In Archive Fever, Jacques Derrida deftly guides us through an extended meditation on remembrance, religion, time, and technology--fruitfully occasioned by a deconstructive analysis of the notion of archiving. Intrigued by the evocative relationship between technologies of inscription and psychic processes, Derrida offers for the first time a major statement on the pervasive impact of electronic media, particularly e-mail, which threaten to transform the entire public and private space of humanity. Plying this rich material with characteristic virtuosity, Derrida constructs a synergistic reading of archives and archiving, both provocative and compelling. "Judaic mythos, Freudian psychoanalysis, and e-mail all get fused into another staggeringly dense, brilliant slab of scholarship and suggestion."--The Guardian "[Derrida] convincingly argues that, although the archive is a public entity, it nevertheless is the repository of the private and personal, including even intimate details."--Choice "Beautifully written and clear."--Jeremy Barris, Philosophy in Review "Translator Prenowitz has managed valiantly to bring into English a difficult but inspiring text that relies on Greek, German, and their translations into French."--Library Journal

The 'archive' is often viewed as a collection of historical documents that records and orders information about people, places and events. This view nevertheless obscures a crucial point: the archive, whilst subject to the vagaries of time and history, can also determine the future. This point has gained urgency in modern-day North Africa and the Middle East where the archive has come to the fore as a site of social, historical, theoretical, and political contestation. Dissonant Archives is the first book to consider the ways in which contemporary artists from the Middle East and North Africa - including Emily Jacir, Walid Raad, Jananne Al Ani, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Mariam Ghani, Zineb Sedira, and Akram Zaatari - are utilizing and disrupting the function of the archive and, in so doing, highlighting a systemic, perhaps irrevocable, crisis in institutional and state-ordained archiving across the region. In exploring and producing archives, be they alternative, interrogative or fictional, these artists are not simply questioning the authenticity, authority or authorship of the archive; rather, they are unlocking its regenerative, radical potential.The result provides essential insights into the nexus between art and politics in the contemporary Middle East.

Walter Benjamin was one of the most original cultural critics of the twentieth century. Illuminations includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and on Brecht's Epic Theater. Also included are his penetrating study "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and Benjamin's theses on the philosophy of history. Hannah Arendt selected the essays for this volume and introduces them with a classic essay about Benjamin's life in dark times. Also included is a new preface by Leon Wieseltier that explores Benjamin's continued relevance for our times.

In the form of a lexicon, artist Mariam Ghani describes, together with her father, the renowned anthropologist and political scientist Ashraf Ghani, the cycle of repeated collapse and recovery that Afghanistan has undergone over the course of the twentieth century. The lexicon comprises seventy-one mostly illustrated terms that include central figures and places, words that carry a specific (political) meaning in the Afghan context, and entries on recurring events and defining themes. The notebook's point of departure is a detailed reflection on the reign of King Amanullah Khan (1919-29), whose successes and failures yielded a model for reformers who succeeded him. These thoughts are followed by a series of terms related to, among other things, Dar ul-Aman Palace, now a ruin, which was part of Amanullah's design for a "new city," and which characterized--as a space of exception, a center of conflict, a prototype for future plans, and a symbol of past failures--twentieth-century Afghan planning policy.Mariam Ghani (*1978) is an artist based in New York and Kabul. Ashraf Ghani (*1949), author of Fixing Failed States (in English) and A Window to a Just Order (in Dari and Pashtu), lives in Kabul.

