ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents many broken narratives like the ones that appear in the four more or less contemporary vignettes - between the rather lofty goal of an Arab conquest of Space, the desperate attempts to claim the legacy of legendary forbears ('Aflaq, Salah al-Din), and the longing for a realm of love rooted in the past of an Andalusian Arab Elysium in the midst of rupture and unrest. Arab cultural identity has been and continues to be contested, though. Areas of contestation exist within nation states, as the chapter about museology in Egypt and the debates about a defining narrative in the context of Cairo's Civilization Museum has indicated, but they also exist between nation states and their specific ideological pre-dispositions that are represented in ideological movements. Another primary argument of this book has been about the adoption and adaptation of Western means of expression and media in Arab nationalism.
