Jeson Ng | University of Chicago (original) (raw)
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Papers by Jeson Ng
Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, 2024
I read Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy b. Yaqẓān, a sixth/twelfth-century philosophical narrative, through the ... more I read Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy b. Yaqẓān, a sixth/twelfth-century philosophical narrative, through the lens of two critical terms in Arabic rhetoric: mathal and majāz, loosely equivalent to metaphor and figurative speech. Foregrounding the hermeneutic principles underlying the two concepts allows us to explore the affective and aesthetic means by which knowledge of the divine can be transmitted even through the material limitations of human language. They also provide the epistemological and rhetorical conditions for relating the sensible (maḥsūs) and intelligible (maʿqūl) worlds to each other through repeated crossings that connect divine truth (ḥaqq) with the material conditions of living. By his fractal-like deployment of mathal and majāz, Ibn Ṭufayl brings vividly to life a method of reading that enjoins us to interpret our material world in light of the wider cosmos in the same way that we encounter his text, preparing us to reach for an ever-receding gnosis.
Al-Masāq, Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean, 2019
Histories of the Crusades have moved away from characterising the conflict as a civilisational cl... more Histories of the Crusades have moved away from characterising the conflict as a civilisational clash between Christianity and Islam, highlighting instead the porousness of religious and geopolitical boundaries in Iberia and the Levant. Yet twelfth-century sources in Old French and Arabic rarely present such a nuanced view outright. Reflecting on the constructedness of the motif of the female Other, I argue that these texts enacted and reinforced a Christian–Muslim dualism in the face of contrary realities of coexistence, fascination and even temptation. Religious difference was constructed and reconstructed through the prism of racial forms, thus facilitating the perpetuation of military conflict. In particular, the motif of the white, sensual Christian woman was used to exclude the enemy in repeated attempts to construct a coherent in-group identity that was, for all that, under constant threat of destabilisation.
Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, 2024
I read Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy b. Yaqẓān, a sixth/twelfth-century philosophical narrative, through the ... more I read Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy b. Yaqẓān, a sixth/twelfth-century philosophical narrative, through the lens of two critical terms in Arabic rhetoric: mathal and majāz, loosely equivalent to metaphor and figurative speech. Foregrounding the hermeneutic principles underlying the two concepts allows us to explore the affective and aesthetic means by which knowledge of the divine can be transmitted even through the material limitations of human language. They also provide the epistemological and rhetorical conditions for relating the sensible (maḥsūs) and intelligible (maʿqūl) worlds to each other through repeated crossings that connect divine truth (ḥaqq) with the material conditions of living. By his fractal-like deployment of mathal and majāz, Ibn Ṭufayl brings vividly to life a method of reading that enjoins us to interpret our material world in light of the wider cosmos in the same way that we encounter his text, preparing us to reach for an ever-receding gnosis.
Al-Masāq, Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean, 2019
Histories of the Crusades have moved away from characterising the conflict as a civilisational cl... more Histories of the Crusades have moved away from characterising the conflict as a civilisational clash between Christianity and Islam, highlighting instead the porousness of religious and geopolitical boundaries in Iberia and the Levant. Yet twelfth-century sources in Old French and Arabic rarely present such a nuanced view outright. Reflecting on the constructedness of the motif of the female Other, I argue that these texts enacted and reinforced a Christian–Muslim dualism in the face of contrary realities of coexistence, fascination and even temptation. Religious difference was constructed and reconstructed through the prism of racial forms, thus facilitating the perpetuation of military conflict. In particular, the motif of the white, sensual Christian woman was used to exclude the enemy in repeated attempts to construct a coherent in-group identity that was, for all that, under constant threat of destabilisation.