Today between forty and sixty nations, home to close to two billion people, have either collapsed or are teetering on the brink of failure. The world's worst problems--terrorism, drugs and human trafficking, absolute poverty, ethnic conflict, disease, genocide--originate in such states, andthe international community has devoted billions of dollars to solving the problem. Yet by and large the effort has not succeeded.Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart have taken an active part in the effort to save failed states for many years, serving as World Bank officials, as advisers to the UN, and as high-level participants in the new government of Afghanistan. Now, in Fixing Failed States, they describe the issue--vividlyand convincingly--offering an on-the-ground picture of why past efforts have not worked and advancing a groundbreaking new solution to this most pressing of global crises. Military force, while certainly necessary on occasion, cannot solve the fundamental problems, and humanitarian interventionscost billions yet do not leave capable states in their wake. Ghani and Lockhart argue that only an integrated state-building approach can heal these failing countries. As they explain, many of these countries already have the resources they need, if only we knew how to connect them to globalknowledge and put them to work in the right way. Their state-building strategy, which assigns responsibility equally among the international community, national leaders, and citizens, maps out a clear path to political and economic stability. The authors provide a clear, practical framework forachieving these ends, supporting their case with first-hand examples of struggling territories such as Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosovo and Nepal as well as the world's success stories--Singapore, Ireland, and even the American South.The battle against terror, poverty, climate change, and much more cannot be won unless we can save these nations. In Fixing Fixed States, two of the world's foremost authorities offer a way out of the current crisis--a framework for re-imagining the international system. It is a book that is uniquein its essential optimism--an optimism that the authors have earned through their own substantial real-world efforts in failed states.

Baryalai Popal sees his Western-educated professors at Kabul University replaced by communists. He witnesses his classmates "disappearing." The communist takeover uproots Popal from his family and home. Thus begins Crossing the River Kabul, the true story of Popal's escape from Afghanistan and his eventual return. Kevin McLean weaves together Popal's stories in this memoir, which is also a fascinating look at Afghanistan from the viewpoint of Popal and generations of his politically influential family. From the exile of Popal's grandfather from Kandahar in 1898 to his father's tutoring of two boys who as adults would play important roles in Afghanistan--one as king and the other as president--to his uncle's presence at the fateful meeting that led to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Popal's family history is intertwined with that of his nation. Popal fled his country following the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1980. After being imprisoned as a spy in Pakistan, he managed to make his way to Germany as a refugee and to the United States as an immigrant. Twenty years later he returned to Afghanistan after 9/11 to reclaim his houses, only to find one controlled by drug lords and the other by the most powerful warlord in Afghanistan. Popal's memoir is an intimate, often humorous portrait of the vanished Afghanistan of his childhood. It is also the story of a father whose greatest desire is to see his son follow in his footsteps, and a son who constantly rebels against his father's wishes. Crossing the River Kabul is a story of choice and destiny, fear and courage, and loss and redemption.  

The Imperial War Museums (IWM) are widely recognized for its incomparable collection of twentieth-century British art, which is built around the extensive programs of war art that were created with government support during the First and Second World Wars. In the decades since, images from these artworks have become icons of British history and of the experience of war. What is less well known is that IWM has similarly striking holdings in contemporary art--and that those artworks reflect experiences of and responses to a wide range of recent and ongoing conflicts. Showcasing artwork created in response to fighting in Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and more, and featuring work by such prominent contemporary artists as Steve McQueen, Roderick Buchanan, and Langlands & Bell, this book reminds us that war continues to spur artists to creative reflection today.

Ten well-established artists from across the Maghreb, Levant, and Gulf in conversations moderated by experts on contemporary Middle Eastern art. Summer Autumn Winter... and Spring is the first book to give voice to ten artists from across the Middle East.

How is home-grown contemporary art viewed within the Middle East? And is it understood differently outside the region? What is liable to be lost when contemporary art from the Middle East is 'transferred' to international contexts - and how can it be reclaimed? This timely book tackles ongoing questions about how 'local' perspectives on contemporary art from the Middle East are defined and how these perspectives intersect with global art discourses. Inside, leading figures from the Middle Eastern art world, western art historians, art theorists and museum curators discuss the historical and cultural circumstances which have shaped contemporary art from the Middle East, reflecting on recent exhibitions and curatorial projects and revealing how artists have struggled with the label of 'Middle Eastern Artist'. Chapters reflect on the fundamental methodologies of art history and cultural studies - considering how relevant they are when studying contemporary art from the Middle East - and investigate the ways in which contemporary, so-called 'global', theories impact on the making of art in the region. Drawing on their unique expertise, the book's contributors offer completely new perspectives on the most recent cultural, intellectual and socio-political developments of contemporary art from the Middle East.

