Antonio de Sosa’s Moors/Moros in ‘Topography of Algiers’

othelloIn Covarrubia’s seventeenth century dictionary Tesoro de La Lengua Castellana O Española, moro (from the Latin Maurus) is defined as “one from the province of Mauritania.” The term is meant to be used pejoratively as in the proverb, “A Moro muerto, gran lanzada” (p.1150). The Real Academia Española offers more than eleven definitions, including the natural border of North Africa and Spain; one who professes the religion of Islam; a Muslim who lived in Spain from the eighth to the fifteenth century; a black mare with a star on the forehead and shoes on one or two limbs; Muslims of Mindanoa and Malaysia; etc. In the Oxford English Dictionary, moor is defined as “originally a native or inhabitant of ancient Mauretania” and “later usually a member of a Muslim people of mixed Berber and Arab descent inhabiting north-western Africa (now mainly present-day Mauritania), who in the eighth century conquered Spain.”

In An Early Modern Dialogue with Islam: Antonio de Sosa’s Topography of Algiers (1612), Sosa devotes an entire chapter—“The Inhabitants and Neighbors of Algiers”—to defining the “Moor” as a category of people among other inhabitants in Algiers, including Jews, Turks and Christians. The rest of the text, however, does not always use the term in the same way; rather, its usage reveals and reproduces the conflation of race, ethnicity and religion in the early modern period.

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Good Violence, Bad Violence

GVBV02242013Written in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Mahmood Mamdani’s 2005 book Good Muslim, BadMuslim historicizes the violence of terrorism. It extricates terrorism from the narrow morality that arises from the convergence of ethics and national interest, and instead locates terrorism “first and foremost as unfinished business of the Cold War.”1 “Good” and “bad” Muslims, terms borrowed from former U.S. President George W. Bush,2 are descriptions not of religious adherence, but of utility to U.S. foreign policy. As yesterday’s allies become today’s antagonists, the labels change to morally denigrate American foes.

Reintroducing history to the violence, the book begins by tracing the broad contours of the relationship between nation-state modernity and violence. Mamdani rejects violence as a pre-modern phenomenon, asserting instead that there is an inextricable relationship between violence and modernity.3 This is the book’s central theoretical framework: violence is political, not cultural.

The first chapter builds on this history of violence, and offers an alternative account of political Islam. It exposes the caricatures of Muslims and Islam that are deployed to provide a moral veneer for expansionist imperialism. The subsequent three chapters offer a chronological account of the violence of U.S. imperialist policies, beginning with post-Vietnam American support for anti-nationalist militancies, and through the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Today’s terrorism, the book asserts, is a direct consequence of these policies. The final chapter of the book offers closing thoughts, exhorting a review of American policies that “consistently seem to erode support and generate opposition.”4

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Decolonizing the Digital

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On February 28th and March 1st 2013, the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University will be hosting its annual graduate conference. Titled “Paradigmatic Conflict and Crisis,” the conference seeks to showcase the work of emerging scholars whose research is concerned with the spaces between conflicting, emerging, and established paradigms, and with new possibilities for our understanding of paradigm as both a discursive formation and a set of practices.

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Digitalization Project Turns a Page in African History

Dr. Livingstone, may not be such the hero we once presumed.
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New digital imaging technology and a team of scholars have recovered David Livingstone’s faded journal entries from the period when the colonial era explorer had lost contact with his European benefactors 140 years ago.

As the introduction of Livingstone’s 1871 Field Diary: A Multispectral Critical Edition states, the digital project “reveals for the first time the original record of a remarkable and traumatic period in the life of David Livingstone, the celebrated British abolitionist, missionary, and explorer of Africa.”

While on an expedition to find the source of the Nile River, Livingstone encountered illness and other types of hardships. He had lost contact with his European suppliers and required the benevolence of traders and locals to survive. His experiences would be later immortalized by Henry Morton Stanley’s dispatches to the New York Herald. The journal materials cover his most challenging crisis, the one that helped encourage the Crown’s crackdown on the slave trade in East Africa and thus, cementing Britain’s dominance in the region.

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How to Read an Image

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My father is an art historian. One of the criticisms I remember him leveling against non-art historians over breakfast was that “x doesn’t know how to read an image.” I had always assumed this was one of those criticisms that don’t really mean anything like: “x totally misrepresents Foucault here” or “x’s discourse is hegemonic.” The past few weeks have given a couple of examples, however, of just how right my father was and how wrong I was. It seems no-one, including myself, really knows how to read an image.

The first is the case of the Swedish Culture Minister and the racist cake. Lena Liljeroth was photographed smiling as she cut into a cake that depicted a racist caricature of a black woman. This has been taken as, at best, a misjudged, ill thought-out stunt and, at worst, a deeply problematic symbol of lingering racism in Swedish society. My first reaction was that it was a provocative post-colonial critique. The head of the cake was replaced by the head of a real person who was screaming with pain throughout the proceedings. My interpretation: Europe has been gleefully cutting up the proverbial African and eating their very flesh oblivious to the human being in pain underneath the surface (vel sim).

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Conflict Heats Up Across the Sahara

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A month ago, few would have suspected that Mali’s government was in line to have its power usurped by its 7,500-man army. President Amadou Toumani Touré, whose present whereabouts are unknown, has been lauded for his democratic governance and was a likely candidate for the ever elusive Mo Ibrahim prize for African leaders who voluntarily cede power. Next month’s elections were to seal the deal for the political career of a man who has played by the rules, since he first took power in a coup in 1991 that earned him the title “soldier of democracy.”

But alas, as many analysts have argued, the series of revolutions that swept the Arab world last year, have officially started to make their presence known on the other side of the Sahara by destabilizing the countries further south. Continue reading Conflict Heats Up Across the Sahara

Lessons from Senegal’s Democracy

senegal_03192012Elections in Senegal have a long history, going back to 1848 when the citizens of Saint-Louis and Gorée were granted universal (male) suffrage. Although limited in scope, this electoral political culture is an important legacy, and this may explain why the breakdown of the electoral process, which many observers predicted, did not happen.

The unconstitutional candidacy of current President Abdoulaye Wade was the key contentious issue, resulting in many days of protest and police repression which cost the lives of around fifteen people. Despite this tension, election day was extremely peaceful and 65% of voters confidently voted against Wade. Continue reading Lessons from Senegal’s Democracy

Is the Most Influential African Intellectual in MESAAS?

African_Intellectual_03032012Professor Mahmood Mamdani the good folks over at Africa is a Country (If you don’t know it, click this link now!) are running an unabashedly inconclusive poll of who might be named the most influential African intellectual alive. One name most of us probably know all too well, Mahmoud Mamdani, is leading the pack so far. With a few days remaining to vote, that may or may not change.

They’ve put together an interesting mix of names, all deserving a word or three. Here’s a brief rundown of the other front runners:

Samir Amin — Trained as an economist and best known for his southern-centered analysis of underdevelopment, de-linking theories of development, and engaged militant activism, this Egyptian intellectual has called Senegal home since the 1980’s. His prolific intellectual output on key political and economic issues is impressive and certainly warrants your attention. Check one of his recent review essays and his vision of the The World We Wish to See.

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