Imperial Eyes Research Articles

Representation of India in Travel Writings by Latin American Women in the 20th Century

This paper examines the representation of India in the works of Latin American women writers in the 20th Century. With the advent of Modernism in Latin America in the late 19th Century as a turn-of-the-century movement, Latin American intellectuals started engaging with India such as Rubén Darío in Azul (1888). However, it was Gabriela Mistral, a Nobel laureate from Chile, who although never travelled to India, may be considered the first Latin American woman writer who engaged with India through the appreciation of Tagore in her literary repertoire. Furthermore, in the 20th Century Cecília Meireles, one of the most famous Modernist poets from Brazil visited India in 1953 upon being invited by Jawaharlal Nehru. She noted in her diary that as paradoxical as it sounds, it is much easier to understand India if one knows Brazil. She drew similarities between the fundamental issues of the two countries then. She wrote the anthology Poemas Escritos Na Índia (1961). Another important performance artist is Josefina Báez who would combine yoga and her lived experience in the three spaces of New York, La Romana in the Dominican Republic and India to produce zany dance dramas like Dominicanish (2001). She uses the classical dance form of Kuchipudi originating in the south of India to restructure her Dominican cultural identity in New York. Another contemporary Mexican writer, Margo Glantz, wrote her work Coronada de Moscas (2012), which is a travelogue based on her three sojourns in India accompanied with photographs by Alina López Cámara. The paper analyses the works by the above-mentioned Latin American intellectuals vis-à-vis representation of India in them and focuses on what it is to travel to India and write on it for Latin American women in the 20th Century. This has been done using the theoretical perspective of bell hooks (Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center, 1984) and Mary Louise Pratt (Imperial Eyes, 1992).

The Landscape of Prehistory: Mesa Verde and the Framing of the Past in American Archaeology

This paper is part of a larger project investigating how American archaeological work in the Southwest gradually elides ongoing acts of displacing native and Mexican peoples in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War. Some of the earliest American encounters with ruins and abandoned settlements belonging to Ancestral Puebloan civilizations occurred in the context of demarcating the new boundary between Mexico and the United States. For example, John Russell Bartlett’s Personal Narrative of the U.S.-Mexican Boundary Survey (1854) is noteworthy for the way such ruins are a major focus within it. However, Bartlett actively associates these ancient ruins with processes of forced removal that he can see happening right in front of him, which result in another, more recent kind of ruin. Over time, though, the recognition of a complex and often violent history of relocation that both shapes and continues into the present drops out of later archaeological work in the region. From the perspective of anachronism, this general change in how Southwest archaeology relates past and present involves superimposing a wished-for present, specifically one devoid of native inhabitants, onto the past ruin to the extent that that ruin is understood to be devoid of any relevance for contemporary indigenous peoples living in the region. Put another way, numerous critics of nineteenth-century European and American archaeological practice have pointed out how it “produces archaeological subjects by splitting contemporary non-European peoples off from their precolonial, and even their colonial past. To revive indigenous history and culture as archaeology is to revive them as dead” (Mary Louis Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 1992). This paper extends this critique further by exploring how such an operation is essentially a special form of anachronism and how it arises out of archaeological practices that, at least initially, are not.In particular, this paper tracks how this change in archaeological practice depends on a notion of prehistoric time which is developed by privileging certain kinds of archaeological evidence (especially pottery and architectural remains) and certain ways of presenting and interpreting that evidence, looking at the history of excavations at Mesa Verde at the turn of the century. Key texts include Gustaf Nordenskiöld’s Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde (1893), and Jesse Walter Fewkes’s Antiquities of the Mesa Verde National Park (1909 & 1911). In reinforcing the perception of Mesa Verde as a historically-disconnected, prehistoric site, Fewkes’s report differs from its forerunner in several aspects, specifically its consolidation of distinct structures (namely, how many there are and which are noteworthy), its shift from an analytical to a descriptive mode of writing, and finally its cultivation of a photographic aesthetic that bolsters the sense of a timeless ruin.

