- Wagner College,
101 Parker Hall, 1 Campus Road
Staten Island, NY 10301 - 7183903485
Karim Malak
Wagner College, History, Faculty Member
- Rutgers University, Center for Security, Race & Rights, Faculty Memberadd
- Visiting Assistant Professor of Non-Western Historyedit
This paper explores the nature of Egyptian Sovereignty at the turn of the 19th century. Challenging the narrative that sees the Egyptian state emerge after 1919, it traces its birth to increasingly assertive policies and reforms that... more
This paper explores the nature of Egyptian Sovereignty at the turn of the 19th century. Challenging the narrative that sees the Egyptian state emerge after 1919, it traces its birth to increasingly assertive policies and reforms that began under Mehmet Ali and Ibrahim Pasha, which were stunted by the British but later picked up by Khedive Abbas Hilmi II. Asking what the limits and opportunities for governance were afforded within competing visions of Ottoman and British sovereignty, the author concentrates particularly on accounting and financial reform, military bureaucracy, and that of the awqāf; the key battlegrounds for Egyptian sovereignty between the 1870s and 1914 when an earlier undertheorized epoch of decolonization began.
Research Interests:
This article explores a seaborne genealogy of sovereignty and governmentality by drawing on the case of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Egypt. It argues that a particular form of totalizing sovereignty emerged through the Levant Crisis... more
This article explores a seaborne genealogy of sovereignty and governmentality by drawing on the case of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Egypt. It argues that a particular form of totalizing sovereignty emerged through the Levant Crisis and its resolution in 1841 when the Mediterranean became mare clausum. Subsequently, it demonstrates how a rivaling seaborne genealogy of sovereignty and governmentality complicates the standard Foucauldian narrative of the emergence of governmentality. In contrast to the classic land-based history of sovereignty and governmentality, a seaborne story can point to a different and earlier periodization of colonization that involves the acquisition of naval stations, outposts, and customs houses hidden under the veneer of naval science.
Research Interests:
In 2011, in the wake of Egypt’s uprising, an Egyptian self-styled feminist by the name of Alia El Mahdy decided to post pictures of herself nude on her Facebook page in an act of ‘freedom’. This bellow for ‘freedom’, and the subsequent... more
In 2011, in the wake of Egypt’s uprising, an Egyptian self-styled feminist by the name of Alia El Mahdy decided to post pictures of herself nude on her Facebook page in an act of ‘freedom’. This bellow for ‘freedom’, and the subsequent outcry against it, allowed her to put forward an application for ‘political’ asylum in Sweden which was swiftly granted.
In the comfort of Sweden in 2014, Alia El Mahdy posted pictures of her nude body once again, bleeding on the flag of the Islamic State. This latest expose was part of El Mahdy’s work with Femen, the Ukranian based feminist group.
Both instances are part of the continued fascination of Western feminism’s desire to liberate individuals of a lower racial hierarchy as an act that defines both the ‘political’ and as a corollary ‘freedom’. In this liberation the West is rendered as the guardian of ‘freedom’. In that instance a racialized other that lacks ‘freedom’ and ‘political’ awareness is performed. El Mahdy’s body becomes an articulation of how this freedom is imbricated with the West’s own contradictions when it comes to balancing rhetoric of openness and the question of Arab refugees.
Yet El Mahdy’s interprelation of the ‘political’ and ‘freedom’ is not germane nor is it as seamless as the West makes it seem, contrary to Sweden’s asylum standards which do not include Syrians or Iraqi fleeing the region. This paper traces the infrastructure that is necessary for such an interpellation and the repression of other cases of ‘freedom’ such that this instance become possible. By looking at the operation of the foreign donor community in Egypt, local comprador NGOs and missionizing Western development practitioners a material infrastructure is revealed that is invested in repressing other cases of ‘freedom’ such that El Mahdy’s appear as indigenous.
In the comfort of Sweden in 2014, Alia El Mahdy posted pictures of her nude body once again, bleeding on the flag of the Islamic State. This latest expose was part of El Mahdy’s work with Femen, the Ukranian based feminist group.
Both instances are part of the continued fascination of Western feminism’s desire to liberate individuals of a lower racial hierarchy as an act that defines both the ‘political’ and as a corollary ‘freedom’. In this liberation the West is rendered as the guardian of ‘freedom’. In that instance a racialized other that lacks ‘freedom’ and ‘political’ awareness is performed. El Mahdy’s body becomes an articulation of how this freedom is imbricated with the West’s own contradictions when it comes to balancing rhetoric of openness and the question of Arab refugees.
