Psychoanalysis and the Love of Arabic reorients the debates around Arabic and global modernity in relation to psychoanalysis, capitalism and universality. The study offers the first psychoanalytic reading of 19th-century works written during the nahda movement by Ahmad Faris Shidyaq (1805 87) and Butrus al-Bustani (1819 83), showing how a curious relationship was forged between language and politics one driven by both a desire for, and anxiety about, modernity. In analysing the abstractness of national belonging as belonging to the language, author Nadia Bou Ali considers why modern Arabic...