접경연구의 혁신과 확장을 위하여

In previous studies on chŏpkyŏng, the term has been considered as the translation of a German term ‘Grenze’ which means a ‘border’ in English. In this respect, it has been used to refer to Staatsgrenze, that is, a state border. In contrast, in new border studies, which recently emerged in the field of history, it is suggested as the translation of a contact zone that Mary Louise Pratt coined. By doing so, a group of historians seek to innovate and expand border studies. However, there is a conceptual gap between chŏpkyŏng as a contact zone and what Pratt herself refers to the term. On this basis, this article calls for a more careful and detailed examination of Pratt’s studies. In this context, it aims to put Pratt’s magnum opus, Imperial Eyes in its right place in the history of imperialism studies, clarify the distinguishing features of her inquiry into the nineteenth-century imperialism, and draw some implications for chŏpkyŏng studies.

From envoy journals to legation reports: regulating knowledge of the world in late imperial and modern China

ABSTRACT In the Qing dynasty, the diary-form for intelligence gathering was perfected by Tulišen, whose travelogue to Central Asia allowed the Kangxi emperor’s “imperial eyes” to assume vicarious witness to that heroic journey. Prior to China’s stationing of resident ministers abroad in 1876, envoy journals similar to Tulišen’s were commonly used for information gathering. In the next three decades, the genre of envoy communication became a fertile field for trials and experimentations, as Qing diplomats adjusted their method of communication to the changing needs of the state and the prevalent media and information technology. When the Qing dynasty established China’s first bureau of foreign affairs (Waiwubu) in 1901, the modern-style “foreign office” required radically new genres for diplomatic communication, which prioritized systemization, standardization, and a complete elimination of subjective experience. These diplomatic reports, akin to Western-style bluebooks, were separated from classified information and thus designed for domestic circulation. Tracing the evolution in diplomatic communications from late imperial China to the turn of the twentieth century, this paper seeks to unpack how new views of the foreign were shaped by new genres, new media, and new diplomatic institutions.

A European Contact Zone: Portugal and Britain in Marianne Baillie's Lisbon in the Years 1821, 1822, and 1823

This paper seeks to shed light on the relationship between Britain and Portugal in the 1820s filtered through Marianne Baillie's eyes in her travel writing Lisbon in the Years 1821, 1822, and 1823 (1824). Looked at through the lens of transculturation as used in Mary Louise Pratt's Imperial Eyes, this relationship – ambivalent though it may be – is perceived along the lines of centre and periphery, domination, and subordination. Portugal is identified as a European contact zone where disparate cultures meet with asymmetrical relations of power. The first part is dedicated to Portugal's entangled post-Napoleonic political situation and to the role of Baillie's letters as eye-witness accounts of historical importance. The second part focusses on Baillie's perception of the Portuguese and their culture, drawing on Jacques Derrida's Of Hospitality to explore the relationship between host and foreigner. It also highlights instances of Baillie's all-pervasive patriotism, which leads to a rather taste-based condemnation of local and living conditions. Her letters combine historical facts and personal impressions while at the same time showing characteristics of travel accounts and women's life writing.

Orientalism in D. H. Lawrence’s Novelistic Representation of Italy

ABSTRACT Critical attention to D. H. Lawrence’s two Italian novels has focused on themes of sexual politics and leadership politics, and few critics have noted their engagement with colonial politics. Informed by postcolonial studies, this paper argues that Lawrence’s representation of Italy in The Lost Girl and Aaron's Rod is overloaded with Orientalist imagery in that Italy is imagined as an Other within Europe that contrasts with the industrialised and civilised North. Italy is portrayed as alternatively redemptive and destructive. While the Italian landscape is idealised as an exotic Other, its people and culture are demonised as a savage Other. Both representation modes are trapped in the logic of imperialist discourses. The celebration of the landscape marginalises Italy from the modern world and the demonisation of the community affirms the racial and cultural inferiority of Italy. Lawrence’s representation of Italy indicates that in the cultural imagination of Britain the racial and national others within Europe are often subject to the colonising gaze of the ‘imperial eyes’.

