MER Article Two Films Shadows Over the Future, A film by Wolfgang Bergmann. 1985. 92 mins, 16mm. Last Exit: Berlin, A film by Marilyn Gaunt. 1988. 28 mins. video. Elizabeth Warnock Fernea • 3 min read
MER Article Mitchell, Colonising Egypt Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Barbara Harlow • 11 min read
MER Article Human Rights Watch Perhaps the saddest commentary on the situation in Iran is Amnesty International’s recent statement that “some former prisoners of conscience held during the 1970s when the late Shah was in power, for whose unconditional release [Amnesty] then worked, now figure among those with responsibility for t Ömer Karasapan • 3 min read
MER Article Column These days the mainstream media in the US generally thinks twice before publishing crude slurs against entire ethnic or racial groups. But there remain those whom it is still apparently respectable to denigrate, foremost among them Arabs and Iranians. Al Miskin • 3 min read
MER Article The Uprooted Cinema My friend Jacques got as far as a screenplay when he died. He was Palestinian (Armenian) from Jerusalem, a photographer by trade, and after his family moved from occupation to Australia, Jacques made his way to the States on a tourist visa. Settling in New York, he found work in a series of custom p Miriam Rosen • 13 min read
MER Article Revolutionary Posters and Cultural Signs All revolutions require aesthetic means for representing changes in consciousness. The French Revolution saw itself as something new and universal, and generated a rich elaboration of aesthetic categories of the sublime (storms of nature, volcanoes, earthquakes), the beautiful (island of calm, meado Mehdi Abedi, Michael M.J. Fischer • 6 min read
MER Article Palestinian Expression Inside a Cultural Ghetto During the summer of 1986,1 spent a month in the West Bank, keen to learn for myself about the effects of Israeli restrictions on Palestinian forms of expression, particularly in the visual arts and local crafts. A quick look at different cultural products indicated that traditional aesthetic values Kamal Boullata • 16 min read
MER Article Poems Hey Jeep, Hey Jeep Sami Shalom Chetrit 1. Eight kids in an army jeep Eight soldiers, one major: eight kids and one minor 2. Hey Jeep, Hey Jeep [1] 3. And his son Ishmael was thirteen years old at the cutting of his uncircumcised flesh. 4. And eight of his sons in the army jeep and his son cri Erez Bitton, Shelley Elkayam, Sami Shalom Chetrit • 3 min read
MER Article "Wounded Kinship's Last Resort" Ironically, the latest junkets featuring liberal Israelis and recently domesticated Palestinians threaten to finally collapse the intricate history of Jews and Arabs in the Middle East into two streamlined, easily recognizable blocs: enlightened, idealistic and well-intentioned Zionists (“wounded sp Ammiel Alcalay • 10 min read
MER Article American Magic in a Moroccan Town Fatna held up the knot of hair. It was a magic spell. “But what does it mean?” I asked, looking suspiciously at the neatly-tied brown square knot. “And whose hair is it?” “Why do you think Khadija has been coming over every day? She wants me to marry her brother Muhammad. This is probably her mothe Hannah Davis • 17 min read
MER Article Bedouins, Cassettes and Technologies of Public Culture Discotheques and taxicabs all over Egypt last January were playing the songs of a new pop star. No one knew exactly where “the Earthquake of ’88” (his biographer’s term) had come from, but everyone seemed to think Ali Hemida was a Bedouin. Some said he came from Sinai; others said Libya. His music w Lila Abu-Lughod • 16 min read
MER Article Culture Across Borders Salman Rushdie’s story of Ismail Najmuddin -- the former Bombay lunch-runner turned movie star, screen name Gibreel Farishta, the Muslim who played Hindu gods in numerous “theologicals,” migrant to London, victim of the bombing of flight AI-420, the man who fell from the sky and lived, only to dream Timothy Mitchell • 8 min read
