Reading and responding to Knot of the Soul deeply signifies a longstanding dialogue with my friend and interlocutor Stefania Pandolfo.…
Islam
On continuity and rupture: A reply to Elshakry and Quadri
By pulling at different threads of the book’s argument, Elshakry and Quadri expose a basic tension between the book’s emphasis…
Encountering another science
The Lighthouse and the Observatory’s learned account of nineteenth-century Egyptian astronomy’s imbrications with religion, empire, and the social realities and…
In-capacities of the soul: A reply to Largier and Iqbal
“It is the other who can see my form.” My friend Omnia El Shakry, also a participant in this forum,…
Listening to the torment of existence
On the one hand, the story of modern Islam across multiple disciplines has for decades been organized by a figure…
Knot of the Soul: Voices, textures, resonances
More than any other book I have read recently, Stefania Pandolfo’s Knot of the Soul made me ask myself time…
Translation, tradition, and the ethical turn: A reply to Bardawil and Allan
The Arabic Freud ... does not aim to augment the literature on psychoanalysis by contributing yet another reading of Freud (merely…
The Arabic Freud: Discourse interruptus
The Arabic Freud masterfully excavates the neglected archives of psychoanalysis in mid-twentieth century Egypt, and offers a doubly contrapuntal account…
Hidden figures in Jinnealogy
Visiting Firoz Shah Kotla has much to tell us about Islamic epistemologies, and much to tell us about how to…
On epistemic possibility: A reply to Hirschkind and Tambar
In their thoughtful reflections on The Iranian Metaphysicals, Charles Hirschkind and Kabir Tambar focus on my analysis of how different…