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Alif 24: Archaeology of literature: tracing the old in the new
Ferial J. Ghazoul Professor
This issue of Alif investigates the different strata constituting texts, and the presence of older material (myths, classics, hymns, rituals, romance, philosophical fragments, etc.) as subtexts in literature. Articles explore the processes and modalities of such inclusions in a given work or the corpus of an author. The issue also includes critical essays on the nature of continuity and correspondence in plots, characters, and styles as well as redeployment of older motifs in modern and postmodern works. Contributors: English section: Walid Bitar, Leslie Croxford, Ananya Kabir, Rondo Keele, Steven Nimis, John Rodenbeck, Edward Said, Doris Shoukri, Mounira Soliman, Steffen Stelzer. Arabic section: Mohammed ‘Ajina, Mohammed Birairi, Ayman Al-Desouky, Hasab al-Sheikh Ja‘far, Scheherazade Hassan, Sami Mahdi, Samia Mehrez, Mai Muzaffar/Rafa Nasiri, Lamis Al-Nakkash/Doris Shoukri, Nagwa Sha‘ban.
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Alif 23: Literature and the Sacred
Ferial J. Ghazoul Professor
Studies in this collection treat varied aspects of the relationship between literary discourses and ideas of the sacred in different cultures and epochs. Contributions by established and emerging scholars from the Arab world, South Asia, Europe, and North America examine issues such as the treatment of the sacred in literary texts and traditions, the literary dimensions of sacred texts, the impact of the sacred on literary imagination, the role of the literary in sacred experience, and the contestations between the respective projects of literature and the sacred over the constitution of cultural and social norms. Alif vol. 23 Contributors: English and French sections: Nasr Abu Zaid, Karen Campbell, Angelica DeAngelis, Markus Dressler, Michael Frishkopf, Scott Kugle, Heba Machhour, Olivier Sécardin, Marla Segol. Arabic section: Farid Abu Si’da, Boutros Hallaq, Ahmed Taher Hassanein, Anwar Ibrahim, Richard Jacquemond, Salah Kamel, Ali Mabrook, Sa’id Tawfiq.
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Alif 22: The language of the self: autobiographies and testimonies
Ferial J. Ghazoul Professor
Autobiography is a protean genre: it covers so many forms and styles. When narrating one’s life, the narrator has to choose what he or she considers to be relevant and decisive. Beside the differences on what is fundamental in a life, the notion of the Self is culturally defined and thus varies from one place to another. The author of an autobiographical text may express only a fragment of his or her life, follow a thread in the trajectory through reminiscences, memoir, diaries, testimony, interview, letters, poems, etc. The author may declare openly that he or she is identical with the protagonist or may give the principal character a different name or no name. The author may depict private or public events, at times taking imaginative license or even including fantastic motifs. Autobiographical discourse is not only culturally conditioned; it is also symptomatic of the cultural moment. Thus it is important to explore the varieties of self-presentation, and not assume a fixed paradigm. In this revisionist spirit that looks for different and alternative ways of recording one’s life, Alif presents the autobiographical drive in multiple contexts: ancient and contemporary Egyptian; nineteenth-century and twentieth-century Arab, Moroccan, and Iraqi; South African and West African; Canadian and American; Palestinian and Sudanese; English and Irish; and even that of a hybrid background Chinese American and Algerian French. There has been a tremendous surge in autobiographical writing in recent years, and the field has been redefined by literary and cultural critics. From James Olney (ed.), Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical (1980) to Dwight Reynolds (ed.), Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition (2001), a range of works have appeared challenging established views and approaches on the subject of autobiography. The epigraphs (whose English translation is drawn from the works mentioned above) attest to the complexity and diversity of motivations in writing about one’s past life.
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Alif 21: The lyrical phenomenon
Ferial J. Ghazoul Professor
This issue of Alif explores the lyrical drive in its myriad manifestations: its formal presence in poems, epics and songs; and its informal dissemination in narratives, philosophy, painting, calligraphy, music and even in broken and discarded objects. The issue covers many languages and touches on a variety of cultures: Mesopotamian, Nile Valley, Greco-Roman; South African and North African; English and Irish; Greek and French; American and Arabic; Persian and Turkish; Urdu and German. Beside academic articles, this issue includes creative essays, poetry and art―all combine to analyze or embody the lyrical impulse.
