Articles by Claire Gallien
Islamic Studies Journal (Brill), 2024
Abstract
Academic studies of Islamic epistemology have predominantly focused on the classical and... more Abstract
Academic studies of Islamic epistemology have predominantly focused on the classical and post-classical periods and neglected works in the organization of sciences (tartīb al-ʿulūm) genre from the early-modern period. At that time, the field had already developed several models, including one inspired by Aristotle, the encyclopedic template, and the pedagogical ordering of sciences. These models have been studied by scholars in the history of philosophy and science, history of religion, as well as pedagogy and learning. However, scholars in Divinity faculties have long ignored these works, leading to an inadequate treatment of their theological foundation and function. Bringing theology to the fore, this article offers an appreciation of how theological principles and epistemic holism have framed and shaped the contours of the “organization of sciences” genre from the early-modern period onwards. The article focuses on al-Qānūn fī Aḥkām al-ʿIlm written by Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan b. Masʿūd al-Yūsī (d. 1102 AH / 1691 CE) and explains how the interdependent, cohesive, and holistic dimensions of al-Yūsī’s organization of the sciences is directly derived from Islamic theology. More specifically, the article explores the unique structural role of the tri-partite definition of the religion (dīn) as “faith, religion, and spiritual excellence (imān-islām-iḥsān)” in al-Yūsī’s organization of the sciences and the function of tawḥīd in his conception of knowledge.
Keywords:
Islamic epistemology; Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan b. Masʿūd al-Yūsī (d. 1102 AH / 1691 CE); tartīb al-ʿulūm; tripartite organization of the sciences (imān-islām-iḥsān); epistemic holism; tawḥīd
https://brill.com/view/journals/isj/aop/article-10.1163-29502276-20240016/article-10.1163-29502276-20240016.xml
religions, 2024
Anyone specialising in Islamic theology at a Western university is aware of the fact that their t... more Anyone specialising in Islamic theology at a Western university is aware of the fact that their teaching and research will either be recognised by the institution as falling under the category of “Islamic Studies” or “Divinity”. In the first case, Islam is predominantly considered a cultural phenomenon and studied as such. In the second case, for reasons that have to do with what Marianne Moyaert in her latest book Christian Imaginations of the Religious Other has conceptualised as “Christian normativity” and the “religionisation” of other faiths, Islamic theology is de facto understood as Islamic speculative theology (kalām). In both cases, the understanding of how Islam theorises and practices theology is significantly restricted, when not altogether ignored. This article unpacks the genealogy of the secular version of a Christian epistemic framework that dominates the study of Islamic theology in the West and engages with the issues related to its application in the field of Islamic theology. In doing so, it opens a critical space for the investigation of Islamic literary productions as both dissensual and consensual theological terrains, through the analysis of the poetry of two theologians and polymathic scholars from two different periods of Islamic history, namely Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 632/1235) and Sidi Muḥammad Ibn al-Ḥabīb (d. 1390/1971).
Keywords:
Islamic theology; Islamic poetic; hermeneutic; Islamic epistemology; kalām; patterns of religionisation; dereligionising the study of Islam; Marianne Moyaert; Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 632/1235); Sidi Muḥammad Ibn al-Ḥabīb (d. 1390/1971)
On the contemporary academic scene, whether one looks into seminar programmes or handbooks, the d... more On the contemporary academic scene, whether one looks into seminar programmes or handbooks, the discourse on Islamic theology is reduced to ‘ilm al-kalām, due in part to the dissociation of literary productions from an underlying theological and ethical framework in the modern European episteme. This partition is alien to the Islamic tradition, in which the discipline of speculative theology and dogmatics not just coexisted but was consubstantial with other rich forms of inquiry into the divine and into human relations with the divine. Our special issue aims to address Islamic theology beyond the specific discipline of ilm al-kalām, enquiring into the translation of theological discourse between genres and forms, the role of poetics in the formulation of specific theological points and debates. A key concern for this issue is to locate theological engagement beyond the intellect, by considering how literature brings the other human faculties, such as imagination, intuition, emotion, and sense perception, into play when approaching the Divine...
Philological Encounters , 2023
PLEASE CONTACT THE AUTHOR IF YOU DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO THE ARTICLE AND WISH TO READ IT
Abstract
... more PLEASE CONTACT THE AUTHOR IF YOU DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO THE ARTICLE AND WISH TO READ IT
Abstract
This article on the place of the Qurʾān and Islamic theology in Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān constitutes a study in textual citation and excision articulated in two main parts. The first part of the article studies the interconnections between philosophy and theology in Ibn Ṭufayl’s (d. 581/1185) life and the references to the Qurʾān and to Islamic theology in his Risālat Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān. In the second part, I track the engagement with the Qurʾān and Islamic theology in the early-modern Latin and English variants of the tale. The article provides a detailed study of the Qurʾanic passages in translation, and reflects on practices of citation, excision and significant paratextual reorganisations. The article argues that the case is less one where the Qurʾān and Islamic theology are excised from the tale and vanish from view, than one where the tale is ‘de-Islamised’ so that it can serve intra-Christian and orientalist interests. The issue resides in making the Qurʾān and Islam epistemically dispensable and in disabling them as hermeneutic interlocutors to be reckoned with in a theological and philosophical debate.
Contents:
Interconnections between philosophy and theology in Ibn Ṭufayl’s life and in the Risālat Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān
Esoteric philosophy as frame-story
Qurʾanic markers in the tale
Pococke’s Manuscripts and Marginalia Annotations
Reading Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān and the Qurʾān Simultaneously
From Arabic Manuscript to Latin Print
The three English Translations Compared
George KEITH (d. 1716)
George ASHWELL (d. 1694)
Simon Ockley (d. 1720)
Concluding Remarks
This study has shown a variety of editorial and philological treatments of the Qurʾān and Islamic theology in the translations of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān published in Latin and English between the mid-seventeenth and early eighteenth century, including the presence of a new anthropological interest in Ockley’s translation. Beyond these variations, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān constitutes what I called a case of ‘de-Islamisation’ of literature where the Qurʾān is parsed from non-scriptural writing and, in particular here, fictional and philosophical writing. Contrary to other circulations of the tale, for instance, amongst medieval Jewish scholars, the Qurʾanic frame of reading is lifted so that the tale may serve other purposes specific to intra-Christian debates and polemics.
To be sure, literature is not meant to stay in place; rather texts, words, and ideas have always circulated beyond borders, be they religious, linguistic, or national. The study of philological, citational, and editorial practices is here fundamental in that it allows us, as in the case study of the Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān’s early English translations, to measure the epistemic distances covered when texts circulate and to understand how they are reshaped in circulation. For instance, here, the material and epistemic selection and separation of the Qurʾān from philosophy is adverse to the ways in which Islamic literature functions, where scripture serves as a foundational discourse from which scientific disciplines, be they grammar, rhetoric, law, philosophy, or poetry may develop In measuring these distances, readers become more acutely aware of their own epistemic positionalities and able to recognize that default modes of reading and thinking are never self-evident nor universally valid.
Suggested Citation: Gallien, Claire. “The Place of the Qurʾān and Islamic Theology in Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān and its Early English Receptions: A Study in Textual Citation and Excision", Philological Encounters 8, 4 (2023): 305-363, doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-bja10052
MEMOrients, 2023
A blog series in 4 installments https://memorients.com/members/dr-claire-gallien
Collecte Aléatoire de Fragments Étrangers, la revue des « autres » littératures Double sens, doub... more Collecte Aléatoire de Fragments Étrangers, la revue des « autres » littératures Double sens, double jeu, double café, double tour, pour son numéro 4, la revue CAFÉ part en quête de doublons. Derrière les apparences et dans le double fond se cachent l'agent double, le trouble double de l'écrivain. N'hésitez pas à nous proposer des récits à double entrée et à double tranchant… Quels textes ? • Des textes traduits depuis des langues le plus souvent sous-représentées dans l'édition française et dans les librairies : les langues minorées dites « rares », « dialectales », « régionales » ou de « tradition orale ». Presque toutes, donc, sauf les quelques langues « dominantes » d'Occident. • Des textes littéraires, quel que soit leur genre (romans graphiques et bandes dessinées sont aussi les bienve-nus), de quelques lignes à une quarantaine de feuillets (1500 signes espaces comprises/feuillet). La puissance du texte, sa portée et son originalité sont aussi importants que le rapport au thème que nous invitons à approcher avec finesse. • Des textes inédits en français, il vous faudra sinon motiver votre projet de retraduction. • Des textes dont les droits sont disponibles : il est essentiel de vous en assurer au plus tôt et de contacter la mai-son d'édition du texte original pour vous renseigner et/ou obtenir l'autorisation de publication, démarche que nous pouvons appuyer si besoin est. Qui publions-nous ? Nous publions le travail de traducteurs et traductrices de tous les horizons, qu'ils débutent ou qu'elles possèdent déjà une solide expérience. Nous réservons une large place aux jeunes traducteurs et traductrices, dans une démarche de formation et afin de faire de la revue un tremplin. Publier dans la revue implique d'adhérer à l'association et d'avoir envie de s'impliquer dans son projet, celui de traduire et de publier collectivement des textes littéraires. Proposer un texte ? Envoyez-nous la traduction d'un extrait significatif de votre texte accompagné d'une note de lecture présentant l'oeuvre, son auteur, le lien avec le thème, ainsi qu'un développement où vous exposerez votre vision de la traduc-tion littéraire et la façon dont elle résonne dans votre traduction. Traduire, oui mais comment ? Nous défendons une certaine position sur la traduction littéraire. Publier dans la revue implique de s'y recon-naître et de s'y inscrire. Nous vous invitons à prendre connaissance de ce positionnement ainsi que de notre ligne éditoriale avant de proposer un texte : www.revuecafe.fr Nous accorderons une attention toute particulière aux textes permettant de découvrir des voix méconnues, un espace en marge ou un pan passé sous silence de la littérature étrangère.
