ABSTRACT
The argument in this essay will be outlined in four parts. I begin by outlining some of the conceptual and definitional issues associated with ‘knowledge’ and ‘democratic knowledge’. The aim is to develop a clear understanding of democratic knowledge. In order to do so, I discuss in the second part the historical foundations of knowledge in both Western and Arab intellectual traditions. For this purpose, I will try then to present briefly some of the key critiques of knowledge practices, referring to diverse intellectual inputs from Michel Foucault to Pierre Bourdieu. As part of this discussion, I provide an overview of some issues surrounding constructions of knowledge, knowledge-making practices, relating them to the perennial knowledge-power dyad. In part three, I will consider the question of democratic knowledge head-on, with special reference to the Arab context, specifically in situations of initial democratic acquisition/transition/transformation. The gist of the exercise in this section tackles the question of decolonising
knowledge-making practices and relating them directly to processes of democratic learning among Arab subalterns. I will conclude by briefly exploring the methodological implications of democratic knowledge, namely, appreciation of local knowledge production, which remains under-represented in narratives of Arab democracy and democratisation.
