This chapter traces the emergence of a North African critique of Arab nationalism and its project for the Arab Renaissance in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab defeat. It takes up the journeys of intellectuals Moroccan Abdallah Laroui and Tunisian Hichem Djaït and how they challenged the dominant frameworks of Arab nationalism and pan-Arab unity at the 1970 Louvain Conference on the Arab renaissance. The two critiqued both the ideological uses of history by the national project and the epistemological structures of Orientalist scholarship, which they accused of perpetuating a discourse of Arab cultural crisis and decadence. This chapter then traces their engagements with figures such as Gustav von Grunebaum, Louis Massignon, and Jacques Berque in the publishing landscape of Parisian orientalism. As such, these two examples illustrate a new position in Arab thought, which believed in the imperative of reclaiming historical thinking as a tool for intellectual decolonization. In charting these entanglements, this chapter sheds light on the continued ties between North Africa, the Arab East, and Parisian Orientalism, and the debate on cultural authenticity and Arab modernity.