HamletRevision: Bhardwaj’sHaideras Crossmapping and Contact Zone

AbstractCompleting his trilogy of adaptations of Shakespearean tragedies, Indian director Vishal Bhardwaj’s film Haider (2014) tackles Hamlet. A generic fusion of realist drama, Bollywood movie, and espionage thriller, the film intersects the Elizabethan source text’s revenge plot with intertextual references to journalist Basharat Peer’s contemporary war memoir Curfewed Nights (2011), detailing the realities in insurgency-torn Kashmir in the 1990s. Taking its cue from the film’s controversial reception, which runs the gamut from censorship, appraisals, and criticism that Indian film does not need the ‘crutch’ of Hamlet to claim attention, this article explores questions about border-crossing, violence, and reconciliation raised on the level of form and content. Haider presents an adaptation of not one but two source texts: one ‘global’ and one ‘local’. The result, this article argues, is astonishingly harmonious and the contested metaphors of adaptation theory and global Shakespeare studies, such as ‘appropriation’ or ‘indigenization’, apply less to it than that of a transcultural ‘contact zone’ (Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation, 2nd. ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2008) and of a ‘crossmapping’ (Bronfen, Elisabeth. Crossmappings. On Visual Culture. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2018). By placing greater emphasis on communality and having the ending turn from revenge to forgiveness, Haider interrogates the transcultural appeal of Hamlet, drawing attention to histories of violent conflict. It also reveals a revisionist agenda that captures both hidden political realities and a haunting refiguration of Shakespeare.

(Re)Searching with Imperial Eyes: Collective Self-Inquiry as a Tool for Transformative Migration Studies

Migration scholars, and the universities and institutions who fund them, at times neglect to address the ways in which the traces of the imperial past, and references to the ‘post’ colonial serve to obfuscate and legitimize discriminatory practices in their work. The ‘imperial eyes’ of the academy set the terms and limitations on interactions, locations, and relationality in research, reducing the agency of migrants, producing stratified configurations in the positionality of both migrants and researchers and, subsequently, exacerbating dynamics of exclusion and extraction. As early-stage researchers, we see a critical need for an approach to migration studies which undermines the ongoing impact of colonialism and the normativity of institutionalized, hierarchical narratives that haunt academia. Our research builds on the work of scholars who write about the autonomy of migration, liberation theorists, and critical Indigenous perspectives, but our positions are also influenced by those on the ‘frontlines’ resisting various manifestations of violence and exclusion. In this article, using an interdisciplinary model, we propose the notion of collective self-inquiry to critically question and inquire into our own methods and approaches and provide a set of methodological tools that can be applied by other researchers within and outside of the university. These tools invite us to work collectively and look more critically at the b/ordering of movement(s) across former empires, thus helping us navigate towards the undercommons, a place where the liberatory potential of the academy can be realized.

“To Articulate Ourselves”: Trans-Indigenous Reflections on Film and Politics in Amazonia

In 1979 German filmmaker Werner Herzog needed access to Native lands and labor in the Amazon to make Fitzcarraldo, his (in)famous film about a rubber baron who hauls a steamboat over a mountain in order to realize his dream of bringing opera to the jungle. The Awajún people burned down Herzog’s camp and forced him out of their lands. The Ashéninka people, however, agreed to work with Herzog. As Awajún authorities resisted Herzog and Ashéninka leaders found ways to work with him, Indigenous political actors drew on resources and networks provided by nongovernmental organizations, churches, the military, and the media. Through a trans-Indigenous exploration of contrasting Native experiences, one of open conflict, the other of collaboration, I ask how “imperial eyes” can be useful to local projects of resistance and resurgence. This trans-Indigenous view of two Indigenous encounters illustrates how Native peoples can creatively use the “same” opportunity in different ways. Moreover, this juxtaposition of Native experiences reveals that Herzog is best understood as a minor character in a crucial period of trans-Indigenous organizing in Abiayala in the 1970s and 1980s.

Slavery through Imperial Eyes

Slavery through Imperial Eyes

The American West and the World: Transnational and comparative perspectives by Janne Lahti

