The ethnocentricity of literary theory is a pervasive phenomenon that garnered attention from comparativists, postcolonial critics, cultural studies scholars alike. Attempts to redress the colonial woes propagated by ‘theory’ against non-Western cultures have been gaining momentum lately yet falling short of fully addressing the resounding decolonial epistemic critique. Such a critique mandates critical distanciation from the assumptions presumed by Western epistemology in relation to non-Western intellectual traditions. Histories and textbooks in literary theory, in specific, continue to approach non-Western poetics on premises that privilege modern Western poetic tradition(s) without adequate consideration to the pragmatic contexts and epistemological systems within which such poetics have evolved interculturally. In the case of Arabic-Islamic poetics, it is neither contextualized in its philosophical, logical and theological kernel nor carefully situated in conjunction to a family of traditions, i.e., manṭiq, ʻulūm al-lisān. Contemporary Arabic-speaking scholarship on Arabic literary history and criticism, in addition, is almost relegated to the margins. This lack of epistemic equity requires deploying the decolonial option to reclaim renunciation in the subject of Arabic literary theory in general.
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