Stefano Boeri

Saskia Sassen

Sanford Kwinter

Bart Lootsma

Yorgos Simeoforidis

Nadia Tazi

Daniela Fabricius

Mckenzie Wark

Francois Chaslin

Jean Attali

Harvard Project on the City

Muliplicity

Moulier Boutang

Reinhold Grether

Celine Rozenblat

Mutations

Rem Koolhaas

Hans Ulrich Obrist

multiplicity Milano

Francine Fort

Michel Feher

Ramona Naddaff

Part 1 explores the human body's relationship to the divine, to the bestial, and to the machines that imitate or simulate it.

Fragments for a History of the Human Body

Part 2 covers the junctures between the body's "outside" and "inside" by studying the manifestations - or production - of the soul and the expression of the emotions and, on another level, by examining the speculations inspired by cenesthesia, pain, and death.

The Alliance of Independent Publishers, a literary organization "dedicated to a different kind of globalization" and the Charles Leopold Mayer Foundation have invited Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House (China), Arab Cultural Center (Morocco and Lebanon), Double Storey Books (South Africa), Sage India (India), Editions La Decouverte (France), and Other Press (United States) to participate in the creation of an unprecedented intercultural project. Entitled Keywords, this original and international experiment is divided into four concise volumes. Each one refers specifically to a word that is key to the understanding of the human condition. Truth, Identity, Gender, and Experience are concepts that we presume universal; therefore we would be hard-pressed to think that they refer to different systems of thought in cultures distinct from our own. Keywords explores the cultural specificity of these terms, and links them to issues that are most relevant for the region under consideration. Each volume of the series offers six different points of view on a given keyword. The authors, who have been carefully selected by their respective publishers for their mastery in their fields and for the clarity of their writing, have been given free rein to share their distinctive visions of the concept at hand and to emphasize particular examples that would best illustrate their unique perspectives. In the volume entitled Gender for example, we find a highly contemporary American analysis of the tension between feminist studies and the concept of the "queer," while the Arab reading of the same word turns to the history of the Arab world to champion the cause of women and homosexuals. For the African author, identity is bound up with questions of ethnicity, race, and colonial laws. The Chinese author shows how in his country identity has been informed in the 20th century by Western references, such as Marxism and the market economy, because at its roots Chinese thought does not directly include these notions. The American author selects Tiger Woods' debate with the media to reveal how in the United States the question of "identity politics" defeats the ideals of multiculturalism. Experience in China may be understood classically as an actual event but also as revealing what cannot be spoken. The French reading emphasizes the contrast between the scientific experience, its psychoanalytic version, and the definition of the "judgment of experience" as formulated by Kant. Truth, from the American perspective, appears to have shifted from a mathematical and universal model to a contemporary notion of truth so elusive and plural that it has almost disappeared as a concept. The Indian approach is deeply historical, as it surveys the meaning of truth from the Vedas to the Gandhian ideal. The African author in this instance has chosen to ignore the history of the concept in order to concentrate on a crucial contemporary question: How well has the South African Commission for Truth and Reconciliation worked and what are its realistic limitations? The variety of the authors' backgrounds (anthropology, philosophy, sociology, epistemology) and their commitment to making Keywords relevant in the explosive "here and now" offer new parameters for envisioning the implications of the process of globalization. This project is required reading for anyone who aspires to become an informed citizen of the world. Keywords will be published in its entirety in 2004 by Other Press. The series will be brought out simultaneously by the other five participating publishers in the languages native to their territories. Each essay was written originally for this series and has never before been published.

Keywords: Experience

Daniel Rey

Tamy Tazi

Nadia Mezian

Tamy Tazi has set her own mark of distinction on contemporary Moroccan dress. Her models embrace two traditions that resist the pressures of time, Haute Couture and Moroccan heritage. This book documents her designs.

Tamy Tazi. Caftans. Ediz. inglese e francese

Keywords: Identity

Cet ouvrage pose un regard inédit sur la “crise sans fin” que traverse le monde musulman : il éclaire la faillite politique de ces pays par le culte de la virilité, qui affecte non seulement les rapports entre les sexes, mais aussi les relations des hommes entre eux et, fondamentalement, la vie en société. La virilité n’est pas appréhendée ici dans sa dimension érotique, mais dans sa portée politique. Une traversée qui s’ouvre dans l’Arabie préislamique et s’achève avec les talibans afghans, à la fin du XXe siècle, après s’être arrêtée sur l’empire des Steppes, l’empire ottoman, le puritanisme des wahhabites, la révolution khomeiniste, le destin de Saddam Hussein et les tribulations des hommes ordinaires au Maghreb.

Politiques de la virilité dans le monde musulman

Le Genre intraitable

La présence des islamistes sur la scène internationale met au jour une question taboue dans le monde musulman : celle du rôle de la virilité. En effet, la virilité y incarne un principe politique essentiel - mais un principe qui ne dit pas son nom. Elle ne renvoie pas seulement au vieux problème des rapports entre les sexes, elle est aussi au fondement du despotisme politique et social qui y sévit de longue date. Elle détermine la nature même des gouvernements, et son enracinement explique pour une large part la crise interminable que subissent les peuples musulmans. Telle est l'hypothèse développée dans ce livre à travers une série de tableaux historiques et contemporains illustrant les débordements et les contradictions des régimes virilistes : de l'anarchie tribale de la période antéislamique jusqu'au rigorisme des wahhabites en Arabie saoudite, en passant par les violences des grands appareils monarchiques d'autrefois, l'aventurisme guerrier et les cruautés de Saddam Hussein, l'autoritarisme du chah puis des mollahs en Iran, le trouble des hommes ordinaires au Maghreb, en butte à la modernisation et à l'oppression. Chaque problème politique renvoie à un type de virilité et à un territoire. Et dans cette traversée des milieux et des siècles apparaissent le Bédouin du désert, les grands conquérants, le maître du sérail chez les Ottomans, le dictateur moderniste et l'islamiste dans ses variations révolutionnaires ou conservatrices. Mais l'auteure examine aussi l'homme de la Cité idéale des théologiens et des philosophes arabes, lesquels ont combattu, à l'âge classique (VIIe - XVe siècle), ces excès et les divisions qui en résultent. Nadia Tazi lève nombre de malentendus sur le rapport des hommes à l'autre - à "l'Occident" en bloc, à la femme, ou à l'homosexuel - et renouvelle l'analyse de thèmes décisifs comme le voile, la souveraineté, le culte du chef, la lutte pour la reconnaissance et la guerre.

Le genre intraitable

Fethi Benslama

La virilité en Islam

Nadia Tazi

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