Reviewed by: The American West and the World: Transnational and comparative perspectives by Janne Lahti Andrew Offenburger The American West and the World: Transnational and comparative perspectives By Janne Lahti. New York; London: Routledge, 2019. In October 2000 at the Western History Association annual conference, then-president Patricia Limerick spoke on the connections between the American West and global history. Limerick described the deep tradition of finding commonalities in pasts of empire, colonialism and environmentalism. “One can… begin as a western American historian,” she said, “and end up attending closely to global processes, from international patterns of colonialism to planetary implications of climate change. The American West affords the historian a key of admission to some of the best and most thought-provoking conversations going on in the world today.”1 This was nothing new for an organization—and a broader network of scholars—who had been comparing American expansion to other European and Indigenous histories in earnest in the 1980s and 1990s; a comparative thrust had linked the West often to locations affected by the British Empire, and if the general public was not yet versed in this American un-exceptionalism, scholars sure were. Since then, a robust and growing field of transnational works has arisen, one that connects the history of the American West with other trans-imperial regions. Readers of this journal and others with an international view of colonialism will be very familiar with this corpus, which has made inroads with scholars of the American West most forcefully over the past twenty years. In The American West and the World, Janne Lahti gives shape and structure to this expansive yet inchoate field, offering a narrative synthesis on the West’s shared history with the world. He draws connections between older comparative work and newer transnational ties. “In some ways,” he writes in the introduction, “transnational history stands as the newest manifestation of an approach that has successively been branded as international, world, or, simply, comparative history. What all these conceptualizations share are attempts of interpretative and methodological realignments contradicting insular narratives” (6). Through examples drawn from previous studies, and through historiographical categorization, Lahti’s work admirably defines a sprawling field. What follows the introduction is a synthesis of secondary works, finding a pattern among the myriad contributions spread across global geographies. Five chapters organize the historiography by chronology and theme, each followed by a full bibliography. “Shared Worlds” (Chapter 1) begins with a story of the Makahs, relying upon Joshua Reid’s The Sea Is My Country, to present a globally entangled world, sustained and caught by imperial and Indigenous interests from Europe to the Americas and Asia, from contact to the early nineteenth century. This “early West,” the author writes, was “international before it became national, and it became known and placed in a global context of empires, markets, epidemics, and knowledge before it was claimed by the United States and its brand of settler colonialism” (17). “Settler Revolutions” (Chapter 2) invokes the paradigm of James Belich to characterize the United States from 1830 to 1900 and beyond, with strong parallels discussed in Indigenous, British, French, Russian, and Spanish imperial lands. The remaining chapters—“Violence,” “Intimacies of Empires” and “Imperial Eyes”—arrange a conversation among scholars of diverse specialties, framed by foundational texts in American transnationalism. This all results in a field-shaping work on the global West and its borderlands. The handling of the historiography is deft and thorough, and this study will be cited often for its ability to articulate the contours of a field still forming in many minds. Scholars of settler colonialism, empire, Indigenous societies, conquest/resistance and postcolonialism will likely nod in agreement in several sections while being pleasantly surprised by unfamiliar connections in others. One simply cannot set down this book and retain any sense of American parochialism, much less triumphalism. Lahti is at his best when attacking exceptionalism by discussing transnational circuits and shared actors along multinational frontiers and borderlands. By virtue of its successes, then, The American West and the World implicitly raises one question (among many) pertaining to comparative and transnational modes of analysis: have previous comparative studies, by allowing for national differences, unwittingly run the...

A Reappreciation of Cannibal Translation as Critique of Ideology

Cultural hegemony has been widely discussed within the field of Translation Studies. However, few scholars proposed a method of political action to erase the thumbprint of hegemony found in many translated works. In my opinion, the concept of “cannibal translation” developed by Haroldo de Campos is an exception (De Campos & Wolff, 1986). This form of translation is a way to regain control over the meaning of existing discourses and of the systems of representations that govern our daily lives. This paper will rely on a strong theoretical background, in order to argue for the realization of a form of militancy within the boundaries of the systems of representations of language itself, in order to stop seeing the world with the “imperial eyes” (Mary Snell-Hornby, 2006) of cultural hegemony, namely of English tongue and culture in Canada and its industries in Colombia. Finally, I will approach militant translation as a method of “ideological criticism,” as understood by Slavoj Žižek. who defines ideology as a “unconscious fantasy that structures social reality” (Garcia & Sanchez, 2008).

