Hala Halim | New York University (original) (raw)
Papers by Hala Halim
Alexandrian Cosmopolitanism, 2013
Global South/Global North Comparatism: The Case of the Refugee Crisis in the Mediterranean Hala H... more Global South/Global North Comparatism: The Case of the Refugee Crisis in the Mediterranean Hala Halim The text below is the abstract of a presentation given by Hala Halim, New York University, on the Presidential Panel at the American Comparative Literature Association annual meeting in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on July 8, 2017. An intervention in the gestating project of South-South comparatism, the presentation made the argument that such comparative work, timely though it is, cannot afford to overlook the South's multiply overdetermined relations with the North. Granted, Third-Worldism must be recouped for a genealogy that undermines Eurocentrism, whether in the cultural sphere or in terms of international law. Scholarship on the contributions of Small States and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), particularly in the context of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was cited. The presentation went on to press the point that defaulting to an exclusive fo...
Postcolonialism Cross-Examined
Journal of the African Literature Association, 2021
Abstract This virtually inaugural scholarly study of the activist Shaima’ al-Sabbagh (1983–2015) ... more Abstract This virtually inaugural scholarly study of the activist Shaima’ al-Sabbagh (1983–2015) documents and analyzes three areas of her production in relation to the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. The argument is made that her colloquial poetry, folklore research and support of subalternity worked in synergy together. Foregrounding the folk imaginaries that the revolution drew on, al-Sabbagh identified a fundamental gap in that event between bourgeois intellectuals/activists and subalterns. Seminal pedagogies she was in the process of devising to close that gap and creative projects to empower labor actors are analyzed in relation to Antonio Gramsci’s views on folklore and his “philosophy of praxis.” These projects benefited from al-Sabbagh’s apprenticeship in the popular, at both the grassroots and academic levels, including her involvement in aragoz (hand-held puppet theater). Al-Sabbagh’s texts, among them manuscripts, as well as video and audio recordings of her, are cited; additionally, interviews about her have been conducted.
boundary 2, 2021
In contradistinction to Anglophone criticism's airbrushing of all things Egyptian/Arab from t... more In contradistinction to Anglophone criticism's airbrushing of all things Egyptian/Arab from the iconic image of C. P. Cavafy, this essay dwells on the poet as an Egyptiote. An Egyptiote orientation, it is argued, variously informs given poems and prose texts in his later years. Probing Cavafy's knowledge of Arabic, the essay demonstrates his affinities and solidarities with Egyptians under colonial duress as witnessed in the choice of subject matter and in the intertextual Greek-Egyptian folkloric resonances in his poem “27 June 1906, 2 P.M.” Analyzing how the poem's tropes and temporality riposte to those in extraliterary discourses about the colonial incident it depicts, the essay reads “27 June 1906, 2 P.M.” in relation to other Cavafy poems that reveal an Egyptiote “transculturated” poetics. A set of prose texts—letters, essays, interviews—by Cavafy, it is demonstrated, vest Egyptiote literati with an intercultural literary agency of acquainting the Greek public with...
Choice Reviews Online, 2012
Hawwa, 2006
Long associated with a cosmopolitanism that this article demonstrates was equally colonial,…
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2006
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2012
As part of the endeavor to seek out nonmetropolitan forms of comparatism, this article addresses ... more As part of the endeavor to seek out nonmetropolitan forms of comparatism, this article addresses the trilingual periodical Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings that was published by the Afro-Asian Writers’ Association from the late 1960s until the early 1990s. Lotus, the article argues, instantiates an antecedent of postcolonial critique and represents a decidedly anti-Eurocentric, internationalist project that held the promise of Global South comparatism. Halim’s article discusses selected issues raised in Lotus, considers the curtailment of its potential by the Cold War, and reflects on the implications of revisiting the journal in relation to contemporary geopolitical realities.
California Italian Studies Journal, 2010
Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 1992
Produced in 1963, Youssef Chahine's historical epic film Saladin -- dealing as it does w... more Produced in 1963, Youssef Chahine's historical epic film Saladin -- dealing as it does with the Third Crusade from an Arab point of view -- is of great interest in many respects. For, not only does the portrayal of such a crucial stage in the relationship between East and West at ...
Comparative Literature Studies, 2022
Delving into an ephemeral 1940s Cairene magazine and conducting oral history, this essay focalize... more Delving into an ephemeral 1940s Cairene magazine and conducting oral history, this essay focalizes an unrecorded Egyptian–Indian moment wedged between the two countries' anti-imperial cooperation in the 1920s and 1930s, and their postindependence solidarity most visible in the 1955 Bandung Conference. The textual material is in the nature of a representation of India, suffused with identification; the oral history yields a virtually unknown Egyptian–Indian solidarity among student networks. Far from claiming to cover any and all engagements with things Indian in 1940s Egypt, the essay argues that the supranationalism of the specific Egyptian dialogue with India tackled here, while squarely anti-imperial, acquires more pronounced socialist internationalist hues due to a much-invigorated stage in the Egyptian left. Recouping that moment enables us to form a more nuanced picture of the later, postindependence internationalism, attuning us to various precursor orientations that fed ...
