{"word_count": 968, "character_count": 7175}
By Christian JungeHow can philology turn into cultural and social critique? What are the epistemic and aesthetic functions of its word lists? And what was the role of Arabic philology in the global nineteenth century? My book ‘Exposing Words: Al-Shidyaq’s Literary Word Lists as Cultural and Social Critique in the Nineteenth Century’ (Die Entblößung der Wörter. Al-Shidyaqs literarische Listen als Kultur- und Gesellschaftskritik im 19. Jahrhundert) (Reichert, 2019) focuses on the Arab-British-Ottoman cosmopolitan Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq (1804-1887), one of the most dazzling and controversial intellectuals of his time. Being constantly on the move, he published in 1855, in Paris, his literary-philological opus magnum, al-Sāq ʿalā al-sāq fī mā huwa al-Fāriyāq (Leg Over Leg, or, The Pigeon in the Tree, The Fāriyāq What Manner of Creature Might He Be), a landmark in modern Arabic literature, which confronts the reader with numerous word lists. From the perspective of Literary and Cultural Studies, my book approaches al-Shidyāq’s lists as a fundamental social and cultural critique of his time. It develops a set of analytical tools to describe the epistemic and aesthetic dimensions of ‘exposing words’, and to make sense of the plentiful, but often neglected, word lists found throughout Arabic literature. In the framework of the ‘return to philology’ (Edward Said), my book reads al-Shidyāq’s experimental ‘language thinking’ (Jürgen Trabant) as a radical social and cultural criticism of the global nineteenth century. This sheds new light on the Nahḍa, the Arab renewal movement during the long nineteenth century, and its role in an entangled ‘world philology’ (Islam Dayeh).Christian Junge, Die Entblößung der Wörter: aš-Šidyāqs literarische Listen als Kultur- und Gesellschaftskritik im 19. Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2019.Drawing on fresh sources, my bookstarts by describing al-Shidyāq’s concurrently central and eccentric positionwithin Ottoman-Arab and European discourses. In particular, it traces the literaryand philological fields in Paris in the 1850s, focusing on al-Shidyāq’s coup ofpublishing al-Sāq in Paris with publisherof the Société asiatique, whilepolemicizing in his work against it. Compiling almost endless errata lists of European Orientalists,it ‘writes back’ (Bill Ashcroft et al.) and refutes with a remarkablepostcolonial awareness their assumed philological supremacy concerning theArabic language and literature (chapter two). Reading al-Sāq in a larger historical context, my study shifts the analyticalfocus from ‘reading narratives’ to ‘reading language’. In doing so, it focuses onenumeration as both an epistemic practice of philology, as well as a didactic andaesthetic device of literature (chapter three). Taking up Fawwāz Ṭarābulusī andʿAzīz al-ʿAẓma’s notion of ‘exposing language’ and developing it into a largerset of analytical tools, this study treats al-Shidyāq’s literary lists as acritique of gender, pleasure and language. Based on Sabine Mainberger’s conceptof ‘enumerative games’, it especially focusses on the performative function ofenumeration: How does literature and philology do things with lists of words?In the context of contemporaryNahḍa debates on the ‘new woman’ in society, al-Sāq offers a sharp-witted, eloquent female protagonist, whosimultaneously unveils and subverts the complicity between patriarchy andlanguage. In dialogue with Hélène Cixous’ concept of écriture féminine, my study analyses the female revaluation and reappropriationof the classical Arabic language. This proto-feminist philology empowers theprotagonists to deconstruct the misogynist Arabic lexis, to imagine new fatherroles and to criticize Victorian gender identities (chapter four). While the Nahḍa debates insiston disciplining the body and its pleasures, the classical Arabic languageoffers the protagonists a different understanding of corporeal and somaticpleasures. By collecting the ‘words of women’, al-Shidyāq reconstructs, andreinvents, a different body for Arab modernity. Relying on Roland Barthes’concepts of plaisir and jouissance, I identify forms ofknowledge derived from the body, and consider how they unsettle contemporaryunderstandings of society and culture in the Ottoman-Arab and European discourses(chapter five). The Arabic Nahḍa debates aredeeply concerned with producing a language suitable for contemporary ‘civilization’or modernity. While some of these debates dismiss the classical language’sarchaisms and synonyms as obstacles to progress, al-Sāq regards them as both a developed mode of thinking, and animportant archive of culture. Using Aleida Assmann’s different modes ofcultural memory, my study investigates how the text makes use of words ascultural archives, and how, in the field of nineteenth century philology, thesecompilations reappropriate the prerogative of interpretation from EuropeanOrientalism (chapter six). To summarize, ‘readinglanguage’ in al-Sāq is a way touncover its literary and philological experiments, and unearth its radical socialand cultural critique. Readdressing al-Shidyāq’s ‘critique of his time’ (Zeitkritik) in a wider social andmaterial context, the study’s conclusion suggests an essential concept ofcritique, which takes the social habitus and material conditions of thenineteenth century, as well as the author’s agency and idiosyncrasies, intoaccount. Moreover, by elaborating and systematizing al-Shidyāq’s device of‘exposing words’, the study provides a rich set of tools with which to analyse literarytexts that combine linguistic contemplation and socio-cultural criticism – adevice which, as the comparative prospect shows, can also be found throughout postmodernliterature (chapter seven).Finally, to facilitate accessto unpublished or rare sources, the book’s supplement provides Arabic, English,French, German and Hungarian paratexts from the nineteenth century, which areseminal for an understanding of al-Shidyāq’s language thinking and its role inthe nineteenth century world philology.Christian Junge. Die Entblößung der Wörter. aš-Šidyāqs literarische Listen als Kultur- und Gesellschaftskritik im 19. Jahrhundert. Mit historischen Paratexten im Anhang. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2019, pp. 394. Free E-Book: https://doi.org/10.29091/9783954906246 Christian Junge is Lecturer and Research Assistant (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS) at Philipps-University Marburg, Germany. He studied Arabic Studies, Literature and Comparative Literature in Berlin, Paris and Cairo. Christian is member of the Arab German Young Academy, co-director of the program Arabische Philologien im Blickwechsel, and founding member of the project Für ein lebendiges Wissenschaftsarabisch: Halqa arabiyya at the CNMS. His current research interests include affect and emotion in postmodern Egyptian literature, literature and philology in the Nahda of the long 19th century, and postcolonial language critique.Citation: Christian Junge, Doing Things with Lists: Philology as Cultural and Social Critique, in: TRAFO – Blog for  Transregional Research, 28.02.2020, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/23066. 