Drawing Spaniards in the Philippines: Displacement, Brutalization, and the Dissident Eye of Ignacio del Villar

This article explores the Spanish colonization of the Philippines and their colonial culture and society as portrayed in the comic strips by Ignacio del Villar, a Spanish cartoonist who drew for Philippine colonial magazines in Spanish. His pictures, whose principal audience was the Spanish-speaking community of Manila in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, satirize the alienation of the Western individual in the Philippines. His mockery of the generalized colonial attitude of “monarch of all I survey” links del Villar with dissident colonial accounts, as discussed by Mary Louise Pratt in Imperial Eyes. This article inquires on the reasons why del Villar seemingly veered away from traditional colonial discourses, resulting in the mockery of the self-image of social superiority that Spanish residents in the Philippines strived to maintain in a complex society where class and origin were difficult notions to define.

“Sympathizing Imperial Eyes” : The Politics of the Western Representation in The Sketch Book

“Sympathizing Imperial Eyes” : The Politics of the Western Representation in The Sketch Book

The Imperial Eyes of the Outsider: Elizabeth Bishop, American Globalization, and the Cold War in Brazil

The Imperial Eyes of the Outsider: Elizabeth Bishop, American Globalization, and the Cold War in Brazil

Trans-‘imperial eyes’ in the Atlantic on the British imperial voyage to Australia, 1787–1791

Early British imperial voyages to Australia did not occur entirely at sea or solely within the sphere of British influence. In the late eighteenth century Britain controlled few ports. Imperial expansion under sail therefore required supplies, rest and repair at the ports of other empires. Indeed, in 1787 the First Fleet laid over in the Atlantic harbours of Tenerife in the Spanish Canary Islands, Rio de Janeiro in Portuguese Brazil and the Dutch East India Company’s Cape colony in southern Africa. These layovers varied in length from a week to a month. During this time British officials went ashore on imperial business. What is less understood is that other voyagers also visited port townships and hinterlands to explore, socialise and make personal purchases, presenting opportunities to view settler colonialism under other empires. In her study of European travel writing, Mary Louise Pratt termed ‘imperial eyes’ the ways of seeing that produced othering discourses of non-Europeans. Through a new reading of 1787 travel accounts, and others from 1789 and 1791, this article argues that British imperial voyaging to Australia entailed seeing with trans-‘imperial eyes’ in the colonies of other empires. These encounters led to the formation of impressions about indigenous peoples under other colonial rule.

Neighbors through Imperial Eyes: Depicting Babylonia in the Assyrian Campaign Reliefs

Abstract The Neo-Assyrian campaign reliefs are rich sources for understanding Assyrian ideas of empire, geography, and Assyria’s relationship to the wider world. They are also exceptions: the format of the later Assyrian campaign reliefs is in several respects so unusual in ancient Near Eastern art as to demand explanation. Not the least of the campaign reliefs’ unusual qualities is the extensive and often detailed depiction of foreign landscapes and people. This paper examines one instance of this phenomenon: the particular case of depictions of Babylonia and the far south in Assyrian campaign reliefs. Studies of the textual sources have done much to draw out the complex cultural and political relationship between Assyria and Babylonia in the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries B.C., revealing tensions between an identification with the cities of the south and their venerable temples on the one hand, and the undeniable political and strategic problems posed by Babylonian rebellions against Assyrian rule on the other. It is argued that the campaign reliefs attempt to resolve this tension by presenting conquest and pacification as accomplished facts, and Babylonia’s abundance as an Assyrian imperial possession. It is also suggested that one function of the reliefs was to process historical victories into a larger, ahistorical image of Assyrian imperial success.

Chinese Law in Imperial Eyes: Sovereignty, Justice, and Transcultural Politics. By Li Chen. Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. xii, 400 pp. ISBN: 9780231173742 (cloth, also available as e-book).

Chinese Law in Imperial Eyes: Sovereignty, Justice, and Transcultural Politics. By Li Chen. Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. xii, 400 pp. ISBN: 9780231173742 (cloth, also available as e-book).

