The Edinburgh companion to the Postcolonial Middle East

552 Pages·2019·12.477 MB·English

by  Anna Ball and Karim Mattar

The Edinburgh
Companion to the
Postcolonial
Middle East
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The Edinburgh
Companion to the
Postcolonial
Middle East
Edited by Anna Ball and Karim Mattar
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Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in
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© editorial matter and organisation Anna Ball and Karim Mattar, 2019
© the chapters their several authors, 2019
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
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Contents
List of Figures viii
Acknowledgements ix
Notes on the Contributors xi
Note on Transliteration xvii
Preface xviii
Introduction
1. Dialectics of Post/Colonial Modernity in the Middle East:
A Critical, Theoretical and Disciplinary Overview 3
Anna Ball and Karim Mattar
2. Edward Said and the Institution of Postcolonial Studies 23
Karim Mattar
3. Postcolonialism and Modern Arabic Literature:
Twenty-fi rst-century Horizons 43
Waïl S. Hassan
4. Interview with Ahdaf Soueif 57
Anna Ball
5. Interview with Sinan Antoon 67
Karim Mattar
Part I: The Colonial Encounter: Discourses of Imperialism and Anti-imperialism
6. Between the Postcolonial and the Middle East: Writing the Subaltern
in the Arab World 83
Juan R. I. Cole
7. Orientalism and World Literature: A Re-reading of Cosmopolitanism
in Ṭāhā Ḥusayn’s Literary World 97
Wen-chin Ouyang
8. On Orientalist Genealogies: The Split Arab/Jew Figure Revisited 118
Ella Shohat
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vi contents
9. Colonial Violence, Law and Justice in Egypt 160
Stephen Morton
10. Peripheral Visions: Translational Polemics and Feminist Arguments in
Colonial Egypt 183
Marilyn Booth
11. Reimagining the Ottoman Legacy 213
Erdağ Göknar
Part II: States of Post/Coloniality: Politics, Religion, Gender, Sexuality
12. Postcolonial Nations: Political or Poetic Allegories?
(On Tahar Djaout’s L’Invention du désert) 241
Réda Bensmaïa
13. Passing Away: Despair, Eulogies and Millennial Palestine 253
Salah D. Hassan
14. ‘They are in the right because I love them’: Literature and Palestine
Solidarity in the 1980s 275
Anna Bernard
15. Nikes in Nineveh: Daesh, the Ruin and the Global Logic of Eradication 293
Sadia Abbas
16. There was no ‘Humble Task’ in the Revolution: Anti-colonial Activity
and Arab Women 309
Anastasia Valassopoulos
17. The Queerness of Textuality and/as Translation: Ways of Reading Hoda
Barakat’s The Stone of Laughter 329
Lindsey Moore
Part III: The Post/Colonial Present: Crisis and Engagement in Global Context
18. Anglophone Arab Autobiography and the Postcolonial Middle East:
Najla Said and Hisham Matar 349
Tahia Abdel Nasser
19. Bare Life in the ‘New Iraq’ 362
Ikram Masmoudi
20. Towards a Globalisation of Contemporary Iranian Literature?
Iranian Literary Blogs and the Evolution of the Literary Field 383
Laetitia Nanquette
21. Popular Culture and the Arab Spring 407
Caroline Rooney
22. The Syrian Revolution, Art and the End of Ideology 427
miriam cooke
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contents vii
23. Biopolitical Landscapes of the ‘Small Human’: Figuring the Child in the
Contemporary Middle Eastern Refugee Crisis in Europe 446
Anna Ball
Afterword: Critical Companionships, Urgent Affi liations 469
Anna Ball and Karim Mattar
Bibliography 476
Index 514
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Figures
8.1 Marcelin Flandrin, ‘Atlas Marocain. Groupe de Juives à Tin-Mel’,
Atlas Marocain 128
8.2 Unknown photographer, ‘Femme Juive’ 128
8.3 Théodore Chassériau, Juives d’Alger au balcon 129
8.4 Théodore Chassériau, Scène dans le quartier juif de Constantine 129
8.5 Eugene Delacroix, Noce juive au Maroc 130
8.6 Alfred Dehodencq, L’exécution de la Juive 131
8.7 Eugene Delacroix, Scène des massacres de Scio 134
8.8 Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, Por linage de ebros 136
8.9 Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, Escena de Inquisición 137
8.10 Alfred Dehodencq, Portrait de Sol Hatchuel 138
8.11 Alfred Dehodencq, La Mariée juive 139
8.12 Alfred Dehodencq, Mariée juive au Maroc 140
8.13 Jean-Léon Gérôme, Le Charmeur de Serpents 142
8.14 Tombstone of Sol Hachuel in Fez, Morocco, 2018 146
15.1 Al-Baqi cemetery before demolition 294
15.2 The Makkah Clock Royal Tower Hotel and the Haram Sharif 295
15.3 Still of destruction of Nineveh, Dabiq, Issue 8 298
15.4 ‘The Flood’, Dabiq, Issue 2 298
15.5 ‘Abandon the Lands of Shirk, Come to the Land of Islam’, Dabiq, Issue 8 299
16.1 ‘Lotfi , Sarra and Selim’s teacher, will be staying a few days here’,
The Silences of the Palace 323
16.2 Khalti Hadda washes Lotfi , The Silences of the Palace 323
16.3 ‘Things are going to change’, The Silences of the Palace 324
16.4 ‘A new future awaits us’, The Silences of the Palace 324
22.1 Tammam ‘Azzam, Syrian Museum: Matisse’s La Danse 434
22.2 Hani Abbas, Sednaya Prison 436
22.3 Wissam al-Jazairi, Women Dancing In Front of a Tank 441
22.4 Sari Kiwan, Man Dancing on a Barrel Bomb 441
23.1 A young girl from Syria walks on the beach after reaching the shores of
