A novelist from Syria