접촉지대 부산을 향한 제국의 시선 : 외국인의 여행기에 재현된 19세기말의 부산

19세기말 여러 나라 외국인의 여행기를 통하여 부산을 경유하는 다차원의 항로를 알 수 있다. 나가사키가 동아시아 해역의 거점항로라면 부산은 하나의 결절지에 해당한다. 청일전쟁을 거치면서 로컬 부산은 지역적이고 세계적인 공간으로 부상한다. 부산을 향하는 제국의 시선이 뜨겁다. 퍼시벌 노웰, 샤를 바라, 사쿠라이 군노스케, 헤세 바르텍, 이사벨라 비숍, 카르네프의 여행기는 조선과 부산에 대한 지정학적 관심을 대변한다. 일본인 전관거류지를 향한 이들의 시선은 일본도시를 상상한다. 나가사키와 같은 일본도시의 경험을 다시 확인할 수 있기 때문이다. 이들의 시선에서 여러 가지 이중성이 드러난다. 식민도시 부산과 자연경관, 일본인 거주지와 조선인 거주지, 부산과 주변부 동래 등은 비대칭적인 양상을 보인다. 문명화 담론과 오리엔탈리즘이 중층화된 형태로 작동한다. 도시와 경관을 접근하는 태도도 부감의 시점을 견지하거나 원근법적 인식을 활용한다. 이로써 보는 자와 보이는 자의 권력관계가 형성된다. 이 지점에서 인종적 위계담론이 기입된다. 여행의 시기와 여행자의 입장에 따라서 식민도시의 이중 공간을 바라보는 시선에 편차가 생기기도 한다. 헤세 바르텍과 카르네프 등은 일본인과 조선인, 일본인 거주지와 조선인 거주지를 명료하게 구분하는 한편 그 경계의 혼종 양상을 주목한다. 이중도시와 혼종화는 식민도시를 이해하는 데 필수적인 두 측면이다. 하지만 제국의 시선은 이항대립적 논리로 차이와 갈등을은폐하고 차단한다. 회화적 글쓰기를 통하여 풍경과 경관 그리고 생활양식을 개관함으로써 타자에 대한 지배와 소유를 강화한다.BR 다섯 사람의 여행기는 접촉지대 부산의 모습을 이해하는 데 도움이 된다. 전관거류지가 식민도시로 발전하는 양상이 구체적으로 서술되고 있다. 이들이 제국의 상상으로 서술의 편향을 보이거나 잘못된 인식지도를 그리고 있는 사실을 피할 방법은 없다. 번역과 문화교섭의 가능성이 비대칭적인 권력관계에 의하여 봉쇄되고 있다. 식민도시 부산에 내재한 일본적 근대가 유럽과 일본의 혼재로 이해될 수 있다면 그 외부 또한 새롭게 인식되어야 한다. 부산과 주변부 동래가 철저하게 다른 공간으로 그려지고 있는 사실을 알 수 있다. 이는 조선의 인식과 큰 편차를 지닌다. 그럼에도 식민도시 부산의 형성과 발전에 개입하는 제국의 시선을 다층적인 스케일로 이해하는 일이 중요하다. 로컬은 지역과 세계의 개입으로 팽창한다. 여러 여행기들을 통하여 식민도시 부산이 변화하는 과정의 구체를 이해할 수 있다.

INTERROGATING EGYPTIAN NATIONALISM: TRANSCULTURAL ARCHITECTURE AT THE RAGGED EDGE OF EMPIRE

This paper examines the discursivity of nationalism in Egypt during the late nineteenth century; a period of vibrant political and architectural transformation that manifests the ragged edge of British empire. To explore this discursive terrain, this paper examines the transnationalism of multiethnic intellectuals and architectural themes. Progressive intellectuals, including the Armenian and Jewish Italian Adib Ishaq, and Yaqub Sanu—all disciples of the originally Persian scholar Jamal al-Din al-Afghani—coincided with the design of ambivalent architectural themes. The architecture and urban context of this period, whether patronized by the colonized or the colonizer, reflected the notion of transculturation through mutual fluctuation and ambivalence between traditional and imperial expressions. Projects such as the Egyptian Museum, Muntazah Palace, Awqaf building, the Lord residency, and the New Hotel, coincided with a context that interprets the ‘contact zone’—a concept posited by the theorist Mary Louise Pratt in Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (2007). For Pratt, the contact zone is a site of creative possibility, where innovative exemplars of transculturation, resulting in the mutual transformation of subjects and histories after their trajectories intersect in a space of copresence. The aim is to fray polarized representations of nationalism and to better appreciate the progressive creative and intellectual transformation that shaped Egypt ahead of the militaristic or religious expressions of nationalism that dominated the twentieth century.