Colonialism of Egypt

When the Egyptian visitors went to the world exhibitions in Europe in the nineteenth century, they faced a simulation of markets and Eastern palaces. With displays of world goods, and crowds of curious spectators. And every "truth" of imperial power and cultural variation. And as Mitchell takes the exhibition as a main idea and the narratives of the Egyptians as a starting point, he explores the specific approaches of the system and the truth that distinguish the modern West, a world in which everything seems organized and arranged as if something is displayed before an observer claiming to represent an external reality, another experience, a broader truth. The book examines the authority and impact of this system and truth through a new reading of Europe's colonial influence on Egypt in the nineteenth century. Mitchell highlights parallels between practices such as colonial urban planning, building model villages, introducing new military technologies, opening the world of the "harem," and attempting to establish political authority through a disciplinary approach to schooling, as well as spreading new methods of writing and communication. He sees that these practices introduced into Egypt the impact of a series of contradictions — between structure and "thing," between conceptual and material, between mind and body, between text and "reality" — which equipped colonial authority with both its mechanisms and its sovereignty. Based on extensive familiarity with Arabic and European sources, the book "Colonial Egypt" explores some of the critical methods pioneered by Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. The book is one of the few attempts to extend Derridean deconstruction into the fields of historical and political analysis. Therefore, the book will interest not only scholars of Middle Eastern history and politics but also all those interested in a deconstructive critique of modernity.