Littérature, 2021
Pour une approche multiscalaire des lieux dévastés : Décharge, île, ligne d’aridité Résumé Face à... more Pour une approche multiscalaire des lieux dévastés : Décharge, île, ligne d’aridité Résumé Face à une crise environnementale de plus en plus aiguë à l’échelle planétaire, un grand nombre de créations littéraires et artistiques prennent en charge la figuration d’espaces dévastés. Dans notre article, nous pensons en particulier à la décharge (Lucie Taïeb), l’île (Chloé Chaudet), et la ligne d’aridité (Claire Gallien). Notre approche critique vise à lier l’étude locale de la dévastation dans ses représentations littéraires et une approche multiscalaire des lieux dévastés. Notre démarche permet ainsi de repenser les géographies littéraires selon une perspective transculturelle tout en évitant l’écueil d’une pensée trop vague et décontextualisée de la mondialisation. À cet égard, la littérature s’avère un lieu privilégié de mise en relation et en tension des multiples échelles de la dévastation.
For a multiscalar approach of devastated places : Landfill, island, aridity line Abstract Faced with an increasingly acute global environmental crisis, a large number of literary and artistic creations take charge of representing devastated spaces. Our article analyses in particular the devastated spaces of the landfill (Lucie Taïeb), the island (Chloé Chaudet), and the aridity line (Claire Gallien). Our critical line aims at linking a geographically specific study of the literary representations of local devastation with a multiscalar interpretation of devastated places. Our approach makes it possible to think out literary geographies seen from a transcultural perspective and, at the same time, to avoid the pitfalls of a loose and decontextualized analysis of globalization. In this regard, literature turns out to be a privileged place to connect and switch on the multiple scales of devastation.
Littérature, 2021
Le lecteur est convié à une promenade litt éraire dont le thème est la gastronomie dans tous ses ... more Le lecteur est convié à une promenade litt éraire dont le thème est la gastronomie dans tous ses états. Cett e anthologie nous permet ainsi de revisiter les grands textes d'auteurs tels que Brillat-Savarin bien sûr mais d'autres auteurs moins att endus, tels Baudelaire, Georges Pérec ou Marguerite Duras. Le sommaire, inti tulé « Plan de table », respecte le déroulé d'un repas, des mises en bouche au dessert sans oublier les boissons et autres spiritueux qui viennent agrémenter les diff érents services et pour lesquels les deux auteurs ont convié de grands écrivains : Proust, Alphonse Allais, Boris Vian et son célèbre « pianocktail » croisé dans L'écume des jours. Un livre savoureux à déguster sans modérati on...
Revue de Littérature Comparée, 2020
Titre court : De « l’humanisme intégral » à « l’humanisme démocratique »
Résumé :
Le présent... more Titre court : De « l’humanisme intégral » à « l’humanisme démocratique »
Résumé :
Le présent article examine la réception de Schwab dans le domaine anglophone, d’après la préface qu’Edward Said publie pour la traduction anglaise de La Renaissance orientale en 1984. La lecture enthousiaste de Said, auteur d’une critique virulente de l’orientalisme, pour Schwab, apologiste de la renaissance orientaliste, parait paradoxale. Je défends l’hypothèse que le rapprochement entre Said et Schwab se joue moins au niveau de l’orientalisme qu’autour de l’enjeu de l’humanisme, « intégral » chez Schwab et « démocratique » chez Said. Si l’on tient compte du panorama académique qui est celui de Said dans les années 1970-1980, et l’engagement de l’intellectuel pour la critique philologique, la pensée de l’affiliation, et la question de l’humanisme démocratique, le rapprochement paraît beaucoup moins incongru. Mon article propose une étude du lien qui unit Said à Schwab précisément au-delà de l’orientalisme.
English title: Concerning Edward Said’s Preface to The Oriental Renaissance (trans. 1984) by Raymond Schwab : From « Integral Humanism » to « Democratic Humanism »
Short title: From « Integral Humanism » to « Democratic Humanism »
Summary:
This article examines Schwab's reception in the English-speaking world, based on the preface that Edward Said published for the English translation of The Eastern Renaissance in 1984. Said’s, otherwise known as the author of a virulent critique of Orientalism, enthusiastic reading of an unapologetically apolitical and heroic version of the orientalist renaissance seems paradoxical to say the least. I contend that the rapprochement between Said and Schwab occurs less at the level of Orientalism than around the issue of humanism, whether one calls it “integral” with Schwab or “democratic” with Said. I argue that if we take into account Said’s academic background in the 1970s and 1980s, his intellectual commitment to philological criticism, the concept of affiliation, and the question of democratic humanism, the connection seems much less incongruous. This article delves into the Said-Schwab connection beyond orientalism.
Revue de Littérature Comparée , 2020
PSA Newsletter #25, 2020
In my contribution, I talk a bit more about late developments in the French context, where decolo... more In my contribution, I talk a bit more about late developments in the French context, where decolonial thinking, and postcolonial thinking to a certain extent, are regularly disparaged, denigrated, and attacked by the white secularist elite for dividing/breaking the Republic, for their “Islamic leftism” and the danger it poses to the French laicité, and now for being mired in neo-liberalism. I argue that far from being soluble in neo-liberal waters, these decentred epistemic proposals are not so much creating the dents in the system – that is arguably more of the role of the postcolonial field – than occupying them. I talk about “joyful militancy” and return to the massive mobilization and strike actions before the COVID lockdown against the new reforms for the privatization of universities and in defense of public services. I say and repeat that postcolonial and decolonial praxis are here to clear spaces for multiple and different knowledge systems to grow and I return to the crucial question of pedagogies, whose purpose is not to secure the reproduction of the system but to make it accountable.
Alif, 2020
This article presents a critical survey that maps out the development and reception of the decolo... more This article presents a critical survey that maps out the development and reception of the decolonial turn in Western and French aca-demia. It traces its genealogical foundations, its points of overlap with and departure from postcolonial studies; illustrates the theoretical contributions of its founding figures and discusses its limitations in relation to its own conceptual blind spots and the neo-liberal context and contemporary regime of coloniality which restrict its development [...] After mapping out the genealogies and interventions of the field, the article offers case studies of its reception in the Republic of South Africa, the UK, and particularly France, where it was first introduced by racialized activist groups. A decolonial literature has emerged in French thanks to academic journals such as Cahiers des Amériques Latines, Mouvements, Multitudes, and Tumultes, and to the publishing house La Découverte. Despite its circulation in English and in translation, the field has met much resistance both inside and outside universities. For instance, Its presence continues to depend on the commitment of specific individuals organizing seminars and workshops, but not on any official program. In this article, I argue that the non-reception of decolonial studies, ranging from careless dismissal to violent rejection amongst conservatives and secularists alike, should be understood in the context of systemic racism and Islamophobia in France, and should also be related to the precedent of postcolonial studies, which have met with a strong opposition, especially in the social sciences.
