Remembering the Osmanlı in the Middle East

Nations and Nationalism, 2004

Abstract. This paper examines the influence of the historical trajectory on the creation of nationalism in the twentieth century Middle East. While it is not claimed here that everything was decided in preexisting history, the paper claims that history was important. If the story of Middle Eastern nationalism is the story of the tension between ethnic Pan-Arabism and geographical state nationalism, the fact is both these phenomena are highly distinct in the sources used for this study, mainly seventeenth- and eighteenth century biographical dictionaries. The modern countries (Egypt, Syria) are in daily use, serving partially as terms of identity, non-political though it might have been. A sense of Arabism existed as well, probably surviving from the early Islamic period. It had much to do with the survival of Arabic literary genres as the preoccupation of the intellectual elite. The Ottomans did their bit in this regard, by treating the Arabic-speaking Middle East as substantially one unified unit, their provinces being superficial and unimportant barriers, mentally no less than physically. Thus, when the Ottoman Empire disappeared in the early twentieth century, the ambivalence between Arabism and state-based nationalism already existed, and was by no means invented by colonialism. The later success of this or that version of nationalism could only be explained by reference to modern factors, but the repertory owed much to the cultural history of the region.

2021

Within this paper I will explore my Arab-Jewish identity by confronting the historical development of that term. I will look at the ways in which collective memory and photography are utilized to construct images used as colonizing tools to assimilate Arab-Jews into Israel and Palestine after 1948 as part of Zionist Ideology. In an effort to explore productive forms of collective memory, I will investigate the way food and hospitality are used as a vehicle to strengthen this cultural diaspora. I will conclude by discussing my thesis installation in which the gallery is activated by food preparation and consumption, ceramic vessels on display, and borders being broken down through the political act of communing

Quest, 2012

Mediterranean Politics, 2008

While the historical trajectories of emergent attempts to deal with legacies of political violence in the Arab Middle East differ widely, certain commonalities can help us understand this new field across the region. On the one hand, evidence presented in this volume suggests that grassroots movements have to some extent succeeded in ending the politics of pretence and denial that long dominated Arab states. On the other hand, particular political groupings and media monopolize discourses of a universally applicable process of truth and reconciliation in a way that consciously makes use of international idioms, but effectively obfuscates other aspects of social and political justice and reform.

CIRS 2018 Proceedings, 2019

Este es un borrador ampliado de un capítulo que se publicará en el libro del Congreso Internacional 2018 de Representaciones Sociales editado por Susana Seidman et al. Eds. Universidad de Belgrano This is an extended draft of a chapter that will be published in the book of the 2018 International Congress of Social Representations edited by Susana Seidman et al. Eds. University of Belgrano

1914-1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War, 2018

Since 1914-1918 various practices of remembering World War I have coexisted and competed in the public spheres of the nation-states of the Middle East. By outlining official efforts to remember—and forget—the events of the war, and by placing them in conversation with counter-narratives that resuscitate forgotten memories in an effort to critique official state versions of history, this article highlights the productive tensions between war memory and the modern state in the Middle East during the 20 th century.

Middle East Critique, 2019

This article takes stock of the field of memory studies and where it has moved since the Arab uprisings. If the 1990s marked the first interest in memory studies, the 2000s opened the floodgates to a variety of approaches and localities. The aim is not to present a complete catalogue of memory studies in the Middle East, but rather to highlight some of the trends and patterns in the field and its development over time. It does so both by discussing key works and by focusing on an examination of memory studies about contemporary Lebanon. The article argues that memory studies in the 1990s drew on a particular understanding of transition that came to an abrupt end with the Arab Uprisings. 2011 marked a turning point both in the way the uprisings made scholars question the national framework previously privileged, and by stoking an interest in memories and histories of revolts other than those connected to the anti-colonial struggle. The latest wave of memory studies investigates the uses of online archives and the archive as metaphor for how storage functions for human memory, introducing new methodologies and theoretical directions.

ecent years have seen a renaissance of Mizrahi and/or Arab-Jewish cultural practices related to identity and belonging. These practices too must be seen against the backdrop of contested histories and terminologies. The identity crisis provoked by the rupture of Jews from their largely Arab/Muslim countries is re ected in a terminological crisis in which no single term seems to fully represent a coherent entity. The very proliferation of terms suggests the enormous dif culties of grappling with the complexities of this identity. To name a few: "

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East , 2011

Introduction to a special issue on the Ottoman legacy co-authored with James Reilly and Christine Philliou.