Representing contemporary urban space: Cairo malls in two Egyptian novels

Arabica ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 58 (6) ◽  
pp. 545-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dina Heshmat
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Space Versus ◽  
First Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Arabic Text ◽  
Classical Arabic ◽  
Street Environment ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Constitutive Element

Abstract Taking into account the expansion of malls as a constitutive element of Egyptian urbanism at the beginning of the twenty-first century, this article analyzes the representation of the mall in two contemporary Egyptian novels. A close reading of Mūsīqā l-mūl by Maḥmūd al-Wardānī and An takūna ʿAbbās al-ʿAbd, by Aḥmad al-ʿĀydī shows that the function of intertextuality in those narratives is central to understand this representation, as well as the sense of alienation or belonging to the contemporary urban space it conveys. Al-Wardānī constructs his novel through intertextuality with a classical Arabic text, contrasting the contemporary space of the mall with the ideal bazaar of a One Thousand and One Nights tale (al-ḥammāl maʿa l-banāt), mapping the latter out as an utopian space versus the hostile, anti-erotic and despotic atmosphere of the mall. Al-ʿĀydī’s approach places the mall at the center of global consumer culture, a space of encounter and refuge, away from the aggressive street environment.

Sacred Space Becomes Public Space

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deonnie Moodie
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
First Century ◽  
Tourist Attraction ◽  
Public Interest Litigation ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The Temple

At the turn of the twenty-first century, middle-class men and women formed non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and filed public interest litigation suits (PILs) in order to expand temple space, knock down buildings that block views of Kālīghāṭ’s façade, and remove undesirable materials and populations from its environs. Employing the language of cleanliness and order, they worked (and continue to work) to make Kālīghāṭ a “must-see” tourist attraction. Scholarship has shown that India’s new middle classes—those produced through India’s economic liberalization policies in the 1990s—desire highly visible forms demonstrating their modernity as well as their uniqueness on the international stage of urban space. The example of Kālīghāṭ indicates how India’s new middle classes build on the work of the old middle classes to deploy the temple as emblematic of both their modernity and their Indian-ness. In so doing, they read the idioms of public space onto sacred space.

A Melkite Arabic literary lingua franca from the second half of the first millennium

1994 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Blau
Keyword(s):  
Arabic Language ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
Greek Orthodox ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Arabic Dialects ◽  
Modern Arabic ◽  
Classical Arabic ◽  
The Ideal

After the Islamic conquest, the Greek Orthodox, so-called Melkite ( = Royalist), church fairly early adopted Arabic as its literary language. Their intellectual centres in Syria/Palestine were Jerusalem, along with the monaster ies of Mar Sabas and Mar Chariton in Judea, Edessa and Damascus. A great many Arabic manuscripts stemming from the first millennium, some of them dated, copied at the monastery of Mar Chariton and especially at that of Mar Saba, have been discovered in the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, the only monastery that has not been pillaged and set on fire by the bedouin. These manuscripts are of great importance for the history of the Arabic language. Because Christians were less devoted to the ideal of the ‘arabiyya than their Muslim contemporaries, their writings contain a great many devi ations from classical Arabic, thus enabling us to reconstruct early Neo-Arabic, the predecessor of the modern Arabic dialects, and bridge a gap of over one thousand years in the history of the Arabic language.

A short ethnography of twenty-first century consumers: On retail rage and one-dimensionality

2021 ◽  
pp. 146954052110396
Author(s):  
Kevin P. Bingham
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Culture ◽  
Retail Trade ◽  
First Century ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Unique Position ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Sociological Interpretation ◽  
The Way

This article begins with two central ideas – that feelings of rage appear to be on the increase in present modernity and that one of the main sources of rage is directly linked to consumer culture and the retail experience it fosters. Although retail trade allows twenty-first century individuals to spend their money on material goods and experiences which provide structure and a sense of meaning and belonging, what it also causes is ambivalence, insecurity and anxiety. These are formidable feelings that cause irritation, frustration and anger to gradually fester until it accumulates into something violent that distorts the way an individual thinks, acts and treats other people. With these points in mind, what this article provides is a thorough sociological interpretation of twenty-first century retail rage. Veering away from existing interpretations of rage by drawing on Herbert Marcuse’s analysis and image of a one-dimensional society, what this article explores is the idea that retail experiences turn people into individuals who are bound and controlled by a consumer duty. As I contend, based on my unique position as a researcher turned retail worker, it is this administered, one-dimensional kind of lifestyle that cultivates rage. To support my argument and understand more comprehensively how and why retail breeds frustration and anger, I use a selection of narrative episodes to unpack three key sources of consumer rage in the twenty-first century. These sources have been labelled instantaneity, performativity and unfulfillment.