Dans ce portrait d’Arundhati Roy, je m’intéresse tout particulièrement à ses essais et à la « mét... more Dans ce portrait d’Arundhati Roy, je m’intéresse tout particulièrement à ses essais et à la « méthode » Roy d’une écriture pratiquant échos thématiques et formels entre fiction et non-fiction et nouant enjeux locaux et globaux. L’article analyse les difficultés liées à la position de Roy en tant que militante appartenant de naissance à la caste privilégiée brahmane et occupant par défaut une place parmi l’élite culturelle indienne écrivant essentiellement en anglais. Aussi, dans ce portrait, je m’emploie à analyser les réceptions globales et locales de l’auteure. Cette position soulève le problème du monopole de la parole critique et militante par l’élite. Au-delà d’un débat autour des questions de légitimité de la parole, les essais de Roy nous rappellent à la nécessité d’une distinction entre militantisme global, auquel elle appartient pleinement, et militantisme spécifique, qu’elle observe, documente, relaie et soutient de l’extérieur, mais aussi à la nécessité de leur convergences et jonctions.
I. Essais au bord de la fiction
II. Du local au global: engagements
III. Du global vers le local: ambiguités en controverses
Où il est question de DalitCamera, du mouvement #MacronGoBack et aussi de la littérature comme abri: abri en situation de violence et censure politiques; abri aussi lorsqu’elle se donne pour vocation d’imaginer d’autres configurations plus justes, accueillantes, attentives et bienveillantes du monde.
Translation Studies, 2019
This article focuses on the first translations of Sanskrit literature into English in the late ei... more This article focuses on the first translations of Sanskrit literature into English in the late eighteenth century and how they can be contrasted with pre-existing cultures of translation in India, and in particular with Mughal precedents. Following a brief survey of Sanskrit and Persian theories of translation, the article offers a study of British reconfigurations of Indian literatures in translation and highlights British orientalists' tendencies to either disavow or reject their reliance on Indian literature in Persian. This move towards absenting Indo-Persian precedents and presenting English translations as new, essentially distinct, and superior created a symbolic space where English could challenge and replace a Persian culture of translation, projecting British colonial rule as the new dominant force dislodging the Mughals in India.
Etudes anglaises, 2019
This article uses travel literature to South America published in the 1710s and Daniel Defoe's es... more This article uses travel literature to South America published in the 1710s and Daniel Defoe's essays, journalism, and correspondence to reinterpret the presence and depiction of Africa and South America, the Atlantic and the South Sea in Robinson Crusoe. It unbinds geography from narrative and uncovers economic and colonial territories and networks that are not mapped or are kept hidden in the plot. This recovered geography intertwines territories which are diegetically constructed as discrete and it develops a line of narration that may support, complement , displace, or subvert the organization and function of space in the plot. This geo-critical approach allows a fresh contrapuntal reading of Robinson Crusoe that recalls the ties binding the novel to capitalism, slavery, and colonisation.
Cet article réinterprète la présence et les représentations de l'Afrique, de l'Amérique du Sud, de l'Atlantique, et des mers du Sud dans Robinson Crusoé à partir de la littérature de voyage vers l'Amérique du Sud publiée dans les années 1710 et les lettres, essais et articles de presse de Daniel Defoe. L'étude se donne pour objectif de libérer la géographie de la diégèse afin de recouvrer les territoires et réseaux économiques et coloniaux qui ne sont pas cartographiés par le récit ou sont volon-tairement cachés. Une fois dévoilée, cette géographie permet de relier des espaces construits comme séparés dans l'imaginaire du récit. Elle tisse sa propre narration qui peut renforcer, compléter mais aussi déplacer ou subvertir la manière dont le récit organise et pense l'espace. L'approche géo-critique développée ici permet une lecture de Robinson Crusoé en contre-point, qui rappelle le lien existant entre le roman, le capitalisme, l'esclavage et la colonisation.
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, , 2018
In Postcolonial Asylum, David Farrier explains why refugee experiences have been considered as a ... more In Postcolonial Asylum, David Farrier explains why refugee experiences have been considered as a “scandal” for postcolonial studies, but also how they have become central to the field, insofar as they reflect the violence and unevenness of the current world order. If geography, political philosophy and law have analysed current “refugee crises”, the literature and arts produced by or about forcefully displaced people have remained understudied. This article affirms that postcolonial theory, precisely because of its situation at the crossroads between social sciences and humanities, offers a unique platform from where to study refugee literature and arts. It also argues that its enduring impact lies in its extraterritoriality, i.e. its capacity to interrogate dominant literary histories defined along national borders, frustrate unilingual visions of national languages and individual conceptions of authorship, and inspire seminal “turbulence” in artistic, critical, and academic practices.
To cite this article: Claire Gallien (2018) Forcing displacement: The postcolonial interventions of refugee literature and arts, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 54:6, 735-750, DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2018.1551268
Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 54.6, 2018
Introduction
To cite this article: Claire Gallien (2018) “Refugee Literature”: What postcoloni... more Introduction
To cite this article: Claire Gallien (2018) “Refugee Literature”: What postcolonial theory has to say, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 54:6, 721-726, DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2018.1555206
Journal of Commonwealth Studies, 2019
Abstract
This article focuses on the literary productions in prose and verse by or related to Mu... more Abstract
This article focuses on the literary productions in prose and verse by or related to Muslim Guantánamo detainees. They are redacted documents directly written or translated into English. The purpose of this essay is to read “terrorist” literature para-doxically and argue that US authorities may be right in claiming that it represents a “national security threat”, but not in the meaning initially purveyed. Indeed, marked by the black bars of redaction, the literature eloquently displays the “terror” of state violence. Integrating redactions into the narrating process and exposing what happens in black sites give detainees’ texts the power, albeit precarious, to break the hegemonic discourse of the state and undermine its monopoly over representations of “terrorism”. The article also discusses the danger of interpreting these texts as mere responses to state violence, to failing justice systems, and democracies. It shows how their subjection to official redaction, editorial rewriting, and to the “forensic” imperative is real but it also delves into the literariness of these texts and their literary interventions. It is precisely by reactivating literary connections and intervening in existing Arabic and Pashto poetic traditions that they escape the physical and imaginary confines of Guantánamo and achieve liberation.
Content List
1. Abstract
2. Obliterating a voice: What happens in the black of redaction
3. Regaining a voice: Can the terrorist speak?
4. Finding a voice: Writing beyond the imperative and reconnecting with tradition
5. Conclusion
6. Notes
7. References
Commonwealth Essays and Studies, 2017
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Articles by Claire Gallien
Academic studies of Islamic epistemology have predominantly focused on the classical and post-classical periods and neglected works in the organization of sciences (tartīb al-ʿulūm) genre from the early-modern period. At that time, the field had already developed several models, including one inspired by Aristotle, the encyclopedic template, and the pedagogical ordering of sciences. These models have been studied by scholars in the history of philosophy and science, history of religion, as well as pedagogy and learning. However, scholars in Divinity faculties have long ignored these works, leading to an inadequate treatment of their theological foundation and function. Bringing theology to the fore, this article offers an appreciation of how theological principles and epistemic holism have framed and shaped the contours of the “organization of sciences” genre from the early-modern period onwards. The article focuses on al-Qānūn fī Aḥkām al-ʿIlm written by Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan b. Masʿūd al-Yūsī (d. 1102 AH / 1691 CE) and explains how the interdependent, cohesive, and holistic dimensions of al-Yūsī’s organization of the sciences is directly derived from Islamic theology. More specifically, the article explores the unique structural role of the tri-partite definition of the religion (dīn) as “faith, religion, and spiritual excellence (imān-islām-iḥsān)” in al-Yūsī’s organization of the sciences and the function of tawḥīd in his conception of knowledge.
Keywords:
Islamic epistemology; Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan b. Masʿūd al-Yūsī (d. 1102 AH / 1691 CE); tartīb al-ʿulūm; tripartite organization of the sciences (imān-islām-iḥsān); epistemic holism; tawḥīd
https://brill.com/view/journals/isj/aop/article-10.1163-29502276-20240016/article-10.1163-29502276-20240016.xml
Keywords:
Islamic theology; Islamic poetic; hermeneutic; Islamic epistemology; kalām; patterns of religionisation; dereligionising the study of Islam; Marianne Moyaert; Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 632/1235); Sidi Muḥammad Ibn al-Ḥabīb (d. 1390/1971)
Abstract
This article on the place of the Qurʾān and Islamic theology in Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān constitutes a study in textual citation and excision articulated in two main parts. The first part of the article studies the interconnections between philosophy and theology in Ibn Ṭufayl’s (d. 581/1185) life and the references to the Qurʾān and to Islamic theology in his Risālat Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān. In the second part, I track the engagement with the Qurʾān and Islamic theology in the early-modern Latin and English variants of the tale. The article provides a detailed study of the Qurʾanic passages in translation, and reflects on practices of citation, excision and significant paratextual reorganisations. The article argues that the case is less one where the Qurʾān and Islamic theology are excised from the tale and vanish from view, than one where the tale is ‘de-Islamised’ so that it can serve intra-Christian and orientalist interests. The issue resides in making the Qurʾān and Islam epistemically dispensable and in disabling them as hermeneutic interlocutors to be reckoned with in a theological and philosophical debate.