Critical Times, 2020
This interview with veteran Egyptian translator and interpreter Nehad Salem is preceded by an int... more This interview with veteran Egyptian translator and interpreter Nehad Salem is preceded by an introduction that situates her biography and formation in relation to the key, interconnected international/internationalist forums in which her career unfolded. A dedicated Third Worldist, Salem participated in crucial events of the liberation period, including the resistance in Port Said during the Suez War, and taught in Algeria in the wake of decolonization. Spotlighting her work in institutions such as the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization, the Afro-Asian Writers’ Association, and UNESCO, the interview addresses issues of gender and agency in relation to the translator/interpreter, and the poetics and politics of literary translation. The interview traces details about the literary history of the liberation period through Salem's work in the journal Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings, edited by, among others, the Egyptian writer Edwar al-Kharrat, and her translations of the Pales...
California Italian Studies, 2010
Comparative Literature Studies, 2022
Delving into an ephemeral 1940s Cairene magazine and conducting oral history, this essay focalize... more Delving into an ephemeral 1940s Cairene magazine and conducting oral
history, this essay focalizes an unrecorded Egyptian–Indian moment
wedged between the two countries’ anti-imperial cooperation in the 1920s
and 1930s, and their postindependence solidarity most visible in the 1955
Bandung Conference. The textual material is in the nature of a representation
of India, suffused with identification; the oral history yields a virtually
unknown Egyptian–Indian solidarity among student networks. Far from
claiming to cover any and all engagements with things Indian in 1940s
Egypt, the essay argues that the supranationalism of the specific Egyptian
dialogue with India tackled here, while squarely anti-imperial, acquires more
pronounced socialist internationalist hues due to a much-invigorated stage
in the Egyptian left. Recouping that moment enables us to form a more
nuanced picture of the later, postindependence internationalism, attuning
us to various precursor orientations that fed into it, if in unremarked ways.
Dwelling on these instances of 1940s internationalism resists the tendency
to subsume the later Third Worldist internationalisms under the shadow
of the Cold War, notwithstanding their imbrication within it. And yet this
intervention is non-teleological: the conclusion considers the implications—
the continuities as much as the discontinuities—of the 1940s moment for
the succeeding Afro-Asian Third Worldism.
Alexandrian Cosmopolitanism, 2013
Global South/Global North Comparatism: The Case of the Refugee Crisis in the Mediterranean Hala H... more Global South/Global North Comparatism: The Case of the Refugee Crisis in the Mediterranean Hala Halim The text below is the abstract of a presentation given by Hala Halim, New York University, on the Presidential Panel at the American Comparative Literature Association annual meeting in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on July 8, 2017. An intervention in the gestating project of South-South comparatism, the presentation made the argument that such comparative work, timely though it is, cannot afford to overlook the South's multiply overdetermined relations with the North. Granted, Third-Worldism must be recouped for a genealogy that undermines Eurocentrism, whether in the cultural sphere or in terms of international law. Scholarship on the contributions of Small States and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), particularly in the context of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was cited. The presentation went on to press the point that defaulting to an exclusive fo...
Postcolonialism Cross-Examined
Journal of the African Literature Association, 2021
Abstract This virtually inaugural scholarly study of the activist Shaima’ al-Sabbagh (1983–2015) ... more Abstract This virtually inaugural scholarly study of the activist Shaima’ al-Sabbagh (1983–2015) documents and analyzes three areas of her production in relation to the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. The argument is made that her colloquial poetry, folklore research and support of subalternity worked in synergy together. Foregrounding the folk imaginaries that the revolution drew on, al-Sabbagh identified a fundamental gap in that event between bourgeois intellectuals/activists and subalterns. Seminal pedagogies she was in the process of devising to close that gap and creative projects to empower labor actors are analyzed in relation to Antonio Gramsci’s views on folklore and his “philosophy of praxis.” These projects benefited from al-Sabbagh’s apprenticeship in the popular, at both the grassroots and academic levels, including her involvement in aragoz (hand-held puppet theater). Al-Sabbagh’s texts, among them manuscripts, as well as video and audio recordings of her, are cited; additionally, interviews about her have been conducted.
boundary 2, 2021
In contradistinction to Anglophone criticism's airbrushing of all things Egyptian/Arab from t... more In contradistinction to Anglophone criticism's airbrushing of all things Egyptian/Arab from the iconic image of C. P. Cavafy, this essay dwells on the poet as an Egyptiote. An Egyptiote orientation, it is argued, variously informs given poems and prose texts in his later years. Probing Cavafy's knowledge of Arabic, the essay demonstrates his affinities and solidarities with Egyptians under colonial duress as witnessed in the choice of subject matter and in the intertextual Greek-Egyptian folkloric resonances in his poem “27 June 1906, 2 P.M.” Analyzing how the poem's tropes and temporality riposte to those in extraliterary discourses about the colonial incident it depicts, the essay reads “27 June 1906, 2 P.M.” in relation to other Cavafy poems that reveal an Egyptiote “transculturated” poetics. A set of prose texts—letters, essays, interviews—by Cavafy, it is demonstrated, vest Egyptiote literati with an intercultural literary agency of acquainting the Greek public with...