scholarly journals 明中葉知識體系建構的多元取向：從李夢陽〈刻《戰國策》序〉談起

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (31) ◽  
pp. 171-190
Author(s):  
王昌偉 王昌偉
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Good Case ◽  
Warring States ◽  
The Song Dynasty ◽  
The World ◽  
The Ideal

<p>嘉靖2年（1523），巡按河南的王溱（生卒年不詳）打算刊刻《戰國策》，為此特別請文學復古運動的領導者李夢陽（1473-1530）作序。通過對序文及李夢陽相關著作的細讀，本文旨在說明，從表面看來，李夢陽似乎是以衛道之士的口吻，通過作序的方式批判《戰國策》為畔經離道之書，事實上這篇序文實含有多重視角。要理解李夢陽這篇序文的學術思想史意義，我們必須把它放置在明中葉以還「雜學」或諸子學興起的背景下考慮。跟宋代以來的理學家強調士人學術應該統一在宏大和具普遍意義的「道」之下的傾向不同，明中葉以後的思想家對世界的理解，則是以多元和分別為基礎，強調萬物的分殊和差異。本文將說明，李夢陽序《戰國策》的多重視角，正反映了明代中葉知識界重視多元性和差異性多於普遍性的特點。</p> <p>&nbsp;</p><p>Li Meng-yang (1473-1530), a leader of mid-Ming literary archaist movement, was invited in 1523 by the inspector of Henan Wang Zhen to write a preface for a reprint of the Intrigues of the Warring States that the latter intended to publish. Through a close reading of the preface and Li&rsquo;s other works, this paper argues that while Li seems to have, on the surface, taken a moral high round and castigated the Intrigues for deviating from the orthodox teachings of the Classics, he preface actually encourages the readers to approach the text from multiple perspectives. We have to situate the preface in the context of the rise of &ldquo;miscellaneous learnings&rdquo; and the &ldquo;learnings of the masters&rdquo; in the mid-Ming period in order to appreciate its significance in intellectual history. Departing from the ways the Neo-Confucians since the Song dynasty envisioned literati learning to be a focused pursuit of a grand and universal Way, intellectuals from the mid-Ming onwards began with an assumption of multiplicity and diversity and emphasized disparities among all things. The multiple perspectives that Li Meng-yang exhibits in his preface to the Intrigues is a good case for showing that mid-Ming intellectuals were more inclined to see the world as complex and diverse, rather than to pursue the ideal of universality.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

scholarly journals Government houses as presentation of power and ideology in the Ottoman State: The case of Safranbolu Government House

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 133-145
Author(s):  
Sema Tuba Özmen ◽  
Beyza Onur
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Spatial Structures ◽  
Architectural Style ◽  
Dominant Ideology ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The City ◽  
Ideological Context ◽  
The Ideal

Architecture, which is associated with the practice of producing space, has always rendered the powers and ideologies visible. This study investigates the government houses in the 19th century Ottoman State with regard to the notions of power and ideology and focuses on the Government House of Safranbolu. It is known that, in the specified period, government houses were important ideological interventions to urban space. This study aims to address the ideological context of the Safranbolu Government House, which is positioned with the ideal of the state. Based on this, first, the urban history of Safranbolu was examined. The importance of Safranbolu Government House in the history of the city, its relationship with the city, its ideological message to the city-dwellers and its architectural style were analyzed through a method based on archival research. All government houses of the period are the artifacts of urban-spatial structures and their architectural style as well as a shared ideology. Safranbolu Government House, which is one of the structures symbolizing the Ottoman State, was also built with a similar ideological consideration. Thus, the readability of the dominant ideology through the production style of Safranbolu Government House, one of the final period architectural artifacts of the Ottoman State, was verified.

scholarly journals AN IMPERIAL APOSTLE? ST PAUL, PROTESTANT CONVERSION, AND SOUTH ASIAN CHRISTIANITY

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-130
Author(s):  
SHINJINI DAS
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Intellectual Engagement ◽  
Imperial Ideology ◽  
The One ◽  
The Ideal