Contents:
Interconnections between philosophy and theology in Ibn Ṭufayl’s life and in the Risālat Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān
Esoteric philosophy as frame-story
Qurʾanic markers in the tale
Pococke’s Manuscripts and Marginalia Annotations
Reading Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān and the Qurʾān Simultaneously
From Arabic Manuscript to Latin Print
The three English Translations Compared
George KEITH (d. 1716)
George ASHWELL (d. 1694)
Simon Ockley (d. 1720)
Concluding Remarks
This study has shown a variety of editorial and philological treatments of the Qurʾān and Islamic theology in the translations of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān published in Latin and English between the mid-seventeenth and early eighteenth century, including the presence of a new anthropological interest in Ockley’s translation. Beyond these variations, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān constitutes what I called a case of ‘de-Islamisation’ of literature where the Qurʾān is parsed from non-scriptural writing and, in particular here, fictional and philosophical writing. Contrary to other circulations of the tale, for instance, amongst medieval Jewish scholars, the Qurʾanic frame of reading is lifted so that the tale may serve other purposes specific to intra-Christian debates and polemics.
To be sure, literature is not meant to stay in place; rather texts, words, and ideas have always circulated beyond borders, be they religious, linguistic, or national. The study of philological, citational, and editorial practices is here fundamental in that it allows us, as in the case study of the Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān’s early English translations, to measure the epistemic distances covered when texts circulate and to understand how they are reshaped in circulation. For instance, here, the material and epistemic selection and separation of the Qurʾān from philosophy is adverse to the ways in which Islamic literature functions, where scripture serves as a foundational discourse from which scientific disciplines, be they grammar, rhetoric, law, philosophy, or poetry may develop In measuring these distances, readers become more acutely aware of their own epistemic positionalities and able to recognize that default modes of reading and thinking are never self-evident nor universally valid.
Suggested Citation: Gallien, Claire. “The Place of the Qurʾān and Islamic Theology in Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān and its Early English Receptions: A Study in Textual Citation and Excision", Philological Encounters 8, 4 (2023): 305-363, doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-bja10052
For a multiscalar approach of devastated places : Landfill, island, aridity line Abstract Faced with an increasingly acute global environmental crisis, a large number of literary and artistic creations take charge of representing devastated spaces. Our article analyses in particular the devastated spaces of the landfill (Lucie Taïeb), the island (Chloé Chaudet), and the aridity line (Claire Gallien). Our critical line aims at linking a geographically specific study of the literary representations of local devastation with a multiscalar interpretation of devastated places. Our approach makes it possible to think out literary geographies seen from a transcultural perspective and, at the same time, to avoid the pitfalls of a loose and decontextualized analysis of globalization. In this regard, literature turns out to be a privileged place to connect and switch on the multiple scales of devastation.
Résumé :
Le présent article examine la réception de Schwab dans le domaine anglophone, d’après la préface qu’Edward Said publie pour la traduction anglaise de La Renaissance orientale en 1984. La lecture enthousiaste de Said, auteur d’une critique virulente de l’orientalisme, pour Schwab, apologiste de la renaissance orientaliste, parait paradoxale. Je défends l’hypothèse que le rapprochement entre Said et Schwab se joue moins au niveau de l’orientalisme qu’autour de l’enjeu de l’humanisme, « intégral » chez Schwab et « démocratique » chez Said. Si l’on tient compte du panorama académique qui est celui de Said dans les années 1970-1980, et l’engagement de l’intellectuel pour la critique philologique, la pensée de l’affiliation, et la question de l’humanisme démocratique, le rapprochement paraît beaucoup moins incongru. Mon article propose une étude du lien qui unit Said à Schwab précisément au-delà de l’orientalisme.
English title: Concerning Edward Said’s Preface to The Oriental Renaissance (trans. 1984) by Raymond Schwab : From « Integral Humanism » to « Democratic Humanism »
Short title: From « Integral Humanism » to « Democratic Humanism »
Summary:
This article examines Schwab's reception in the English-speaking world, based on the preface that Edward Said published for the English translation of The Eastern Renaissance in 1984. Said’s, otherwise known as the author of a virulent critique of Orientalism, enthusiastic reading of an unapologetically apolitical and heroic version of the orientalist renaissance seems paradoxical to say the least. I contend that the rapprochement between Said and Schwab occurs less at the level of Orientalism than around the issue of humanism, whether one calls it “integral” with Schwab or “democratic” with Said. I argue that if we take into account Said’s academic background in the 1970s and 1980s, his intellectual commitment to philological criticism, the concept of affiliation, and the question of democratic humanism, the connection seems much less incongruous. This article delves into the Said-Schwab connection beyond orientalism.
I. Essais au bord de la fiction
II. Du local au global: engagements
III. Du global vers le local: ambiguités en controverses
Où il est question de DalitCamera, du mouvement #MacronGoBack et aussi de la littérature comme abri: abri en situation de violence et censure politiques; abri aussi lorsqu’elle se donne pour vocation d’imaginer d’autres configurations plus justes, accueillantes, attentives et bienveillantes du monde.
Cet article réinterprète la présence et les représentations de l'Afrique, de l'Amérique du Sud, de l'Atlantique, et des mers du Sud dans Robinson Crusoé à partir de la littérature de voyage vers l'Amérique du Sud publiée dans les années 1710 et les lettres, essais et articles de presse de Daniel Defoe. L'étude se donne pour objectif de libérer la géographie de la diégèse afin de recouvrer les territoires et réseaux économiques et coloniaux qui ne sont pas cartographiés par le récit ou sont volon-tairement cachés. Une fois dévoilée, cette géographie permet de relier des espaces construits comme séparés dans l'imaginaire du récit. Elle tisse sa propre narration qui peut renforcer, compléter mais aussi déplacer ou subvertir la manière dont le récit organise et pense l'espace. L'approche géo-critique développée ici permet une lecture de Robinson Crusoé en contre-point, qui rappelle le lien existant entre le roman, le capitalisme, l'esclavage et la colonisation.
To cite this article: Claire Gallien (2018) Forcing displacement: The postcolonial interventions of refugee literature and arts, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 54:6, 735-750, DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2018.1551268
To cite this article: Claire Gallien (2018) “Refugee Literature”: What postcolonial theory has to say, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 54:6, 721-726, DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2018.1555206
This article focuses on the literary productions in prose and verse by or related to Muslim Guantánamo detainees. They are redacted documents directly written or translated into English. The purpose of this essay is to read “terrorist” literature para-doxically and argue that US authorities may be right in claiming that it represents a “national security threat”, but not in the meaning initially purveyed. Indeed, marked by the black bars of redaction, the literature eloquently displays the “terror” of state violence. Integrating redactions into the narrating process and exposing what happens in black sites give detainees’ texts the power, albeit precarious, to break the hegemonic discourse of the state and undermine its monopoly over representations of “terrorism”. The article also discusses the danger of interpreting these texts as mere responses to state violence, to failing justice systems, and democracies. It shows how their subjection to official redaction, editorial rewriting, and to the “forensic” imperative is real but it also delves into the literariness of these texts and their literary interventions. It is precisely by reactivating literary connections and intervening in existing Arabic and Pashto poetic traditions that they escape the physical and imaginary confines of Guantánamo and achieve liberation.
Content List
1. Abstract
2. Obliterating a voice: What happens in the black of redaction
3. Regaining a voice: Can the terrorist speak?
4. Finding a voice: Writing beyond the imperative and reconnecting with tradition
5. Conclusion
6. Notes
7. References
Academic studies of Islamic epistemology have predominantly focused on the classical and post-classical periods and neglected works in the organization of sciences (tartīb al-ʿulūm) genre from the early-modern period. At that time, the field had already developed several models, including one inspired by Aristotle, the encyclopedic template, and the pedagogical ordering of sciences. These models have been studied by scholars in the history of philosophy and science, history of religion, as well as pedagogy and learning. However, scholars in Divinity faculties have long ignored these works, leading to an inadequate treatment of their theological foundation and function. Bringing theology to the fore, this article offers an appreciation of how theological principles and epistemic holism have framed and shaped the contours of the “organization of sciences” genre from the early-modern period onwards. The article focuses on al-Qānūn fī Aḥkām al-ʿIlm written by Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan b. Masʿūd al-Yūsī (d. 1102 AH / 1691 CE) and explains how the interdependent, cohesive, and holistic dimensions of al-Yūsī’s organization of the sciences is directly derived from Islamic theology. More specifically, the article explores the unique structural role of the tri-partite definition of the religion (dīn) as “faith, religion, and spiritual excellence (imān-islām-iḥsān)” in al-Yūsī’s organization of the sciences and the function of tawḥīd in his conception of knowledge.
