William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s

Modern scholars often find it difficult to account for the profound eccentricities in the work of William Blake, dismissing them as either ahistorical or simply meaningless. But with this pioneering study, Saree Makdisi develops a reliable and comprehensive framework for understanding these peculiarities. According to Makdisi, Blake's poetry and drawings should compel us to reconsider the history of the 1790s. Tracing for the first time the many links among economics, politics, and religion in his work, Makdisi shows how Blake questioned and even subverted the commercial, consumerist, and political liberties that his contemporaries championed, all while developing his own radical aesthetic.

Literature & Fiction

Makdisi, Saree

British & Irish

University of Chicago Press

The central argument of Edward Said’s Orientalism is that the relationship between Britain and its colonies was primarily oppositional, based on contrasts between conquest abroad and domestic order at home. Saree Makdisi directly challenges that premise in Making England Western, identifying the convergence between the British Empire’s civilizing mission abroad and a parallel mission within England itself, and pointing to Romanticism as one of the key sites of resistance to the imperial culture in Britain after 1815. Makdisi argues that there existed places and populations in both England and the colonies that were thought of in similar terms—for example, there were sites in England that might as well have been Arabia, and English people to whom the idea of the freeborn Englishman did not extend. The boundaries between “us” and “them” began to take form during the Romantic period, when England became a desirable Occidental space, connected with but superior to distant lands. Delving into the works of Wordsworth, Austen, Byron, Dickens, and others to trace an arc of celebration, ambivalence, and criticism influenced by these imperial dynamics, Makdisi demonstrates the extent to which Romanticism offered both hopes for and warnings against future developments in Occidentalism. Revealing that Romanticism provided a way to resist imperial logic about improvement and moral virtue, Making England Western is an exciting contribution to the study of both British literature and colonialism.

Making England Western: Occidentalism, Race, and Imperial Culture

The central argument of Edward Said’s Orientalism is that the relationship between Britain and its colonies was primarily oppositional, based on contrasts between conquest abroad and domestic order at home. Saree Makdisi directly challenges that premise in Making England Western, identifying the convergence between the British Empire’s civilizing mission abroad and a parallel mission within England itself, and pointing to Romanticism as one of the key sites of resistance to the imperial culture in Britain after 1815. Makdisi argues that there existed places and populations in both England and the colonies that were thought of in similar terms—for example, there were sites in England that might as well have been Arabia, and English people to whom the idea of the freeborn Englishman did not extend. The boundaries between “us” and “them” began to take form during the Romantic period, when England became a desirable Occidental space, connected with but superior to distant lands. Delving into the works of Wordsworth, Austen, Byron, Dickens, and others to trace an arc of celebration, ambivalence, and criticism influenced by these imperial dynamics, Makdisi demonstrates the extent to which Romanticism offered both hopes for and warnings against future developments in Occidentalism. Revealing that Romanticism provided a way to resist imperial logic about improvement and moral virtue, Making England Western is an exciting contribution to the study of both British literature and colonialism.

How the "peace process" has made life impossible for ordinary Palestinians. This book is not about suicide bombers. Tending one's fields, visiting a relative, going to the hospital: for ordinary Palestinians, such everyday activities require negotiating permits and passes, curfews and closures, "sterile roads" and "seam zones"―bureaucratic hurdles ultimately as deadly as outright military incursion.Not since the late Edward Said has there been such an articulate Arab voice on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In devastating detail, Saree Makdisi reveals how the "peace process" institutionalized Palestinians' loss of control over their inner and outer lives. He shows how Israel's massive concrete walls going up around Gaza and the West Bank isolate communities from their lands, their livelihoods, and each other. Through eye-opening statistics and day-by-day reports, we learn how Palestinians have seen their hopes for freedom and statehood culminate in the creation of abject "territories" comparable to open-air prisons.Anyone surprised at Arab anger or the election of Hamas must read this book.

Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation

History

Middle East

W.W.Norton&Company

“A compelling account . . . and a reminder that a true peace can be built only on justice.”―Desmond M. Tutu Tending one’s fields, visiting a relative, going to the hospital: for ordinary Palestinians, such activities require negotiating permits and passes, curfews and closures, “sterile roads” and “seam zones”―bureaucratic hurdles ultimately as deadly as outright military incursion. In Palestine Inside Out, Saree Makdisi draws on eye-opening statistics, academic histories, UN reports, and contemporary journalism to reveal how the “peace process” institutionalized Palestinians’ loss of control over their inner and outer lives―and argues powerfully and convincingly for a one-state solution. 33 photographs and 12 maps

Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial

How denial sustains the liberal imagination of a progressive and democratic Israel.\nThe question that this book aims to answer might seem simple: how can a violent project of dispossession and discrimination be imagined, felt, and profoundly believed in as though it were the exact opposite––an embodiment of sustainability, multicultural tolerance, and democratic idealism? Despite well-documented evidence of racism and human rights abuse, Israel has long been embraced by the most liberal sectors of European and American society as a manifestation of the progressive values of tolerance, plurality, inclusivity, and democracy, and hence a project that can be passionately defended for its lofty ideals.\nTolerance Is a Wasteland argues that the key to this miraculous act of political alchemy is a very specific form of denial. Here the Palestinian presence in, and claim to, Palestine is not simply refused or covered up, but negated in such a way that the act of denial is itself denied. The effects of destruction and repression are reframed, inverted into affirmations of liberal virtues that can be passionately championed. In Tolerance Is a Wasteland, Saree Makdisi explores many such acts of affirmation and denial in a range of venues: from the haunted landscape of thickly planted forests covering the ruins of Palestinian villages forcibly depopulated in 1948; to the theater of "pinkwashing" as Israel presents itself to the world as a gay-friendly haven of cultural inclusion; to the so-called Museum of Tolerance being built on top of the ruins of a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, which was methodically desecrated in order to clear the space for this monument to "human dignity." Tolerance Is a Wasteland reveals the system of emotional investments and curated perceptions that makes this massive project of cognitive dissonance possible.\nFrom the Back Cover\n"Tolerance Is a Wasteland exposes the deep contradictions between Israel's public image and the realities Palestinians experience every day. Its argument is searing and troubling––and anyone who cares about Israel-Palestine ignores it at their peril."—Peter Beinart, author of The Crisis of Zionism\n"Writing here in the name of moral principles, Saree Makdisi shows how a struggle for freedom and justice on the part of Palestinians is overridden and dismissed, turned into a specter of destruction, and urges that the world must come together in its embrace of emancipation. His analyses are keen and persuasive, and he holds out for a future of justice where so many have understandably despaired. This book is a beacon of light, and we can only hope that it shines and shines."—Judith Butler, author of Precarious Life and The Force of Nonviolence\n"How does a country hide ethnic cleansing and apartheid? Cover it in trees, rainbow flags, a settler state masquerading as a multiracial liberal democracy, a museum of 'tolerance,' and deny what's buried underneath or practiced in plain sight. As Makdisi shows in his latest masterpiece, the whitewashing, greenwashing, and pinkwashing of colonial violence taught liberals to stop worrying about Palestinians or international law and love Israel unconditionally. And it worked … until now. By peeling back seven decades of denial, Makdisi reveals a truth that is simply undeniable."—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination\n"In Tolerance Is a Wasteland, Makdisi takes a radical path through the denials of the Zionist state's mass killings—ethnic cleansing embedded in its constitutive racism. By centering the Museum of Tolerance, Makdisi exposes militarized tolerance while engaging the reader with what he frames brilliantly as 'the denial of denial.' This book, a thoughtful examination of moments of occlusion as denial, is a must-read. It eloquently troubles Zionist affirmation of the fetish, opening up the possibility of global ethics and/as counterpolitics."—Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, author of Incar

University of California Press

Reading William Blake (Reading Writers and their Work)

William Blake (1757‒1827) is one of the most original and influential figures of the Romantic Age, known for his work as an artist, poet and printmaker. Grounding his ideas both in close reading and in the latest scholarship, Saree Makdisi offers an exciting and imaginative approach to reading Blake. By exploring some of the most important themes in Blake's work and connecting them to particular plates from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Makdisi highlights Blake's creative power and the important interplay between images and words. There is a consistent emphasis on the relationship between the material nature of Blake's illuminated books, including the method he used to produce them, and the interpretive readings of the texts themselves. Makdisi argues that the material and formal openness of Blake's work can be seen as the very basis for learning to read in the spirit of Blake.

Cambridge University Press

Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, Series Number 27)

The years between 1790 and 1830 saw over 150 million people brought under British Imperial control, and one of the most momentous outbursts of British literary and artistic production, announcing a new world of social and individual traumas and possibilities. This book traces the emergence of new forms of imperialism and capitalism as part of a culture of modernization in the period, and looks at the ways in which they were identified with, and contested in, Romanticism, through original readings of texts by Wordsworth, Blake, Byron, Shelley and Scott.

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Books by Makdisi, Saree

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Makdisi, Saree. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s

William Blake and the Impossible History of the 1790s

Making England Western: Occidentalism, Race, and Imperial Culture

Making England Western: Occidentalism, Race, and Imperial Culture

Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation

Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation

Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial

Tolerance Is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial

Reading William Blake (Reading Writers and their Work)

Romantic Imperialism: Universal Empire and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism, Series Number 27)