The New Middle East, ISIL and the 6 th Revolt Against the West

This paper aims to provide an analysis of the 'new' in 'the new Middle East.' We argue that what is 'new' is the revolt against the West cur- rently underway in the contemporary Middle East, challenging the dom- inant values of Western statehood and personhood. The paper identifies the novelty in the politics of radical antagonism, apocalyptic geopolitical imagination, the re-birth of extra-territorial subjectivities and the politics of resistance, which together shatter the existing political logos. Two par- ticular empirical cases animate our discussion; namely the Arab Spring and the ISIL. By providing such groundwork, the paper also hopes to point to new avenues for further research that would go beyond the confines of narrow, ethnocentric accounts of 'the new the Middle East.'