Keywords:
Islamic epistemology; Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan b. Masʿūd al-Yūsī (d. 1102 AH / 1691 CE); tartīb al-ʿulūm; tripartite organization of the sciences (imān-islām-iḥsān); epistemic holism; tawḥīd
https://brill.com/view/journals/isj/aop/article-10.1163-29502276-20240016/article-10.1163-29502276-20240016.xml
Keywords:
Islamic theology; Islamic poetic; hermeneutic; Islamic epistemology; kalām; patterns of religionisation; dereligionising the study of Islam; Marianne Moyaert; Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 632/1235); Sidi Muḥammad Ibn al-Ḥabīb (d. 1390/1971)
Abstract
This article on the place of the Qurʾān and Islamic theology in Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān constitutes a study in textual citation and excision articulated in two main parts. The first part of the article studies the interconnections between philosophy and theology in Ibn Ṭufayl’s (d. 581/1185) life and the references to the Qurʾān and to Islamic theology in his Risālat Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān. In the second part, I track the engagement with the Qurʾān and Islamic theology in the early-modern Latin and English variants of the tale. The article provides a detailed study of the Qurʾanic passages in translation, and reflects on practices of citation, excision and significant paratextual reorganisations. The article argues that the case is less one where the Qurʾān and Islamic theology are excised from the tale and vanish from view, than one where the tale is ‘de-Islamised’ so that it can serve intra-Christian and orientalist interests. The issue resides in making the Qurʾān and Islam epistemically dispensable and in disabling them as hermeneutic interlocutors to be reckoned with in a theological and philosophical debate.
Contents:
Interconnections between philosophy and theology in Ibn Ṭufayl’s life and in the Risālat Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān
Esoteric philosophy as frame-story
Qurʾanic markers in the tale
Pococke’s Manuscripts and Marginalia Annotations
Reading Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān and the Qurʾān Simultaneously
From Arabic Manuscript to Latin Print
The three English Translations Compared
George KEITH (d. 1716)
George ASHWELL (d. 1694)
Simon Ockley (d. 1720)
Concluding Remarks
This study has shown a variety of editorial and philological treatments of the Qurʾān and Islamic theology in the translations of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān published in Latin and English between the mid-seventeenth and early eighteenth century, including the presence of a new anthropological interest in Ockley’s translation. Beyond these variations, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān constitutes what I called a case of ‘de-Islamisation’ of literature where the Qurʾān is parsed from non-scriptural writing and, in particular here, fictional and philosophical writing. Contrary to other circulations of the tale, for instance, amongst medieval Jewish scholars, the Qurʾanic frame of reading is lifted so that the tale may serve other purposes specific to intra-Christian debates and polemics.
To be sure, literature is not meant to stay in place; rather texts, words, and ideas have always circulated beyond borders, be they religious, linguistic, or national. The study of philological, citational, and editorial practices is here fundamental in that it allows us, as in the case study of the Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān’s early English translations, to measure the epistemic distances covered when texts circulate and to understand how they are reshaped in circulation. For instance, here, the material and epistemic selection and separation of the Qurʾān from philosophy is adverse to the ways in which Islamic literature functions, where scripture serves as a foundational discourse from which scientific disciplines, be they grammar, rhetoric, law, philosophy, or poetry may develop In measuring these distances, readers become more acutely aware of their own epistemic positionalities and able to recognize that default modes of reading and thinking are never self-evident nor universally valid.
Suggested Citation: Gallien, Claire. “The Place of the Qurʾān and Islamic Theology in Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān and its Early English Receptions: A Study in Textual Citation and Excision", Philological Encounters 8, 4 (2023): 305-363, doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-bja10052
For a multiscalar approach of devastated places : Landfill, island, aridity line Abstract Faced with an increasingly acute global environmental crisis, a large number of literary and artistic creations take charge of representing devastated spaces. Our article analyses in particular the devastated spaces of the landfill (Lucie Taïeb), the island (Chloé Chaudet), and the aridity line (Claire Gallien). Our critical line aims at linking a geographically specific study of the literary representations of local devastation with a multiscalar interpretation of devastated places. Our approach makes it possible to think out literary geographies seen from a transcultural perspective and, at the same time, to avoid the pitfalls of a loose and decontextualized analysis of globalization. In this regard, literature turns out to be a privileged place to connect and switch on the multiple scales of devastation.
Résumé :
Le présent article examine la réception de Schwab dans le domaine anglophone, d’après la préface qu’Edward Said publie pour la traduction anglaise de La Renaissance orientale en 1984. La lecture enthousiaste de Said, auteur d’une critique virulente de l’orientalisme, pour Schwab, apologiste de la renaissance orientaliste, parait paradoxale. Je défends l’hypothèse que le rapprochement entre Said et Schwab se joue moins au niveau de l’orientalisme qu’autour de l’enjeu de l’humanisme, « intégral » chez Schwab et « démocratique » chez Said. Si l’on tient compte du panorama académique qui est celui de Said dans les années 1970-1980, et l’engagement de l’intellectuel pour la critique philologique, la pensée de l’affiliation, et la question de l’humanisme démocratique, le rapprochement paraît beaucoup moins incongru. Mon article propose une étude du lien qui unit Said à Schwab précisément au-delà de l’orientalisme.
English title: Concerning Edward Said’s Preface to The Oriental Renaissance (trans. 1984) by Raymond Schwab : From « Integral Humanism » to « Democratic Humanism »
Short title: From « Integral Humanism » to « Democratic Humanism »
Summary:
This article examines Schwab's reception in the English-speaking world, based on the preface that Edward Said published for the English translation of The Eastern Renaissance in 1984. Said’s, otherwise known as the author of a virulent critique of Orientalism, enthusiastic reading of an unapologetically apolitical and heroic version of the orientalist renaissance seems paradoxical to say the least. I contend that the rapprochement between Said and Schwab occurs less at the level of Orientalism than around the issue of humanism, whether one calls it “integral” with Schwab or “democratic” with Said. I argue that if we take into account Said’s academic background in the 1970s and 1980s, his intellectual commitment to philological criticism, the concept of affiliation, and the question of democratic humanism, the connection seems much less incongruous. This article delves into the Said-Schwab connection beyond orientalism.
I. Essais au bord de la fiction
II. Du local au global: engagements
III. Du global vers le local: ambiguités en controverses
Où il est question de DalitCamera, du mouvement #MacronGoBack et aussi de la littérature comme abri: abri en situation de violence et censure politiques; abri aussi lorsqu’elle se donne pour vocation d’imaginer d’autres configurations plus justes, accueillantes, attentives et bienveillantes du monde.
Cet article réinterprète la présence et les représentations de l'Afrique, de l'Amérique du Sud, de l'Atlantique, et des mers du Sud dans Robinson Crusoé à partir de la littérature de voyage vers l'Amérique du Sud publiée dans les années 1710 et les lettres, essais et articles de presse de Daniel Defoe. L'étude se donne pour objectif de libérer la géographie de la diégèse afin de recouvrer les territoires et réseaux économiques et coloniaux qui ne sont pas cartographiés par le récit ou sont volon-tairement cachés. Une fois dévoilée, cette géographie permet de relier des espaces construits comme séparés dans l'imaginaire du récit. Elle tisse sa propre narration qui peut renforcer, compléter mais aussi déplacer ou subvertir la manière dont le récit organise et pense l'espace. L'approche géo-critique développée ici permet une lecture de Robinson Crusoé en contre-point, qui rappelle le lien existant entre le roman, le capitalisme, l'esclavage et la colonisation.
To cite this article: Claire Gallien (2018) Forcing displacement: The postcolonial interventions of refugee literature and arts, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 54:6, 735-750, DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2018.1551268
To cite this article: Claire Gallien (2018) “Refugee Literature”: What postcolonial theory has to say, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 54:6, 721-726, DOI: 10.1080/17449855.2018.1555206
This article focuses on the literary productions in prose and verse by or related to Muslim Guantánamo detainees. They are redacted documents directly written or translated into English. The purpose of this essay is to read “terrorist” literature para-doxically and argue that US authorities may be right in claiming that it represents a “national security threat”, but not in the meaning initially purveyed. Indeed, marked by the black bars of redaction, the literature eloquently displays the “terror” of state violence. Integrating redactions into the narrating process and exposing what happens in black sites give detainees’ texts the power, albeit precarious, to break the hegemonic discourse of the state and undermine its monopoly over representations of “terrorism”. The article also discusses the danger of interpreting these texts as mere responses to state violence, to failing justice systems, and democracies. It shows how their subjection to official redaction, editorial rewriting, and to the “forensic” imperative is real but it also delves into the literariness of these texts and their literary interventions. It is precisely by reactivating literary connections and intervening in existing Arabic and Pashto poetic traditions that they escape the physical and imaginary confines of Guantánamo and achieve liberation.
