Adrien Zakar 

A historian of the late Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East with expertise in maps, intellectual history, visual practices, and STS. He received a Ph.D. in History from Columbia University and then worked as a Mellon Postdoctoral Scholar at the Stanford Humanities Center. He is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto’s Near and Middle East Department and the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology.

At the crossroads of Middle Eastern history and technology studies, this collection of short essays on “Capital, Technology, and Utopia” grows out of a collaboration between Henna and the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. The pieces featured were composed as part of a university course with the editorial assistance of Henna accompanying undergraduate and graduate students toward publishing their final papers. 

In the Winter of 2023, students gathered in a seminar-style course to discuss critical texts and seek answers to the following questions: How do the workings of capital intersect with technological change and political visions? How have technological schemes become part of the fabric of political discourses, economic relations, and cultural production amidst the changing institutional landscape of the 19th and 20th-century Middle East? Could it be that current infrastructure, megaprojects, and tech ventures are grounded in a long history of technology that is peculiar to the trajectory of modern states in the region? What may we learn from past encounters? The course approached these questions through critical readings in the histories of technology, science, war, politics, and society, moving between cultural history and the study of materiality and power and using the Middle East as a starting point for the study of global currents and cultural trends. 

The resulting collection embraces a multifaceted perspective that addresses the intertwinings of capital expansion, technological proliferation, and the rise of imaginaries of past, present, and future from Egypt and Israel/Palestine, to Lebanon, Iran, and East Asia. In the Middle East, as elsewhere, utopian conceptions of technological prowess are at the core of state-sponsored strategies to bolster their legitimacy through grand infrastructural “Visions.” Often designed with the primary objective of enticing venture capital regardless of sustainability, these visions project wealth and growth, thereby conveniently relocating socio-political struggles in debates over efficiency, prestige, and national or civilizational pride, materializing in competitions over the “highest” or “biggest” structures. What brings all of these short essays together is attention to the productive process set in motion by militarization, capitalization, and technology from the age of European colonialism and Ottoman imperial reform to the present.

In “Taming the Egyptian Monster: The Image of Egypt in the Anxious Colonial Imagination,” Mosab Alnomire explores the monsterology of Orientalism through the historical portrayal of Egypt as a wild and mysterious beast of a land, which gained momentum after the establishment of the Suez Canal in the late 19th century. Rooted in modern cultural constructions of the strange, the abnormal, and the wild, this depiction was driven by notions of superiority and imperial anxiety legitimizing the elaboration of technological fixes designed to tame the monster. The Canal’s construction not only redefined the geopolitical landscapes of war and trade but also magnified the perception of Egypt as an enigmatic place, interwoven with anxieties about imperial decline and the possibility of retaliatory forces emerging out of the colonies.

In “Building a ‘National’ Economy: Popular Understandings of Capital and State Building in Late-Ottoman Syria (1860-1920)” Timothy Boudoumit examines the role of the Ottoman 19th century in shaping political identities in the Levant, particularly in Mount Lebanon. The late Ottoman period saw the threads of ethnoreligious and economic identity interlace, with local leaders like Dawud Pasha using a capitalist ideology to legitimize Ottoman rule and counter the prevailing Maronite influence over the mountain. The clash of ideologies between Dawud and the Maronite leader Yusuf Karam ultimately led to their exile, but their influence on the region’s political landscape endured, contributing to the present-day sectarian and capitalist aspects of political identity.

In “The Jaffa Orange, Haunted: What Fruit Can Teach Us About Resistance and Memory,” Hayley Birss delves into the history and symbolism of the Jaffa Orange, tracing its journey from a celebratory tradition in post-war Britain to a settler-colonial symbol in Palestine. It investigates how the Jaffa Orange transitioned from a spectacle of prosperity and luxury to a specter haunted by the dispossession of Palestinians. The narrative highlights the orange’s transformation from a British symbol of Christmas festivities to an emblem of Zionist economic might, its role as an emblem of Palestinian’s rootedness and resistance, and its eventual fading from the state’s spectacle-making practices, in part due to its troubled past.

In “The Gaze as Rebellion in the Films of Abbas Kiarostami,” Nora Mezo-Willingham explores the works of 20th-century Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, showing how they subverted both utopian and dystopian construction of post-Revolutionary Iran. Kiarostami’s intricate camera movements capture marginalized villagers, highlighting their concerns and interests, engaging in a meta-criticism of filmmaking as a means for representing reality, one that subtly dispels both Western stereotypes of Iran and the lionizing myths bolstering the Islamic Republic. Kiarostami navigates strict censorship to depict real-life issues and challenge societal norms, offering a nuanced perspective of Iran’s cultural and political contexts within the larger history of Iranian cinema.

Finally, bringing us to recent years in “Muslim Surveillance in China and Japan,” Zannatul Isaque examines how surveillance capitalism, particularly facial recognition technology, poses a growing threat to Muslims and those who could be targeted as Muslims in East Asia. It exposes cases in China and Japan that highlight the use of ethno-religious profiling and mass surveillance, raising concerns about human rights abuses. China’s policies towards Uighur Muslims and its global dominance in AI-powered surveillance, along with Japan’s investments in the surveillance industry, underscore the need for caution in the face of advancing facial recognition systems while unraveling its grounding in persistent practices of marginalization.