Author: Jack Reynolds File Type: pdf While There Have Been Many Essays devoted to comparing the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty with that of Jacques Derrida, there has been no sustained book-length treatment of these two French philosophers. Additionally, many of the essays presuppose an oppositional relationship between them, and between phenomenology and deconstruction more generally. Jack Reynolds systematically explores their relationship by analyzing each philosopher in terms of two important and related issues - embodiment and alterity. Focusing on areas with which they are not commonly associated (e.g., Derrida on the body and Merleau-Ponty on alterity) makes clear that their work cannot be adequately characterized in a strictly oppositional way. Merleau-Ponty and Derrida Intertwining Embodiment and Alterity proposes the possibility of a Merleau-Ponty-inspired philosophy that does not so avowedly seek to extricate itself from phenomenology, but that also cannot easily be dismissed as simply another instantiation of the metaphysics of presence. Reynolds argues that there are salient ethicopolitical reasons for choosing an alternative that accords greater attention to our embodied situation. As the first full-leng **

Author: Fozia Bora File Type: pdf In the encyclopaedic fourteenth century, Arabic chronicles produced in Mamluk cities bore textual witness to both recent and bygone history, including that of the Fatimids (9691171CE). For in two centuries of rule over Egypt and North Africa, the Ismaili Fatimids had left few self-generated historiographical records. Instead, it fell to Ayyubid and Mamluk historians to represent the dynasty to posterity. This monograph sets out to explain how later historians preserved, interpreted and re-organised earlier textual sources.Mamluk historians engaged in a sophisticated archival practice within historiography, rather than uncritically reproducing earlier reports. In a new diplomatic edition, translation and analysis of Mamluk historian Ibn al-Furats account of late Fatimid rule in The History of Dynasties and Kings , a widely known but barely copied universal chronicle of Islamic history, Fozia Bora traces the survival of historiographical narratives from Fatimid Egypt. Through Ibn al-Furats text, Bora demonstrates archivality as the heuristic key to Mamluk historical writing.This book is essential for all scholars working on the written culture and history of the medieval Islamic world, and paves the way for a more nuanced reading of pre-modern Arabic chronicles and of the epistemic environment in which they were produced.Review Boras mapping of medieval Islamic Egyptian historiography is a tour de force. Through a razor-sharp analysis of primary and secondary literature, she traces the reception of Ibn al-Furats writings through the broad sweep of late Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk historical and archival traditions. She navigates the reader through the rich intricacies of the shaping of these historiographical traditions, while also educating about their value and relevance for our changing times. Dr Shainool Jiwa, Head of Constituency Studies & Senior Research Associate, The Institute of Ismaili Studies.The present monograph is a very important contribution to what is now termed global medieval studies and, of course, the cultural history of the Islamicate world of the pre-modern era. Fozia Boras book should be read by all who are interested in understanding modes of knowledge production, creating narratives of the past and what constitutes an archive. She also asks very pertinent questions about how we approach pre-modern texts and as such this book should be really read by anybody interested in epistemological issues in medieval studies. Emilia Jamroziak, Professor of Medieval Religious History and Director of the Institute for Medieval Studies, University of LeedsIn this carefully researched book, Fozia Bora achieves something remarkable major advances not just in our understanding of Fatimid historiography and history, but more broadly in the sociology of classical Islamic scholarship. Empirically based and theoretically ambitious, it restores and interrogates narratives that had been lost to history. Chase F. Robinson, Distinguished Professor of History at City University of New York and Director of Smithsonians Freer and Sackler Galleries About the Author Fozia Bora is a lecturer in Middle Eastern History at the University of Leeds, where she is also the director of postgraduate research in Arabic, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. She received her DPhil from the University of Oxford and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Cambridge Muslim College. She has published in peer-reviewed journals and was recently awarded the Royal Asiatic Societys Staunton Prize for outstanding work by an early-career scholar.

Author: Michael Löwy File Type: pdf

Author: Anna Mansson McGinty File Type: pdf While Islam has become a controversial topic in the West, a growing number of Westerners find powerful meaning in Islam. Becoming Muslim is an ethnographic study based on in-depth interviews with Swedish and American women who have converted to Islam. Proceeding from the womens life-stories, the author explores the appeal of Islam to some Western women and the personal meaning assigned to the religion. While conversion is often perceived as entailing a dramatic change in worldview, the womens experiences point to an equally important continuity. Notably, the conversion is triggered by particular personal ideas and quests, and within Islam the women can further explore already salient thoughts. The work appeals to students in the fields of anthropology, religious studies, psychology, and womens studies, interested in identity, conversion, and gender.