Content List
1. Abstract
2. Obliterating a voice: What happens in the black of redaction
3. Regaining a voice: Can the terrorist speak?
4. Finding a voice: Writing beyond the imperative and reconnecting with tradition
5. Conclusion
6. Notes
7. References
Islam and New Directions in World Literature brings forth the Islamicate as an aesthetic and critical force in World Literature
Disrupts the one-way traffic in the field of World Literature studies by regarding Islam as both an alternative and a critical force behind creative processes
Understands Islam as a driving creative force and situates its contribution in the development, past and present, of world imaginaries
Covers a variety of global locations to discuss the Islamicate as developed in Western European, Turkic, Indo-Persian, Middle-Eastern, African, Japanese, Chinese and Philippine literatures
Examines a diversity of genres including fiction and poetry, but also philosophy, oral literature and manga
Since its advent, Islam has been a representational force to be reckoned with, cross-pollinating world literatures in Africa, Europe, Asia, the Pacific Ocean and the Americas. Yet, scholarship on Islam in world literatures has been sparse despite its significant presence. This book understands Islamic literary and cultural heritages as dynamic forces, constantly enriched and enlivened by various humanistic traditions in multiple languages, spanning the lives of individuals and societies throughout history. It is also designed to incorporate a variety of themes, influences, ramifications and representations of Islam in world literatures in classical and contemporary contexts.
Exploring Islam’s presence in world literatures in two strands: on the one hand, examining the orientalist versions and usages of Islam; and on the other hand, analysing the presence of Islam as Islamicate, this book advances a consideration of Islam as an agent in the history of World Literature.
Foreword - Jeffrey Einboden (Northern Illinois University)
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgments
1. The World Imaginaires of Islam: Islam and New Directions in World Literature - Sarah R. Bin Tyeer (Columbia University) & Claire Gallien (Université Paul Valéry - Montpellier 3)
Tropes of Orientalism
2. Los moros de la hueste: Recovering the Islamicate in the Goths’ Lament - Gregory Hutcheson (University of Louisville)
3. Just One Word - Gil Anidjar (Columbia University)
Sensory Fluctuations: Aural, Oral, Visual, and Written
4. Poems in Praise of the Prophet (madīḥ) as a Citizen of the Literary World - Walid Ghali (Aga Khan University)
5. The Place and Function of Imagination in Fulani Mystical Poetry (Massina, Mali) - Christiane Seydou (CNRS-Paris)
6. Vanishing Art, Genre-making: The Uyghur Storytelling Tradition and its Heritagization - Musapir
Circulation,Translation, Rereading
7. Friedrich Rückert’s Understanding of Islam and Poetic Translation of the Qur’ân - Georges Tamer (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg) and Cüneyd Yıldırım (Münster Universität)
8. The "Islamic" Arabian Nights in World Imaginaries - Muhsin al-Musawi (Columbia University)
9. Where is World Literature? - Hamid Dabashi (Columbia University)
Secular/Non-Secular
10. Praising the Prophet Muhammad in Chinese. A New translation and Analysis of Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang’s Ode to the Prophet - Haiyun Ma (Frostburg State University) and Brendan Newlon (Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, NC)
11. A Fine Romance: Translating the Qissah as World Romance - Pasha M. Khan (McGill University)
12. Indonesia’s "Sastra Profetik" As Decolonial Literary Theory - Nazry Bahrawi (University of Washington)
Introduction par Claire Gallien et Sarga Moussa
Gallien Sur la préface d’Edward Said à la traduction anglaise de La Renaissance orientale (1984) de Raymond Schwab : De « l’humanisme intégral » à « l’humanisme démocratique »
Sarga Moussa « Voyager c’est traduire. » Relire le Voyage en Orient de Lamartine à la lumière de Raymond Schwab
Guillaume Bridet Yggdrasill (1936-1940) : une revue entre cosmopolitisme, impérialisme et universalisme poétiques
Chloé Chaudet Raymond Schwab et la pensée occidentale de l’engagement : vers un renouveau transculturel de l’histoire littéraire
Ninon Chavoz Fictions « d’innombrable » : la Renaissance romantique chez Raymond Schwab (1950) et Tristan Garcia (2019)
Tristan Leperlier Pour une histoire littéraire transnationale : La littérature algérienne entre « Intégral » et « Intégrisme »
Michaël Ferrier Japon : « l’interlocuteur invisible ». L’absence du Japon dans La Renaissance orientale de Raymond Schwab
Ladan Niayesh, Université de Paris, LARCA (UMR 8225)
New Transculturalisms 1400-1800 Series, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 208 pages. ISBN 978-3-030-22924-5. Hardcover 103,99 euros, eBook 59,49 euros.
https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030229245
The concept of resonance collapses the binary between subject and object, perceiver and perceived, evoking a sound or image that is prolonged and augmented by making contact with another surface. This collection uses resonance as an innovative framework for understanding the circulation of people and objects between England and its multiple Asian Easts. Moving beyond Saidian Orientalism to engage with ongoing critical conversations in the fields of connected history, material culture, and thing theory, it offers a vibrant range of case studies that consider how meanings accrue and shift through circulation and interconnection from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. Spanning centuries of traveling translations, narratives, myths, practices, and other cultural phenomena, Eastern Resonances in Early Modern England puts forth resonance not just as a metaphor, but a mode of investigation.
Table of contents:
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction (Claire Gallien, Ladan Niayesh) 1-14
2. Not fit for any other pursuit: Shifting Places, Shifting Identities in Ludovico di Varthemas Itinerario (Supriya Chaudhuri ) 17-34
3. A Pattern to all Princes: Locating the Queen of Sheba (Matthew Dimmock) 35-50
4. Endued with a natural disposition to resonance and sympathy: Harmonious Joness Intimate Reading and Cultural Translation of India (Michael J. Franklin) 51-71
5. Ancient Persia, Early Modern England, and the Labours of Reception (Jane Grogan) 75-92
6. Enthusiastick Uses of an Oriental Tale: The English Translations of Ibn Tufayls Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan in the Eighteenth Century (Louisiane Ferlierr, Claire Gallien) 93-114
7. The Manchu Invasion of Britain: Nomadic Resonances in Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Chinoiserie Aesthetics, and Material Culture (Laurence Williams Laurence Wiriamuzu) 115-135
8. From Jehol to Stowe: Ornamental Orientalism and the Aesthetics of the Anglo-Chinese Garden (Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding) 139-162
9. A Mart for Everything: Commercial Empire and India as Bazaar in the Long Eighteenth Century (Diego Saglia) 163-181
10. Collecting in India and Transferring to Britain, or the Intertwined Lives of Indian Statues and Colonial Administrators (Late Eighteenth Century to Early Nineteenth Century) (Anne-Julie Etter) 183-199
Index
__________
Volume 54 Number 6 December 2018
_________________________________________________________________________
Contents
Special issue: Refugee Literature
Guest Editor: Claire Gallien
Introduction: “Refugee literature” - What postcolonial theory has to say
Claire Gallien
Articles
A season of wandering. On the camps.
Laura Genz
Forcing Displacement: The postcolonial interventions of refugee literature and arts
Claire Gallien
A global postcolonial: Contemporary Arabic literature of migration to Europe
Johanna Sellman
The more-than-human refugee journey: Hassan Blasim’s short stories
Rita Sakr
No country, no cry: Literature of women’s displacement and the reading of pity
Olivera Jokic
A life without a shoreline: Tropes of refugee literature in Jenny Erpenbeck’s Go, Went, Gone
Corina Stan
The battle of truth and fiction: Documentary storytelling and Middle Eastern refugee discourse
Valerie Anishchenkova
An environmental history of literary resilience: “Environmental refugees” in the Senegal River Valley
Mélanie Bourlet and Marie Lorin
General Article
The question of Arab “identity” in Amin Maalouf’s Les Desorientés
Hanan Ibrahim
Book Reviews
The chapter analyses first how the novel depicts death, the violence of wars and displacements, and the protagonists’ enduring pain of living with fragments. I also carefully detail how fragmentation, multiplicity, and kaleidoscopic visions are used as stylistic devices best designed to ethically engage with the traumatic experiences related in the novel. In the last part of the chapter, I unpack the hidden structure of the book based on literary affiliations and companionship, which constitute new trails holding books and lives together, against all odds. I argue that the characters and narrators, real-life migrants and storytellers, find solace and meaning in the Islamic theological principle that behind and beyond multiplicity there is unity, beyond fragmentation, there is a striving for wholeness, and that beyond dispersal, literature offers the possibility of a different return, elsewhere and otherwise.