AbstractThis article explores the locally specific (re)construction of a biblical figure, the Apostle St Paul, in India, to unravel the entanglement of religion with British imperial ideology on the one hand, and to understand the dynamics of colonial conversion on the other. Over the nineteenth century, evangelical pamphlets and periodicals heralded St Paul as the ideal missionary, who championed conversion to Christianity but within an imperial context: that of the first-century Roman Mediterranean. Through an examination of missionary discourses, along with a study of Indian (Hindu and Islamic) intellectual engagement with Christianity including Bengali convert narratives, this article studies St Paul as a reference point for understanding the contours of ‘vernacular Christianity’ in nineteenth-century India. Drawing upon colonial Christian publications mainly from Bengal, the article focuses on the multiple reconfigurations of Paul: as a crucial mascot of Anglican Protestantism, as a justification of British imperialism, as an ideological resource for anti-imperial sentiments, and as a theological inspiration for Hindu reform and revivalist organization.

Bandits

2015 ◽  
pp. 191-200
Author(s):  
Michael Cooperson
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Classical Arabic ◽  
Moral Questions

This chapter deals primarily with two kinds of stories about bandits (in Arabic, anyone of whom it is said kāna yaqṭa‘u al-ṭarīq). In stories of the first kind, bandits explain why they rob travellers. In stories of the second kind, biographers claim that various ʿAbbāsid figures spent some of their lives as highwaymen. I will argue that the two kinds of reports may productively be read together. Admittedly, this material is too limited in quantity and too self-consciously literary to permit a reliable characterisation of rural unrest during the early ʿAbbāsid period. Even so, a close reading of these reports will allow us to offer some tentative proposals about how banditry was imagined and, more generally, how the various genres of Classical Arabic narrative responded to the legal, ethical and moral questions raised by highway robbery.

Is the Pastoral Ministry Bad for One’s Spiritual Health?

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-52
Author(s):  
Eric Sorenson
Keyword(s):  
Pastoral Ministry ◽  
Spiritual Health ◽  
First Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Vocational Ministry ◽  
History Of ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Church ◽  
Unique Context

It was a universal conviction among the leaders of the ancient church that vocational ministry is attended by certain spiritual hazards that threaten to undo the very soul of the minister. This notion is revived in William Paley’s 1795 sermon, “Dangers Incidental to the Clerical Character.” The pastoral ministry, he warns, is comprised of “dangers inherent to the very nature of our profession.” In this ordination sermon, Paley not only identifies certain spiritual hazards, but he traces their roots to the unique context and responsibilities of daily ministry. A close reading of Paley’s sermon highlights its clear relevance to ministers in the twenty-first century, who, like all ministers throughout the history of the church, are constantly exposed to the spiritual dangers lurking in ministry itself. Such a close reading also reveals practical means by which today’s minister can be constantly vigilant to overcome these dangers.

Sex, Race, and Culture: Constructing Theological Anthropology for the Twenty-First Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 508-529
Author(s):  
Mary Doak
Keyword(s):  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
First Century ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Race And Culture ◽  
Human Embodiment ◽  
The Ideal

Pre-Vatican II theological anthropology focused attention on the exercise of human freedom as embodied in time and oriented to community. Post-Vatican II theology has deepened this trajectory by reflecting on the specific conditions and experiences of human embodiment, as well as the cultural and historical contexts that ground efforts to realize the ideal of persons-in-community. This article explores the contributions of theological anthropologies that take seriously gender, race, history, and culture in theology, and argues for further contemporary, enculturated, and embodied reflections on sin and grace.

Narratology in the Twenty-First Century: The Cognitive Approach to Narrative

PMLA ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 924-930 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Fludernik
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
First Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
New Criticism ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Literary Theories ◽  
The Waves

Literary theory in the twentieth century was heavily influenced by linguistics. The structuralist model that set the waves of literary theories in motion originated in Saussurean linguistics and its Jakobsonian elaborations. One could argue that until the 1980s all literary theory, and all linguistics for that matter, was based on an analysis of langue, or the system of language or literature or text, to the detriment of parole, the practices, contexts, and negotiations of speakers, writers, and readers. The structuralist model, with its theoretical expansion of close-reading practices, already entrenched in the wake of the New Criticism, generalized the frame of mind that was soon to become the bogeyman of poststructuralist and cultural studies attacks. The formula could be summarized as No history, no ethics, no themes, no aesthetics, and no context—period.

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