Book Arts as Archives of Decolonization: The Design and Visuality of Arabic Books (1950s–1980s)

Abstract This article sheds light on a remarkable, yet hitherto overlooked, period in which Arabic book arts flourished, spanning from the 1950s to the 1980s. This innovative publishing activity emerged at the confluence of artistic, political, and intellectual ferment of anticolonial movements across the Arab world. It argues that, as sites of everyday creative imaginings, epistemic formations, and aesthetic experiences, the visual culture of books was integral to decolonization struggles. It helped shape new aesthetic sensibilities, articulate political imaginaries, and mobilize cross-border anticolonial solidarities. The study uncovers the creative labor of designing and illustrating Arabic books, while centering on the aesthetic and political preoccupations of Arab artists–graphic designers involved in their making. It proposes a methodology and analysis of the various ways visuality came to reshape the book’s economy, narrative, politics, and pedagogy. This article’s examination of book arts as archives of decolonization is significant not only for understanding how the political and aesthetic endeavors of this era have transformed Arabic books, but also—crucially—for contributing to a historical and epistemological restitution of what “decolonizing” meant for artists–graphic designers grappling with modernism in the Global South.