Feminism in the House of Anthropology

Although early feminist insights about reflexivity and fieldwork relations have become core tenets of anthropological theories, feminism itself has been marginalized in anthropology. This review examines feminist contributions to American cultural anthropology since the 1990s across four areas of scholarship: the anthropology of science and medicine, political anthropology, economic anthropology, and ethnography as writing and genre. Treating feminist anthropology as a traveling theory capable of addressing critical social problems beyond gender, this article aims not merely to recredit feminism in anthropology, but also to show its potential to transform anthropology into an antiracist, decolonial, and abolitionist project.

Gramsci in the Postcolony: Hegemony and Anticolonialism in Nasserist Egypt

This article traces Gramsci's concept of hegemony as it travels from Southern Italy to Egypt, arguing that the concept ‘stretches’, following Fanon, through an encounter with the nexus of capitalism and (post-)colonialism. I explore a reading of Gramsci's concepts in a postcolonial context, paying special attention to colonialism and anticolonialism as constitutive of the absence or presence of hegemony. Through an exploration of the Nasserist project in Egypt – the only instance of hegemony in modern Egyptian history – I show how colonialism and anticolonialism were central to the formation of Nasserist hegemony. Drawing on Edward Said, I look at two particular aspects of hegemony as a traveling theory to bring to light some theoretical entanglements that arise when Gramsci travels, in turn highlighting the continuing theoretical potential thinking through such entanglements, as well as of thinking with Gramsci in Egypt and the broader postcolonial world.

Lo irreal y lo experimental en “la nueva novela egipcia” y “la luz nueva” y sus vínculos con Borges

En dos contextos socioculturales muy diferentes, aparecen, casi al mismo tiempo, dos corrientes de novelas que tienen muchos vínculos con Jorge Luis Borges y que, según nuestra hipótesis, tienen además muchos puntos en común. La primera es la española “luz nueva”, y la segunda es la egipcia “nueva novela” o al-riwāya al-ŷadīda. Ambas corrientes, como pretendemos argumentar en este estudio, escriben una novela posmodernista e irreal, de imaginación fresca y de elevada dimensión metafísica, en las que se introduce una gran experimentación formal y fragmentación. El referente de estas corrientes es el escritor argentino, en cuya producción narrativa tiene una relevante repercusión el acervo cultural árabe. Este estudio arranca de la “Traveling theory ”, de Edward Said, en la cual el teórico palestino argumenta que las ideas viajan de una cultura a otra, de un pueblo a otro y de un escritor a otro, pero que en cada contexto nuevo se redefinen las mismas ideas. Aplicando esta reflexión, investigamos los vínculos, repercusiones, correspondencias y afinidades entre una corriente y otra, teniendo en consideración que los escritores de una corriente no tienen contacto con los de la otra.

Toward a Contrapuntal Double Critique of Colonial Modernity

While some postcolonial critics have championed Abdelkebir Khatibi’s notion of “double critique” over Edward Said’s method of “contrapuntal reading” (Lionnet), this conclusion argues for a novel way of combining these two approaches. Khatibi’s elaboration of the intersign and his deployment of the intersemiotic in his work illustrate a way of reading both the positive and negative signs of the decay of colonial modernity, while also gauging the spaces and intervals between them. Saidian contrapuntal reading allows critics to account for the historical sedimentation of knowledge and how it is built up in specific languages but not in others. Contrapuntal double critique, then, can deconstruct the oppositions constitutive of the field of imperialist discourse without disabling oppositional, anti-imperialist critique. The conclusion outlines Khatibi’s transcolonial Maghrebi traveling theory, which is explored in his writing on Jean Genet and in the explication of his own novel Un Été à Stockholm. It ends by questioning the category of “francophone literature” as a monolingual, self-contained version of comparative literature.