Yoav Di Capua
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520257320
- eISBN:
- 9780520944817
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520257320.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
This chapter focuses on the Ābdīn archive and the true nature and scope of the project. The project lasted more than twenty-five years and involved a host of foreign archivists, philologists, and ...
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This chapter focuses on the Ābdīn archive and the true nature and scope of the project. The project lasted more than twenty-five years and involved a host of foreign archivists, philologists, and historians. Undeniably colonial in essence, the royal project introduced to Egyptian historiography three complementary elements. First, substantiating the “founder paradigm,” it set the criteria for what constituted “proper historical knowledge” with regard to modern Egypt. Then, it disseminated the assumption that, both physically and epistemologically, there could be no valid historical evidence outside the archive (which systematically excluded Ottoman and subaltern pasts). Finally, it introduced the concepts of scientific objectivity and expert authority.Less
This chapter focuses on the Ābdīn archive and the true nature and scope of the project. The project lasted more than twenty-five years and involved a host of foreign archivists, philologists, and historians. Undeniably colonial in essence, the royal project introduced to Egyptian historiography three complementary elements. First, substantiating the “founder paradigm,” it set the criteria for what constituted “proper historical knowledge” with regard to modern Egypt. Then, it disseminated the assumption that, both physically and epistemologically, there could be no valid historical evidence outside the archive (which systematically excluded Ottoman and subaltern pasts). Finally, it introduced the concepts of scientific objectivity and expert authority.
David Sims
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9789774166686
- eISBN:
- 9781617976544
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- American University in Cairo Press
- DOI:
- 10.5743/cairo/9789774166686.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
Egypt has placed its hopes on developing its vast and empty deserts as the ultimate solution to the country’s problems. New cities, new farms, new industrial zones, new tourism resorts, and new ...
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Egypt has placed its hopes on developing its vast and empty deserts as the ultimate solution to the country’s problems. New cities, new farms, new industrial zones, new tourism resorts, and new development corridors all have been promoted for over half a century to create a modern Egypt, and to pull tens of millions of people away from the increasingly crowded Nile Valley into the desert hinterland. The results, in spite of colossal expenditures and ever-grander government pronouncements, have been meager at best, and today, Egypt’s desert is littered with stalled schemes, abandoned projects, and forlorn dreams. It also remains stubbornly uninhabited. Egypt’s Desert Dreams is the first attempt of its kind to look at Egypt’s desert development in its entirety. It recounts the failures of governmental schemes, analyzes why they have failed, and exposes the main winners of Egypt’s desert projects, as well as the underlying narratives and political necessities behind it, even in the post-revolutionary era. It also shows that all is not lost, and that there are alternative paths that Egypt could take.Less
Egypt has placed its hopes on developing its vast and empty deserts as the ultimate solution to the country’s problems. New cities, new farms, new industrial zones, new tourism resorts, and new development corridors all have been promoted for over half a century to create a modern Egypt, and to pull tens of millions of people away from the increasingly crowded Nile Valley into the desert hinterland. The results, in spite of colossal expenditures and ever-grander government pronouncements, have been meager at best, and today, Egypt’s desert is littered with stalled schemes, abandoned projects, and forlorn dreams. It also remains stubbornly uninhabited. Egypt’s Desert Dreams is the first attempt of its kind to look at Egypt’s desert development in its entirety. It recounts the failures of governmental schemes, analyzes why they have failed, and exposes the main winners of Egypt’s desert projects, as well as the underlying narratives and political necessities behind it, even in the post-revolutionary era. It also shows that all is not lost, and that there are alternative paths that Egypt could take.
Lucie Ryzova
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199681778
- eISBN:
- 9780191761591
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199681778.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History, Social History
In colonial-era Egypt, a new social category of “modern men” emerged, the efendiyya (sg. efendi). Working as bureaucrats, teachers, journalists, free professionals and public intellectuals, the ...
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In colonial-era Egypt, a new social category of “modern men” emerged, the efendiyya (sg. efendi). Working as bureaucrats, teachers, journalists, free professionals and public intellectuals, the efendis represented new middle class elites. They were the experts who drafted and carried out the state’s modernisation policies, and the makers as well as majority consumers of modern forms of politics and national culture. As simultaneously “authentic” and “modern,” they assumed key political role in the anti-colonial movement and in the building of a modern state both before and after the revolution of 1952. This book tells the story of where did these self-consciously modern men come from, and how did they come to be through multiple social, cultural, and institutional contexts. These contexts included social strategies pursued by “traditional” middling households responding to new opportunities for social mobility; modern schools as (non-exclusive) vehicles for new forms of knowledge opening possibilities to redefine social authority; but they also included new forms of youth culture, student rituals and peer networks, as well as urban popular culture writ large. Through these contexts, a historically novel experience of being an efendi emerged. New social practices (politics, or writing) and new cultural forms and genres (literature, autobiography) were its key sites of self-expression. Through these venues, an efendi culture imbued with a sense of mission, duty, and entitlement was articulated, and defined against and in relation to two main contrastive others: “traditional” society and western modernity-cum-colonial authority. Both represented the efendis’ social, cultural and political nemeses, who, in some contexts, could also become his allies.Less
In colonial-era Egypt, a new social category of “modern men” emerged, the efendiyya (sg. efendi). Working as bureaucrats, teachers, journalists, free professionals and public intellectuals, the efendis represented new middle class elites. They were the experts who drafted and carried out the state’s modernisation policies, and the makers as well as majority consumers of modern forms of politics and national culture. As simultaneously “authentic” and “modern,” they assumed key political role in the anti-colonial movement and in the building of a modern state both before and after the revolution of 1952. This book tells the story of where did these self-consciously modern men come from, and how did they come to be through multiple social, cultural, and institutional contexts. These contexts included social strategies pursued by “traditional” middling households responding to new opportunities for social mobility; modern schools as (non-exclusive) vehicles for new forms of knowledge opening possibilities to redefine social authority; but they also included new forms of youth culture, student rituals and peer networks, as well as urban popular culture writ large. Through these contexts, a historically novel experience of being an efendi emerged. New social practices (politics, or writing) and new cultural forms and genres (literature, autobiography) were its key sites of self-expression. Through these venues, an efendi culture imbued with a sense of mission, duty, and entitlement was articulated, and defined against and in relation to two main contrastive others: “traditional” society and western modernity-cum-colonial authority. Both represented the efendis’ social, cultural and political nemeses, who, in some contexts, could also become his allies.
