Davis 403to achieve the same revolutionary developments in the realm of paint-
ing and sculpture that Iraqi poets had achieved in the realm of poetry.^36
What is notable is not only the symbiosis among the Iraqi intelligentsia of
the period, but the challenging of hegemonic discourses of authority and
tradition in literature and the arts, which implicitly challenged political
and traditional authority. The impact of the rich artistic milieu of the late
1940s and 1950s was to promote a greater respect for ethnic and cultural
diversity, as well as a critical building block and legacy for civil society and
democratic governance.
Challenges to the public sphere
This brief overview of the public sphere’s empirical manifestations within
the context of the pre-1963 Iraqi nationalist movement demonstrates
the necessity of contextualizing the concept in a larger structural nexus
to fully understand its political impact. The political ramifications of the
public sphere can most easily be demonstrated by comparing the few
nationalist groups that did adhere to a sectarian definition of Iraqi politi-
cal community and those that promoted a more tolerant understanding
of political community. In discussing sectarian identities, we need to dis-
tinguish between Iraqist, or local nationalism [al-wat.aniyya al-‘irāqiyya],
and pan-Arab nationalism [al-qawmiyya al-‘arabiyya] in Iraq. While
accepting and respecting Iraq’s predominant Arab culture, Iraqist nation-
alists argued that creating a democratic state based on social justice and
tolerance for ethnic diversity took precedence over creating a pan-Arab
nation. Pan-Arabists countered by arguing that only through joining a
pan-Arab state [al-wat.an al-‘arabi] could Iraq hope to confront Western
colonial domination and achieve the historical greatness it had enjoyed
under the Arabo-Islamic empires, particularly the ‘Abbasid Empire, cen-
tered in Iraq.^37 Sectarian nationalist organizations were invariably pan-
Arabist in ideological orientation and largely grounded in the (rural and
tribal) Sunni Arab community.
lmost all groups that emphasized sectarian identities and politi-A
cal community were Sunni Arab and drawn from the military. As
noted above, one of the earliest of such groups, al-‘Ahd, was comprised