Publisher: Columbia University Press (April 2020)

German, Jew, Muslim, Gay offers an astonishing perspective on the history of modern Germany and German-speaking Central Europe from the vantage of a man who united multiple marginal identities in himself, devoted his life to promoting religious utopias and secular brotherhoods, and considered himself as part of a spiritual elite that held the key to Germany’s salvation. Hugo Marcus (b., 1880, Posen [today, Poznañ], Poland; d., 1966, Basel, Switzerland) was an extraordinary individual. He is the only figure to have played an important role in the gay rights movement and in establishing Islam in Germany.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1: Fighting for Gay Rights in Berlin, 1900–1925
CHAPTER 2: Queer Convert: Protestant Islam in Weimar Germany, 1925–1933
CHAPTER 3: A Jewish Muslim in Nazi Berlin, 1933–1939
CHAPTER 4: Who Writes Lives: Swiss Refuge, 1939–1965
CHAPTER 5: Hans Alienus: Yearning, Gay Writer, 1948–1965
Conclusion: A Goethe Mosque for Berlin

Source: Columbia University Press

By Wael Hallaq

Publisher: Columbia University Press (July 3, 2018)

Since Edward Said’s foundational work, Orientalism has been singled out for critique as the quintessential example of Western intellectuals’ collaboration with oppression. Controversies over the imbrications of knowledge and power and the complicity of Orientalism in the larger project of colonialism have been waged among generations of scholars. But has Orientalism come to stand in for all of the sins of European modernity, at the cost of neglecting the complicity of the rest of the academic disciplines?

In this landmark theoretical investigation, Wael B. Hallaq reevaluates and deepens the critique of Orientalism in order to deploy it for rethinking the foundations of the modern project. Refusing to isolate or scapegoat Orientalism, Restating Orientalism extends the critique to other fields, from law, philosophy, and scientific inquiry to core ideas of academic thought such as sovereignty and the self.

Restating Orientalism offers a bold rethinking of the theory of the author, the concept of sovereignty, and the place of the secular Western self in the modern project, reopening the problem of power and knowledge to an ethical critique and ultimately theorizing an exit from modernity’s predicaments. A remarkably ambitious attempt to overturn the foundations of a wide range of academic disciplines while also drawing on the best they have to offer, Restating Orientalism exposes the depth of academia’s lethal complicity in modern forms of capitalism, colonialism, and hegemonic power.

Source: Amazon