Yet El Mahdy’s interprelation of the ‘political’ and ‘freedom’ is not germane nor is it as seamless as the West makes it seem, contrary to Sweden’s asylum standards which do not include Syrians or Iraqi fleeing the region. This paper traces the infrastructure that is necessary for such an interpellation and the repression of other cases of ‘freedom’ such that this instance become possible. By looking at the operation of the foreign donor community in Egypt, local comprador NGOs and missionizing Western development practitioners a material infrastructure is revealed that is invested in repressing other cases of ‘freedom’ such that El Mahdy’s appear as indigenous.
Research Interests:
Ethnoaccountancy’, Donald Mackenzie (2005) argues, studies peoples’ scientific standards that create a discipline to govern, normalize and standardize finance. It is often a governing of numbers, often fiscal and monetary. Much like homo... more
Ethnoaccountancy’, Donald Mackenzie (2005) argues, studies peoples’ scientific standards that create a discipline to govern, normalize and standardize finance. It is often a governing of numbers, often fiscal and monetary. Much like homo islamicus, it aims to move past ‘science’ and instead probe for a political economy of morality when it comes to standardizing accounting techniques. Inverting the claim that these standards are objective and real manifestations of the ‘economy’, ‘ethnoaccountancy’ turns these issues into a moral question rather than one of science or the market.
In this paper, by probing the example of the IMF’s New Budget Classification (NBC) of the state of Egypt in 2004-6, I dissect the self-evident 'objectivity' of the new accounting techniques. Thus, a purportedly ‘technical’ reform in 2004 that changed accounting regulations paved the way for the lifting of energy subsidies in Egypt in 2014-15. The NBC’s epistemic violence is evident in the accusation that Egyptian methods of accounting are ‘inefficient’.
The question of an im/moral economy that governs numbers can have far-reaching effects on peoples’ livelihoods and income. My interest lies in the ways in which the translation of numbers and their scientificity turns human experiences into ‘technical’ objects. Armed with an accounting arsenal backed by IMF, the emergent arrangement, I argue, allows debates -such as the subsidy question in Egypt- to operate in the realm of numbers rather than that of human experience. Inter alia, the NBC introduced speculative capital to cure Egypt’s 'inefficient' fiscal budget.
In this paper, by probing the example of the IMF’s New Budget Classification (NBC) of the state of Egypt in 2004-6, I dissect the self-evident 'objectivity' of the new accounting techniques. Thus, a purportedly ‘technical’ reform in 2004 that changed accounting regulations paved the way for the lifting of energy subsidies in Egypt in 2014-15. The NBC’s epistemic violence is evident in the accusation that Egyptian methods of accounting are ‘inefficient’.
The question of an im/moral economy that governs numbers can have far-reaching effects on peoples’ livelihoods and income. My interest lies in the ways in which the translation of numbers and their scientificity turns human experiences into ‘technical’ objects. Armed with an accounting arsenal backed by IMF, the emergent arrangement, I argue, allows debates -such as the subsidy question in Egypt- to operate in the realm of numbers rather than that of human experience. Inter alia, the NBC introduced speculative capital to cure Egypt’s 'inefficient' fiscal budget.
Research Interests:
Claims to new or critical knowledge can often be non-performative. Building off of this assumption, this paper demonstrates the ways in which the 2010-2011 uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa have been analysed through... more
Claims to new or critical knowledge can often be non-performative. Building off of this assumption, this paper demonstrates the ways in which the 2010-2011 uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa have been analysed through approaches that claim to be critical and post-Orientalist and yet reproduce problematic assumptions about the region, revealing their connection to a longer genealogy dating back to Orientalism. This serves to sanitize the uprisings by virtue of a neoliberal agenda that reproduces the ‘Middle East’ straitjacket, in turn creating a typology not too different from realist analysis in the region that (re)posits ‘Arab exceptionalism.’ Claims to being critical, or making a critical turn, are thus questioned in this paper through an analysis that shows how theory has been in the interest of power through the appropriation of native informants into the academic complex of think-tanks, Western donor institutions, and foreign media.