Lesbos, having crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey, 2015 446
23.2 Oguz Sen and Justus Becker, Mural of Aylan Kurdi/Alan Shenu, 2016 453
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Acknowledgements
Anna Ball: My thanks are due fi rst and foremost to my co-editor, Karim Mattar, whose
exceptional knowledge, ability, diligence and dedication have made this project pos-
sible. I am deeply indebted to him for all of his collaboration over the course of the
volume’s creation. Thank you, too, to all of the marvellous contributors to this volume,
who have journeyed with us over the past several years in order to express their own
keen investment in this fi eld. I am extremely grateful to Edinburgh University Press for
their impeccable support and guidance, and to the anonymous reviewers who shared
our belief in this project. My thanks are also due to colleagues and students at the
Postcolonial Studies Centre at Nottingham Trent University, and to Professor Nahem
Yousaf, Professor Philip Leonard and Professor Andrew Thacker for their research sup-
port and mentoring over the years, as well as to my mentor and former supervisor,
Dr Anastasia Valassopoulos. Thank you to the ‘excellent women’, Dr Sarah Jackson
and Dr Catherine Clay, for the sound advice and solidarity that saw me through this
project. Above all, thank you to my wonderful husband, Lee Garland, and to our
daughter Clara Garland, for their endless patience and support over the last few years.
As I pass this volume to the reader, I return myself to them wholeheartedly.
Karim Mattar: I would like to thank my co-editor Anna Ball for her tireless efforts in
bringing this volume to fruition over the past several years. Her work ethic, commit-
ment, perseverance, attention to detail and vision have been essential to the volume’s
success, and inspirational to me both personally and professionally. I would also
like to thank Edinburgh University Press and its editorial team – especially Nicola
Ramsey, Ellie Bush, Ersev Ersoy and Kirsty Woods. The support they have shown us,
their enthusiasm for this project from its outset, and their guidance in its assembly
and refi nement have all been outstanding – they have, indeed, made this volume
possible. Finally, I would like to thank each of the contributors for the originality,
insight and sheer brilliance of their wide-ranging engagements with the questions and
concerns we had hoped to address in this volume. Individually and collectively, their
chapters comprise the critical nexus between postcolonial studies and the Middle East
at its heart. It is my hope that as this volume makes its way into the world, readers
will for many years to come likewise appreciate the fi ne scholarship on display in the
following pages.
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x acknowledgements
The editors: We would like to thank the American Comparative Literature Associa-
tion, at whose 2016 conference at Harvard University we hosted a seminar on ‘The
Postcolonial Middle East: Theory, Politics, Culture’. Many of the chapters included
in this volume originated as papers for this seminar, and the discussion that took
place there helped us refi ne our conception of the project. We would also like to
thank Interventions, the Journal of Arabic Literature, Routledge, Princeton Univer-
sity Press, Biography and Edinburgh University Press for granting their permission
to reprint previously published material. Chapter 3, ‘Postcolonialism and Modern
Arabic Literature: Twenty-fi rst-century Horizons’ by Waïl S. Hassan, is a modifi ed
version of an article which fi rst appeared in Interventions: International Journal of
Postcolonial Studies (9 November 2017; pp. 1–17). Chapter 7, ‘Orientalism and
World Literature: A Re-reading of Cosmopolitanism in Ṭāhā Ḥusayn’s Literary
World’ by Wen-chin Ouyang, is a modifi ed version of an article which fi rst appeared
in the Journal of Arabic Literature (49, 2018; pp. 1–30). Chapter 11, ‘Reimagin-
ing the Ottoman Legacy’ by Erdağ Göknar, is a modifi ed version of a book chapter
which fi rst appeared in Orhan Pamuk, Secularism and Blasphemy: The Politics of the
Turkish Novel (London & New York: Routledge, 2013; pp. 127–62). Chapter 12,
‘Postcolonial Nations: Political or Poetic Allegories? (On Tahar Djaout’s L’Invention
du désert)’ by Réda Bensmaïa, is a modifi ed version of a book chapter which fi rst
appeared in Experimental Nations: Or, the Invention of the Maghreb (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2003; pp. 67–82). Chapter 13, ‘Passing Away: Despair,
Eulogies and Millennial Palestine’ by Salah D. Hassan, is a modifi ed version of an
article which fi rst appeared in Biography (36:1, 2013; pp. 27–50). Chapter 19, ‘Bare
Life in the “New Iraq”’ by Ikram Masmoudi, is a modifi ed version of a book chapter
which fi rst appeared in War and Occupation in Iraqi Fiction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 2015; pp. 134–83). Finally, thank you to all of those who provided
copyright permission to reproduce images in this volume. Credits are listed in the
captions for each image, and the editors will be glad to make suitable arrangements
with any copyright holders whom they have not been able to contact.
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