Keywords
Hassan Blasim
God 99
Forced migration
Politics of representation
Fragmentation
tawḥı̄d
Affiliation
Literary trails
A large part of the essay (the first and second part, respectively entitled ‘Resistance and strategic misreading’ and ‘Recentring Palestine’) is preoccupied by the field of tension created in the missed encounter between Palestine and postcolonial studies and is devoted to examining the resistances to interact. By doing so, I unpack the political and ideological strategies entailed in presenting Palestine and postcolonial studies in antinomic terms and show how their mutual exclusions were partly due to misreading and partly to the contingencies of conflicting timelines. In ‘Recentring Palestine’, I also revisit Saidian key theoretical concepts as seminal in postcolonial studies, thus arguing that some of postcolonialism’s ‘beginnings’ are to be found in Palestine.
Contrary to this perspective, I try, in the third part of this essay entitled ‘Affiliations’ in reference to Edward W. Said’s theorization of the concept, to rethink Palestine and postcolonial studies affiliatively, stressing what may be gained for both parties. For postcolonial studies, Palestine offers a way to contradict the claim made by some critics that postcolonialism is dead and that it is incapable of addressing new global challenges. For Palestine, postcolonial theory offers a framework to connect with other global postcolonial struggles and tools to analyse neo-colonialism and neo-orientalism imposed by Israel, Zionism, and the mass media. My contribution encourages connections and appropriations of the field of postcolonial studies by Palestinian scholars and activists.
Keywords: post-colonialism/postcolonialism; ma ba’d al-isti’māriya; imperialism; Tricontinentalism; anti-colonial; decolonial; orientalism; neo-orientalism; Zionism; resistance; affiliation; travelling theory; force-field; third space; borders.
At this juncture in time, English is still the dominant language that many authors aspiring to world recognition write in, or into which they should at least be translated. Yet, there are two ways for English to circulate in the world – one is by being global, the other is by becoming worldly. English as a global language is modelled on the colonial paradigm of centre/periphery, where English expands outward and where the periphery must connect to the centre, be articulated or at least adapted to its terms, validated by it and translated into it, in order to be circulated worldwide. I am not claiming this paradigm does not exist, nor am I undermining its force. It is still the case that literatures must be relevant to the English-speaking Global North in order to become global. However, there are numerous excellent volumes and articles already published on this issue and my chapter therefore does not focus on this aspect.1 I am interested here in how English becomes worldly. We will see that contrary to the global paradigm, which has a blunting effect on literature, the worldly paradigm has an enhancing potential through greater complexity and creativity. By becoming worldly, I mean works in English that would attach themselves to other languages, scripts, forms, genres, literary traditions, perspectives and cosmovisions, and through this type of literary attachment (or what Edward Said beautifully conceptualized as ‘affiliation’ in opposition to the ‘filiation’ of the tribe)2 turn into enmeshed formations. Obviously these witting and unwitting gestures of linking are not something new or specific to English. After all, it would be hard to find one type of literature that is not intertextual. Yet, imperial ideology, as applied to linguistic and literature, has created an amnesia concerning the relations between English and the world.
In this chapter, I place Anglophone-Arabic3 writing within the larger debate on world literature and multilingualism. Indeed, the novelists and poets I have selected possess and are possessed by multiple languages, i.e. Arabic, in its classical form and its various vernaculars (Iraqi, Palestinian, Syro-Lebanese … ), English and other European languages and minority languages such as Kurdish. For some, English is the language they have always written in, and they reserve Arabic vernaculars for home and private exchanges. For others, English and Arabic are alternatively used, and for others still, Arabic is the language of writing, whether due to a lesser command of English or due to a positive and militant ‘politics of language’. Hanan al-Shaykh has made her career as a writer in Arabic, ‘refusing’ to write directly in English, while recognizing the influences of Russian, French, English, Arabic classical and contemporary Egyptian literatures on her prose.4
My essay includes a selection of contemporary poetry and prose published by Arab writers in Arabic, English or both, who practice self-translation and/or navigate between the two languages. I start with a reflection on heterolingualism, as distinct from multilingualism, in the case of Anglophone-Arabic literature. Then my essay proposes to question the apparent belonging of these texts to one language only (either Arabic or English) and to define them as ‘born-translated’ instead. The last sections offer close readings of excerpts from the texts that showcase their engagements in heterolingual practices by breaking scripts (Dunya Mikhail, Zeina Hashem Beck), language boundaries and unity (Suheir Hammad), and readers’ (Orientalist) projections (Sinan Antoon). The production of Arab writers in English has been well researched.5 The authors I selected for this chapter navigate between both languages or write in Arabic but are known in the Anglosphere through (self-)translation. In all cases, my selection does not presume to be representative of the Anglo-Arab literary tradition in its entirety.
Mikhail’s The Iraqi Nights (2014) is a collection of poems, with drawings resembling ancient Sumerian tablets and with the poet’s handwriting added to the printed pages. The collection is initially written in Arabic and then translated into English, but in the English translation the ancient Sumerian tablets and the poet’s handwriting in Arabic remain and are essential to the creation of meaning. Hashem Beck’s bilingual duet poems entwine scripts and languages that sometimes translate into one another and sometimes diverge from each other. Non-Arabic speakers only get at best one half of the poem, but they in reality get the full story, in the sense that they keep us aware of what we might not understand. Conversely, bilingual readers in Arabic and English may understand the full poem but the reality is that the two versions do not compare. The two partners are neither equal nor identical. Hammad’s breaking poems (2008) are written in English but in a syntax that breaks with linguistic norms and unearths the violence of normative language and consensual representations. Her breaking poems in English open a space where Arabic comes in and where both languages lodge and dislodge each other, through what I have analysed elsewhere as the ‘minorization’ of English.6 As I argue with Hammad and in my additional reflections on Ashraf Fayadh’s Instructions Within (2017), the disruption of forms, contents, expectations and policed morality does not lead to chaos and atomization but on the contrary to the formation of intense and committed collectives. Finally, I offer comparative micro-readings of Antoon’s Ya Maryam (2012)/The Baghdad Eucharist (2017) that question the dominant discourse on Iraqi sectarian violence and war but do not produce the same effect whether directed inside or outside what Emily Apter referred to as the ‘translation zone’ – in other words, for its English or Arabic readers.7 The close readings indicate that a text is not heterolingual by nature, and in that regard it differs greatly from texts that would just be published in a bilingual format. It becomes heterolingual by practice and to highlight the political dimension of literature
The permanent instability of the Turkish refugee is mirrored in the narrative that is attributed to him and which never settles in a specific genre. Indeed, it overwrites travel literature traditions in Arabic, namely the rihla and the masalik, and borrows from numerous generic strands of travel writing, with or without conversion episodes, and which were popular in Europe at the time, namely refugee narratives, the picaresque novel, vagrant narratives, and slave narratives. I argue in this chapter that Ishmael Bashaw’s story comes closest to the slave narrative, which is why I end my analysis with a reflection on its intersections with the genre, and discuss the literary and ideological implications of this near-identification, but also I emphasize how it deviates from it, leaving the reader with the impression that Ishmael Bashaw and his story never quite fit anywhere.
Contrairement à la plupart des chapitres de l’ouvrage qui reprennent sous forme traduite un essai complet écrit par un auteur ou artiste britannique sur l’art de la traduction, le texte choisi dans cette section est composé d’extraits de la correspondance d’Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883) dans laquelle ce dernier précise les différentes étapes de son travail de traduction des Rubā’iyāt du poète persan Omar Khayyām (1048-1131). Au fil des lettres, FitzGerald offre à son correspondant, professeur de persan, Edward Cowell, une réflexion sur sa conception de l’art de la traduction. La cohérence de l’ensemble tient en cette unité thématique et au fait que les lettres sont toutes adressées au même destinataire. Par ailleurs, les lettres sélectionnées pour leur contenu métacritique ont parfois été coupées lorsque trop longues et s’éloignant du sujet qui nous concerne ici – les remarques de l’auteur sur son art de traduire et sur sa conception de la traduction. L’étude de cette correspondance est particulièrement captivante parce qu’elle révèle à la fois l’ambivalence du rapport de FitzGerald, auteur, traducteur, et orientaliste, au matériau persan—ambivalence que l’on pourrait rapprocher de la définition qu’Edward Said donne de l’Orientalisme, oscillant entre précision et généralisation, illusion mimétique et recréation, dénotation et connotation, éloge et condamnation—mais aussi parce qu’elle s’inscrit dans une vision plus générale de la traduction comme recréation. Partisan d’un modèle de traduction libre, FitzGerald interroge au fil de sa correspondance la frontière entre traduction et création.