Pierre Cachia
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748640867
- eISBN:
- 9780748653300
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748640867.003.0018
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
This chapter discusses the elite treatment of honour crimes in modern Egypt. It focuses on the ways and mechanisms in which elite literature has departed or distanced itself from the traditions and ...
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This chapter discusses the elite treatment of honour crimes in modern Egypt. It focuses on the ways and mechanisms in which elite literature has departed or distanced itself from the traditions and practices of honour crimes that prevailed in folk literature. It takes a look at Tāhā Husayn's Du al-Karawān; Tawfīq al-Hakīm's Uxniyat al-Mawt; and Najīb Surūr's Minēn ajīb Nā. Even leading modernists like Tāhā Husayn looked upon colloquial forms of Arabic as debased. Most Arab writers of the twentieth century saw themselves not only as artists but also as agents of cultural and social reform, and shied away from themes that struck them as trivial or reactionary.Less
This chapter discusses the elite treatment of honour crimes in modern Egypt. It focuses on the ways and mechanisms in which elite literature has departed or distanced itself from the traditions and practices of honour crimes that prevailed in folk literature. It takes a look at Tāhā Husayn's Du al-Karawān; Tawfīq al-Hakīm's Uxniyat al-Mawt; and Najīb Surūr's Minēn ajīb Nā. Even leading modernists like Tāhā Husayn looked upon colloquial forms of Arabic as debased. Most Arab writers of the twentieth century saw themselves not only as artists but also as agents of cultural and social reform, and shied away from themes that struck them as trivial or reactionary.
Alex Dika Seggerman
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781469653044
- eISBN:
- 9781469653068
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469653044.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
Analyzing the modernist art movement that arose in Cairo and Alexandria from the late nineteenth century through the 1960s, Alex Dika Seggerman reveals how the visual arts were part of a multifaceted ...
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Analyzing the modernist art movement that arose in Cairo and Alexandria from the late nineteenth century through the 1960s, Alex Dika Seggerman reveals how the visual arts were part of a multifaceted transnational modernism. While the work of diverse, major Egyptian artists during this era may have appeared to be secular, she argues, it reflected the subtle but essential inflection of Islam, as a faith, history, and lived experience, in the overarching development of Middle Eastern modernity.
Challenging typical views of modernism in art history as solely Euro-American, and expanding the conventional periodization of Islamic art history, Seggerman theorizes a “constellational modernism” for the emerging field of global modernism. Rather than seeing modernism in a generalized, hyperconnected network, she finds that art and artists circulated in distinct constellations that encompassed finite local and transnational relations. Such constellations, which could engage visual systems both along and beyond the Nile, from Los Angeles to Delhi, were materialized in visual culture that ranged from oil paintings and sculpture to photography and prints. Based on extensive research in Egypt, Europe, and the United States, this richly illustrated book poses a compelling argument for the importance of Muslim networks to global modernism.Less
Analyzing the modernist art movement that arose in Cairo and Alexandria from the late nineteenth century through the 1960s, Alex Dika Seggerman reveals how the visual arts were part of a multifaceted transnational modernism. While the work of diverse, major Egyptian artists during this era may have appeared to be secular, she argues, it reflected the subtle but essential inflection of Islam, as a faith, history, and lived experience, in the overarching development of Middle Eastern modernity.
Challenging typical views of modernism in art history as solely Euro-American, and expanding the conventional periodization of Islamic art history, Seggerman theorizes a “constellational modernism” for the emerging field of global modernism. Rather than seeing modernism in a generalized, hyperconnected network, she finds that art and artists circulated in distinct constellations that encompassed finite local and transnational relations. Such constellations, which could engage visual systems both along and beyond the Nile, from Los Angeles to Delhi, were materialized in visual culture that ranged from oil paintings and sculpture to photography and prints. Based on extensive research in Egypt, Europe, and the United States, this richly illustrated book poses a compelling argument for the importance of Muslim networks to global modernism.