Taking our cue from Edward Said, we explore how new approaches have presented themselves as critical and have disrobed themselves of their exotic and explicit racist discourse, despite the fact that the same assumptions continue to lurk in the background. Using Sara Ahmed’s notion of the non-performativity of claims to being critical, we survey how the Middle East is being reshaped through these ‘new’ and ‘critical’ approaches that in essence are apologetic to neoliberalism and liberal governmentality at large. We show how minorities continue to be an intervention mechanism under the so-called ‘freedom of belief’ agenda, how the ‘democracy paradigm’ advances electoralism as freedom, and how rights-based approaches with their underlying (neo)liberal assumptions continue to determine gender politics and analysis despite postcolonial interventions.
By creating a contemporary genealogy of Middle East area studies and surveying calls for proposals for journal articles, media publications, Western think-tank reports, donor programs and Civil Society Organizations' (CSOs) expansion into the Middle East, this paper argues that this form of surveillance, though masquerading as ‘critical,’ builds off of neoliberal governmentality. This, in turn, molds a subjectivity that reifies the Middle East as a stagnant entity.
Taking our cue from Edward Said, we explore how new approaches have presented themselves as critical and have disrobed themselves of their exotic and explicit racist discourse, despite the fact that the same assumptions continue to lurk in the background. Using Sara Ahmed’s notion of the non-performativity of claims to being critical, we survey how the Middle East is being reshaped through these ‘new’ and ‘critical’ approaches that in essence are apologetic to neoliberalism and liberal governmentality at large. We show how minorities continue to be an intervention mechanism under the so-called ‘freedom of belief’ agenda, how the ‘democracy paradigm’ advances electoralism as freedom, and how rights-based approaches with their underlying (neo)liberal assumptions continue to determine gender politics and analysis despite postcolonial interventions.
By creating a contemporary genealogy of Middle East area studies and surveying calls for proposals for journal articles, media publications, Western think-tank reports, donor programs and Civil Society Organizations' (CSOs) expansion into the Middle East, this paper argues that this form of surveillance, though masquerading as ‘critical,’ builds off of neoliberal governmentality. This, in turn, molds a subjectivity that reifies the Middle East as a stagnant entity.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In the literature on workers in Egypt at large, especially after the January 25th revolution, a problem persists that posits workers' participation as important but only in its 'economic' aspect. True workers were important in bringing... more
In the literature on workers in Egypt at large, especially after the January 25th revolution, a problem persists that posits workers' participation as important but only in its 'economic' aspect. True workers were important in bringing down the regime in February 11 2011, yet afterwards mobilization was 'economic' but not 'political'. This was often blamed on workers' failure to capture factories due to a lack of class-consciousness necessary to win over the bourgeoisie or the managerial class for control of factories. The other side of this argument is that the bourgeoisie and the youth movement was selfish, it did not ally with workers and did not raise their demands: making it harder for them to strike for 'political' matters.
By looking at the case of Bisco Masr, a biscuits factory founded in 1957 that was once owned by the state and its own workers, and their story of buying stock through their knowledge of accounting, a different story is told. This story problematizes the so-called 'economic' and 'political' binary of workers' participation by showing that workers have at times overcome this impasse. Rather than wait for the workers' revolution where workers will capture the means of production by forcing a tactical alliance with the bourgeoisie, this contribution shows that other technologies that operate at the level of micro-power influence the struggle rather than the struggle being the determinant factor. By looking the politics of accounting and due diligence audits that have the potential to forestall privatization, micropractices necessary to the functioning of capitalism are opened up to show that they influence the struggle rather than being influenced by the struggle against the bourgeoisie, causing us to rethink how we think of workers' mobilization.
By looking at the case of Bisco Masr, a biscuits factory founded in 1957 that was once owned by the state and its own workers, and their story of buying stock through their knowledge of accounting, a different story is told. This story problematizes the so-called 'economic' and 'political' binary of workers' participation by showing that workers have at times overcome this impasse. Rather than wait for the workers' revolution where workers will capture the means of production by forcing a tactical alliance with the bourgeoisie, this contribution shows that other technologies that operate at the level of micro-power influence the struggle rather than the struggle being the determinant factor. By looking the politics of accounting and due diligence audits that have the potential to forestall privatization, micropractices necessary to the functioning of capitalism are opened up to show that they influence the struggle rather than being influenced by the struggle against the bourgeoisie, causing us to rethink how we think of workers' mobilization.