Choice Reviews Online, 2012
Hawwa, 2006
Long associated with a cosmopolitanism that this article demonstrates was equally colonial,…
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2006
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2012
As part of the endeavor to seek out nonmetropolitan forms of comparatism, this article addresses ... more As part of the endeavor to seek out nonmetropolitan forms of comparatism, this article addresses the trilingual periodical Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings that was published by the Afro-Asian Writers’ Association from the late 1960s until the early 1990s. Lotus, the article argues, instantiates an antecedent of postcolonial critique and represents a decidedly anti-Eurocentric, internationalist project that held the promise of Global South comparatism. Halim’s article discusses selected issues raised in Lotus, considers the curtailment of its potential by the Cold War, and reflects on the implications of revisiting the journal in relation to contemporary geopolitical realities.
California Italian Studies Journal, 2010
Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 1992
Produced in 1963, Youssef Chahine's historical epic film Saladin -- dealing as it does w... more Produced in 1963, Youssef Chahine's historical epic film Saladin -- dealing as it does with the Third Crusade from an Arab point of view -- is of great interest in many respects. For, not only does the portrayal of such a crucial stage in the relationship between East and West at ...
Comparative Literature Studies, 2022
Delving into an ephemeral 1940s Cairene magazine and conducting oral history, this essay focalize... more Delving into an ephemeral 1940s Cairene magazine and conducting oral history, this essay focalizes an unrecorded Egyptian–Indian moment wedged between the two countries' anti-imperial cooperation in the 1920s and 1930s, and their postindependence solidarity most visible in the 1955 Bandung Conference. The textual material is in the nature of a representation of India, suffused with identification; the oral history yields a virtually unknown Egyptian–Indian solidarity among student networks. Far from claiming to cover any and all engagements with things Indian in 1940s Egypt, the essay argues that the supranationalism of the specific Egyptian dialogue with India tackled here, while squarely anti-imperial, acquires more pronounced socialist internationalist hues due to a much-invigorated stage in the Egyptian left. Recouping that moment enables us to form a more nuanced picture of the later, postindependence internationalism, attuning us to various precursor orientations that fed ...
Critical Times, 2020
This interview with veteran Egyptian translator and interpreter Nehad Salem is preceded by an int... more This interview with veteran Egyptian translator and interpreter Nehad Salem is preceded by an introduction that situates her biography and formation in relation to the key, interconnected international/internationalist forums in which her career unfolded. A dedicated Third Worldist, Salem participated in crucial events of the liberation period, including the resistance in Port Said during the Suez War, and taught in Algeria in the wake of decolonization. Spotlighting her work in institutions such as the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization, the Afro-Asian Writers’ Association, and UNESCO, the interview addresses issues of gender and agency in relation to the translator/interpreter, and the poetics and politics of literary translation. The interview traces details about the literary history of the liberation period through Salem's work in the journal Lotus: Afro-Asian Writings, edited by, among others, the Egyptian writer Edwar al-Kharrat, and her translations of the Pales...
California Italian Studies, 2010
Comparative Literature Studies, 2022
Delving into an ephemeral 1940s Cairene magazine and conducting oral history, this essay focalize... more Delving into an ephemeral 1940s Cairene magazine and conducting oral
history, this essay focalizes an unrecorded Egyptian–Indian moment
wedged between the two countries’ anti-imperial cooperation in the 1920s
and 1930s, and their postindependence solidarity most visible in the 1955
Bandung Conference. The textual material is in the nature of a representation
of India, suffused with identification; the oral history yields a virtually
unknown Egyptian–Indian solidarity among student networks. Far from
claiming to cover any and all engagements with things Indian in 1940s
Egypt, the essay argues that the supranationalism of the specific Egyptian
dialogue with India tackled here, while squarely anti-imperial, acquires more
pronounced socialist internationalist hues due to a much-invigorated stage
in the Egyptian left. Recouping that moment enables us to form a more
nuanced picture of the later, postindependence internationalism, attuning
us to various precursor orientations that fed into it, if in unremarked ways.
Dwelling on these instances of 1940s internationalism resists the tendency
to subsume the later Third Worldist internationalisms under the shadow
of the Cold War, notwithstanding their imbrication within it. And yet this
intervention is non-teleological: the conclusion considers the implications—
the continuities as much as the discontinuities—of the 1940s moment for
the succeeding Afro-Asian Third Worldism.