This is the first study to cover cinemas from Iran to Morocco. Nine essays present the region's major national cinemas, devoting special attention to the work of directors who have given image and voice to dissent from political regimes, from patriarchal customs, from fundamentalist movements, and from the West. These country essays are complemented by in-depth discussions of eighteen films that have been selected for both their excellence and their critical engagement with pressing current issues. The introduction provides a comprehensive overview of filmmaking throughout the region, including important films produced outside the national cinemas. The long history of Iranian cinema, its international renown, and the politics of directors confronting the state, earns it a special place in this volume. The other major emphasis is on the Israel/Palestine conflict, featuring films by Palestinian directors, Israelis, and an Egyptian working in Syria. Nineteen authors collaborated on this book, among them Walter Armbrust, Roy Armes, Kevin Dwyer, Eric Egan, Nurith Gertz, Lina Khatib, Florence Martin, and Nadia Yaqub. About half of the contributors are film scholars; the others range across literary studies and the social sciences to two film directors and a novelist. Beyond differences in disciplinary orientation, there is considerable variation among contributors in the perspectives that inform their writing. They offer an illuminating range of approaches to the cinemas of the region. The book is richly illustrated with posters of the featured films, photos of their directors at work, and stills illustrating critical arguments in the film essays.

Examines the work and aspirations of women filmmakers in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, as well as in marginalized communities within the United States, with particular attention to issues of gender, race, nation, and aesthetics.

International Politics and Film introduces readers to the representational qualities of film but also draws attention to how the relationship between the visual and the spatial is constitutive of international politics. Using four themes-borders, the state of exception, homeland and distant others-the territorial and imaginative dimensions of international affairs in particular are highlighted. But this volume also makes clear that international politics is not just something "out there"; film helps us better understand how it is also part of everyday life within the state-affecting individuals and communities in different ways depending on axes of difference such as gender, race, class, age, and ethnicity.

This study explores artistic choices in cinema exhibition, focusing on film theaters, film festivals, and film archives and situating film-curating issues within an international context. Artistic and commercial film availability has increased overwhelmingly as a result of the digitization of the infrastructure of distribution and exhibition. The film trade's conventional structures are transforming and, in the digital age, supply and demand can meet without the intervention of traditional gatekeepers--everybody can be a film curator, in a passive or active way. This volume addresses three kinds of readers: those who want to become film curators, those who want to research the film-curating phenomenon, and those critical cinema visitors who seek to investigate the story behind the selection process of available films and the way to present them.

Orphan works, or artworks for which no copyright holder is traceable, pose a growing problem for museums, archives, and other heritage institutions. As they come under more and more pressure to digitize and share their archives, they are often hampered by the uncertain rights status of items in their collections. The Greatest Films Never Seen: The Film Archive and the Copyright Smokescreen uses the prism of copyright to reconsider human agency and the politics of the archive, and asks what the practicalimplications are for educational institutions, the creative industries, and the general public.

In Visual Occupations Gil Z. Hochberg shows how the Israeli Occupation of Palestine is driven by the unequal access to visual rights, or the right to control what can be seen, how, and from which position. Israel maintains this unequal balance by erasing the history and denying the existence of Palestinians, and by carefully concealing its own militarization. Israeli surveillance of Palestinians, combined with the militarized gaze of Israeli soldiers at places like roadside checkpoints, also serve as tools of dominance. Hochberg analyzes various works by Palestinian and Israeli artists, among them Elia Suleiman, Rula Halawani, Sharif Waked, Ari Folman, and Larry Abramson, whose films, art, and photography challenge the inequity of visual rights by altering, queering, and manipulating dominant modes of representing the conflict. These artists' creation of new ways of seeing--such as the refusal of Palestinian filmmakers and photographers to show Palestinian suffering or the Israeli artists' exposure of state manipulated Israeli blindness --offers a crucial gateway, Hochberg suggests, for overcoming and undoing Israel's militarized dominance and political oppression of Palestinians.