Je propose en introduction d’exposer les contextes de publication et de réception des Rubā’iyāt, d’analyser le rapport de l’œuvre aux études et à l’imaginaire orientalistes de l’époque victorienne, et d’étudier la pratique de la traduction comme création. Ces pistes critiques ont pour but de servir de cadre à la traduction des extraits de la correspondance de FitzGerald et de mieux comprendre les enjeux épistémologique, littéraire, et idéologique de son travail
1. EDWARD FITZGERALD, TRADUCTEUR-AUTEUR DES RUBA’IYAT
2. ORIENTALISME – ETUDE ET IMAGINAIRE
3. « IL NE S’AGIT PAS D’UNE TRADUCTION PURE ET SIMPLE, MAIS PLUTOT D’UNE TRADUCTION DANS TOUT CE QU’ELLE PEUT AVOIR DE PLUS CREATIF »
For more, please contact the author.
This essay considers firstly how the history of India had been written in Britain before the middle of the eighteenth century and then presents the corpus of Indo-Persian historiography translated by the British orientalists stationed in India in the second half of the eighteenth century. Particular attention will be paid to the Persian intellectual and political aspects of this corpus and to the colonial motivations underpinning the commissioning of works of translation. Finally, in the last part, I propose a reflection on the transformations of Indian sources and the creation of a global historiographical discourse based on the universal claims of British scholarship.
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Panel: ‘Reading Literature as Theology in Islam’
Organisers:
Claire Gallien: claire.gallien@zith.uni-tuebingen.de
Easa Saad: easa.saad@wolfson.ox.ac.uk
On the contemporary academic scene, whether one looks into seminar programmes or handbooks, the discourse on Islamic theology is reduced to ‘ilm al-kalām, due in part to the dissociation of literary productions from an underlying theological and ethical framework in the modern European episteme. This partition is alien to the Islamic tradition, in which the discipline of speculative theology and dogmatics not just coexisted but was consubstantial with other rich forms of inquiry into the divine and into human relations with the divine.
Our panel aims to address Islamic theology beyond the specific discipline of ilm al-kalām, enquiring into the translation of theological discourse between genres and forms, the role of poetics in the formulation of specific theological points and debates. A key concern for this panel is to locate theological engagement beyond the intellect, by considering how poetry brings the other human faculties, such as imagination, intuition, emotion, and sense perception, into play when approaching the Divine.
The papers selected explore these themes across the full spectrum of languages used for poetic expression in the Islamic world, in any historical period. They hone in on a particular poetic corpus, make comparisons across corpora or even traditions, or offer more theoretical interventions.
A selection of papers and invited contributions shall be published as part of a special issue on the subject of the panel in an international peer-reviewed journal.
Within the scope of this year’s conference on ‘Paradigm Shifts’, we would like to invite speakers to our panel on ‘Reading Literature as Theology in Islam’.
On the contemporary academic scene, whether one looks into seminar programmes or handbooks, the discourse on Islamic theology is reduced to ‘ilm al-kalām, due in part to the dissociation of literary productions from an underlying theological and ethical framework in the modern European episteme. This partition is alien to the Islamic tradition, in which the discipline of speculative theology and dogmatics not just coexisted but was consubstantial with other rich forms of inquiry into the divine and into human relations with the divine.
Our panel aims to address Islamic theology beyond the specific discipline of ilm al-kalām, enquiring into the translation of theological discourse between genres and forms, the role of poetics in the formulation of specific theological points and debates. A key concern for this panel is to locate theological engagement beyond the intellect, by considering how poetry brings the other human faculties, such as imagination, intuition, emotion, and sense perception, into play when approaching the Divine.
We invite submissions exploring these themes across the full spectrum of languages used for poetic expression in the Islamic world, in any historical period. Submissions may choose to hone in on a particular poetic corpus, make comparisons across corpora or even traditions, or offer more theoretical interventions.
A selection of papers and invited contributions shall be published as part of a special issue on the subject of the panel in an international peer-reviewed journal.
Do send a short proposal with title to both emails addresses by the 18th December 2023:
claire.gallien@zith.uni-tuebingen.de
easa.saad@wolfson.ox.ac.uk
More details and updates about the conference itself are posted on the European Academy of Religion website: https://www.europeanacademyofreligion.org/euare2024
Mardi 15 décembre 2020, 15h-17h
Affiche ci-joint
Contact : claire.gallien@univ-montp3.fr
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We read late publications in the field of decolonial studies with critical hindsight and reflect on the meanings and practices, including pedagogic, of decentring knowledge production and ways of reading. So far, the workshop has met to discuss theory. Starting in September 2019, we will alternate between theory reading sessions and sessions where we try and unpack works of fiction and poetry with decolonial tools.
On this platform we share events information, documents (extracts, video recordings, podcasts) related to the sessions of the workshop, programme and notes on the workshop.
With the workshop and platform, we aim to give greater visibility on how French scholars and students grapple with the field and with decoloniality in a French (academic) context where the approach, that is not recognized yet, is regularly misunderstood and disparaged. On the other hand, we remain attentive to the mainstreaming of the “decolonial” label and its domestication since we make a distinction between proposals of epistemic displacements and systemic recuperations.
in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Britain where I look in the first section into the history of orientalist collecting and cataloguing practices across these two centuries. The moment I will be focusing on with you is the second half of the eighteenth century, which comes as a second major phase of British orientalist manuscript collection—the first phase being the early seventeenth century with the foundation of chairs of Arabic at Cambridge and Oxford and donations of major collections gathered by various prominent orientalists and travellers to the Levant.
With British colonisation in India well underway, colonial administrators interested in orientalist studies and antiquarianism brought back with them large collections of Indian manuscripts. The collections were catalogued by the owners, by other orientalists, or by auctioneers and offer exceptional insight into representations of Indian literature in Europe at the time. For this presentation, I offer a critical survey of some of these collections—in particular those belonging to Fraser, Guise, Ouseley, Jones, Colebrooke, and Tipu Sultan—and study the shape of Indian literature as collected in and for Europe. I argue that these catalogues were not transparent windows providing a view of ‘Indian literature’ but that the acts of collecting and cataloguing implied linguistic and generic reconfigurations. These reconfigurations procure insights into the historical context and cultural biases of the literary transfers taking place at the time from India to Britain, with impacts on the representations and shapes of ‘Indian literature’.
I offer close readings of texts that engage with heterolingual practices of writing by breaking scripts (Dunya Mikhail, Zeina Hashem Beck), breaking the monolingual conception of language (Suheir Hammad), and breaking Orientalist representations encrypted in language use (Sinan Antoon). The conclusion that I draw is that the purpose of their practices is not to periodically hybridize monolithic entities (be they script, language, or representation) but to dramatize the creative potentialities of the multilingual and heterolingual tongue. Their exploration of multi/heterolingualism acts as a shaping force configuring their texts. Ultimately, heterolingual writing showcases politically and aesthetically charged questions, such as to whom does a language belong and who has the right to define what a language is, what it should look like, how it should be spoken and written?
https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/dr-claire-gallien-in-conversation-with-dr-rita-sakr-tickets-126418313579?fbclid=IwAR0kuXgrf7h8VYc8Rc70uhe4pkYHeO8bdyxQfBOtfMaesmtlaZHuH_BDvmM
Link to recording: https://bham-ac-uk.zoom.us/rec/play/zCk5OPzfMvVEx_iPYn3XglCBEfFWZzxuMvuFbs4qErQjjYoSPmkiaU3zRi9NMU8jZyPTqHg8wS_EuFXg.ZOx72lhHwKX2xWlE
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Dr Gallien’s presentation focuses on a specific literary corpus, namely the poetry and prose of multilingual writers, who navigate between English, Arabic, in its classical and vernacular forms, and other languages of translation. It then challenges the default assumption that these writers publish in English and add elements of their Arabic mother tongue in their texts. Building on Abdelkébir Khatibi’s statement that ‘1. We only ever speak one language and 2. We never speak only one language’ and Jacques Derrida’s reflections in Monolingualism of the Other, her talk thinks through the implications of considering English not as a language welcoming in its midst other tongues, but as a born-multilingual and born-heterolingual language.
Rather than periodically hybridizing monolithic entities (be they script, language, or representation), heterolingual practices of writing showcase politically and aesthetically charged questions, such as to whom does a language belong and who has the right to define what a language is, what it should look like, how it should be spoken and written?