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After Ontology: Literary Theory and Modernist Poetics
William Donald Melaney
This book identifies the uniquely postmodern elements in hermeneutics and deconstruction in order to reread many of the central texts in modernist literature. It is a comparative study that illuminates points of contact between the philosophical positions of Gadamer and Derrida, discussing Heidegger's influence on both Gadamer's ontological approaches to the work of art and Derrida's transformation approach to literary and philosophical texts. The poetry of Eliot, Pound and Yeats is examined within this framework, while the crucial example of Joyce is taken up in terms of the production and reception of 'Ulysses' as a seminal influence. The study concludes by suggesting that Derrida provides an ethical version of hermeneutics that departs from Gadamerian models but can be reconciled with both postmodern insights and historical research.
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Masters of the trade: Crafts and craftspeople in Cairo, 1750-1850
Pascale Ghazaleh
Based on various guild charters, most of which have never been studied before, this monograph analyzes the different ways in which artisans and merchants organized themselves during the Ottoman period, and asks whether these forms of organization changed during the first half of the nineteenth century.
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Alif 20: The hybrid literary text: Arab creative authors writing in foreign languages
Ferial J. Ghazoul Professor
This issue of Alif is devoted to exploring creative texts by authors from the Arab world (including Karim Alrawi, Edward Said, Rafik Schami, and Ahdaf Soueif) who write in foreign languages: Dutch, English, French, German, and Hebrew. Contributors: English Section: Shereen Abou El Naga, Magda Amin, Soraya Antonius, Anne Armitage, Andrea Flores, Nadia Gindi, Richard Jacquemond, Mahmoud El Lozy, Amin Malak, Khaled Mattawa, Cynthia Nelson, Marlous Willemsen. Arabic Section: Etel Adnan, Mahamed Lamine Ould Moulay Brahim, Ferial J. Ghazoul, Edwar al-Kharrat, Walid El Khachab, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Samia Mehrez, Dalia Said Mostafa, Tahia Abdel Nasser, Mahmoud Qassim, Bashir El-Siba'i, Anton Shammas, Muhammad Siddiq, Ahdaf Soueif.
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Alif 19: Gender and knowledge: contribution of gender perspectives to intellectual formations
Ferial J. Ghazoul Professor
Contributors are from Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, USA, India, Britain, and France. English Section: Saad Al Bazei, Doris Shoukri, Aisha Abdel Rahman (Bint al-Shati’), Melissa Matthes, Huda Lutfi, Srilata Ravi, Brinda Mehta, Maijan Al-Ruwaili, David Blanks, Jehan Al-Bayoumi, Nasr Abu Zeid Arabic Section: Hoda Elsadda, Sherine Abu el Naga, Sherif Hetata, Buthaina Al Nasiri, Salma Jayyusi, Nasr Abu Zeid, Muhammad Mahmoud, Virginia Woolf, Olfat Al Roubi, Heba Ra’ouf Ezzat, Muhammad Brairi, Julia Kristeva
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Alif 18: Post-Colonial Discourse in South Asia
Ferial J. Ghazoul Professor
This issue of Alif explores a considerable variety of themes and problems that exist in contemporary South Asia, offering perspectives on poetry and fiction, popular culture and mythmaking, as well as the enduring resonance of Gandhian rhetoric and philosophy. Contributors confront environmental degradation and social injustice, post-colonial interpretations of Shakespeare, and the terrifying plague of AIDS, perhaps the first truly global epidemic. Despite the undeniably serious problems that afflict the people of South Asia, there is also much to celebrate after half a century of independence. There is a pervasive sense that the subcontinent has finally emerged from lingering shadows of the British Raj, asserting a new and ascendant identity, through art and literature, music, film, and popular culture.
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State and Industrial Capitalists in Egypt
Samer Soliman
In contrast to the conventional wisdom of the political economy of modern Egypt, this study contends that the Egyptian capitalist class is not a ‘parasitic’ class that is interested only in investing in commercial and financial activities and challenges the view that the Egyptian state is merely a tool in the hands of the ‘parasitic’ bourgeoisie.
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Just a Gaze: Female Clientele of Diet Clinics in Cairo (An Ethnomedical Study)
Iman Farid Basyouny
Situating the female body in contemporary Egyptian urban culture, the author investigates women’s perceptions of the female body during their quest for therapy in diet clinics.
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Class, Family, and Power in an Egyptian Village
Samer El Karanshawy
This investigation of the intricate interplay of family, status, and occupation in an Egyptian village of the Delta in the context of elections for representatives to Egypt's national parliament provides a grass-roots view of Egyptian politics.
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