In the field of American studies, attention is shifting to the long history of U.S. engagement with the Middle East, especially in the aftermath of war in Iraq and in the context of recent Arab uprisings in protest against economic inequality, social discrimination, and political repression. Here, Alex Lubin and Marwan M. Kraidy curate a new collection of essays that focuses on the cultural politics of America's entanglement with the Middle East and North Africa, making a crucial intervention in the growing subfield of transnational American studies. Featuring a diverse list of contributors from the United States, the Arab world, and beyond, American Studies Encounters the Middle East analyzes Arab-American relations by looking at the War on Terror, pop culture, and the influence of the American hegemony in a time of revolution. Contributors include Christina Moreno Almeida, Ashley Dawson, Brian T. Edwards, Waleed Hazbun, Craig Jones, Osamah Khalil, Mounira Soliman, Helga Tawil-Souri, Judith E. Tucker, Adam John Waterman, and Rayya El Zein.

In T. E. Lawrence's classic memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence of Arabia claimed that he inspired a "dream palace" of Arab nationalism. What he really inspired, however, was an American idea of the area now called the Middle East that has shaped U.S. interventions over the course of a century, with sometimes tragic consequences. America's Dream Palace brings into sharp focus the ways U.S. foreign policy has shaped the emergence of expertise concerning this crucial, often turbulent, and misunderstood part of the world. America's growing stature as a global power created a need for expert knowledge about different regions. When it came to the Middle East, the U.S. government was initially content to rely on Christian missionaries and Orientalist scholars. After World War II, however, as Washington's national security establishment required professional expertise in Middle Eastern affairs, it began to cultivate a mutually beneficial relationship with academic institutions. Newly created programs at Harvard, Princeton, and other universities became integral to Washington's policymaking in the region. The National Defense Education Act of 1958, which aligned America's educational goals with Cold War security concerns, proved a boon for Middle Eastern studies. But charges of anti-Americanism within the academy soon strained this cozy relationship. Federal funding for area studies declined, while independent think tanks with ties to the government flourished. By the time the Bush administration declared its Global War on Terror, Osamah Khalil writes, think tanks that actively pursued agendas aligned with neoconservative goals were the drivers of America's foreign policy.

Alastair Bonnett looks at the role nostalgia plays in the radical imagination to offer a new guide to the history and politics of the left.

This collection of essays explores some new possibilities for understanding postcolonial traumas. It examines representations of both personal and collective traumas around the globe from Palestinian, Caribbean, African American, South African, Maltese, Algerian, Indian, Australian and British writers, directors and artists.

This collection brings together experts from media and communication studies with postcolonial studies scholars to illustrate how the two fields may challenge and enrich each other. It encompasses essays on topics including media convergence, transcultural subjectivity, hegemony, piracy, and media history and colonialism. Drawing on examples from film, literature, music, TV, and the internet, the contributors investigate the transnational dimensions of today's media, engage with local and global media politics, and discuss media outlets as economic agents, thus illustrating mechanisms of power in postcolonial and neo-colonial mediascapes.

The Future of Postcolonial Studies celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of The Empire Writes Back by the now famous troika - Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin. When The Empire Writes Back first appeared in 1989, it put postcolonial cultures and their post-invasion narratives on the map. This vibrant collection of fifteen chapters by both established and emerging scholars taps into this early mapping while merging these concerns with present trends which have been grouped as: comparing, converting, greening, post-queering and utopia. The postcolonial is a centrifugal force that continues to energize globalization, transnational, diaspora, area and queer studies. Spanning the colonial period from the 1860s to the present, The Future of Postcolonial Studies ventures into other postcolonies outside of the Anglophone purview. In reassessing the nation-state, language, race, religion, sexuality, the environment, and the very idea of 'the future,' this volume reasserts the notion that postcolonial is an "anticipatory discourse" and bears testimony to the driving energy and thus the future of postcolonial studies.