Arab. Dualis, or the Mystery of Identity

Abstract

Arab. Dualis, or the mystery of identity, is a review article devoted to the critical presentation of scientific positions and perspectives of the last century, focusing on defining the concepts of ‘Arab’, ‘Arabic’ and ‘Arabic’. To this day, there are attempts to define them, more or less objective, in the literature on the subject. Scientists use the achievements of various fields and branches of science and their methods to obtain satisfactory result. Scientific achievements duplicate many misleading stereotypes and mythical axioms in this respect, often referring to the post-romantic vision of ‘Arab’ and later, post-war ideological positions commonly shaped by non-scientific factors. The scope of the study included selected Western literature on the subject; it represents the most important and influential research trends. They were divided into groups: referring to the common history, geographic and territorial identity, and linguistic identity as the basis of the unity of ‘Arabs’, emphasizing the etymological research of the title concept. The next sets of factors are the historical community, anthropological (including genetic), legal-political, and socio-psychological identity seen from the point of view of political science and cultural anthropology. Their boundaries are fluid, and the material illustrating them has been assigned to them arbitrarily – to avoid repetition.