Foundations of Modern Arab Identity discusses these applications from the perspective of Arab intellectuals of the 19th century including Butrus al-Bustani, Salim al-Bustani, Jurji Zaydan, Farah Antun, Ahmad Faris Shidyaq, Nasif al-Yaziji, Muhammad al-Muwaylihi, Muhammad Abduh and Jamal ad-din al-Afghani.
Instead, the dialectic between Self and Other transpired internally—epistemologically and discursively—on a plane of dynamic cultural and social formations within Ottoman Arab society and polity during the Tanzimat.
This epistemology, rooted in the priorities of indigenous and colonial capitalist development and Western political hegemony, recasts through liberalism and Western cultural superiority which causes intellectual paradigms, political programs, and visions of a new national social order among Arab thinkers to inevitably express lack as central to Arab identity.
Instead of focusing on either works in social thought or narrative prose, the book studies a variety of texts - pamphlets, newspaper articles, and philosophical tracts as well as maqamat, novels, and sketches - in an attempt to explicate new conversations and ideas, which were articulated in different genres and linguistic modes.
"[4] Anthropologist Lucia Volk writes that Sheehi proves that these intellectual "elites actively produced indigenous ideologies of modernity while struggling against the overwhelming powers of Western colonialism.