Juridical humanity : a colonial history / Samera Esmeir.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Esmeir, Samera, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Persons (Law)--Egypt--History.

Persons (Law).

Law--Egypt--History.

Law.

Colonial influence.

History.

Egypt--History--British occupation, 1882-1936.

Egypt.

Egypt--Colonial influence.

Physical Description:

xv, 363 pages ; 18 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2012.

Summary:

In colonial Egypt, the state introduced legal reforms that claimed to liberate Egyptians from the inhumanity of precolonial rule and elevate them to the status of human beings. These legal reforms intersected with a new historical consciousness that distinguished freedom from force and the human from the prehuman, endowing modern law with the power to accomplish but never truly secure this transition.

Samera Esmeir offers a historical and theoretical account of the colonizing operations of modern law in Egypt. Investigating the law, both on the books and in practice, she underscores the centrality of the "human" to Egyptian legal and colonial history and argues that the production of "juridical humanity" was a constitutive force of colonial rule and subjugation. This original contribution queries long-held assumptions about the entanglement of law, humanity, violence, and nature, and thereby develops a new reading of the history of colonialism.

Samera Esmeir is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I History

1 Conquest 21

2 Conscripts 67

Part II Nature

3 Wounds 109

4 Battles 149

Part III Powers

5 Red Zones 199

6 Crisis 241.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780804781251

0804781257

9780804783040

0804783047

OCLC:

764361121