Arabism, Arab Nationalism and Transnational Arab Identification in the 20th Century

This article deals with the history of nationalist Arab thinking and of Pan-Arabism. It is situated at the intersection of the cultural, political and religious dimensions throughout the century. This angle of study makes it possible to escape the narrow vision of a primary Arab nationalism, purely secular by nature, freed at the outset from all religious and cultural influence. By emphasizing the importance of the linguistic and literary element in the initial structuration of Arabity, by recalling that political Islamism took root in the first decades of the century, the article challenges the chronology that limits these ideologies to their authoritarian incarnation alone in the 1950s and presents the composite landscape of an Arabity with many facettes and frequent reshaping.