Synopses & Reviews
and#147;
On Timeand#8217;s primary contribution is to offer the first study of modernity in the Egyptian context that attends to the new technological modes by which that distinction in temporality was historically produced. This approach departs from the largely nation- and human-centered narratives of Egyptian history. By focusing on non-human agents and using a trans-regional perspective, a larger cast of actors and other vectors of historical change come into view. This work will advance both historical and critical efforts to de-center secular, pietistic accounts of our shared modern past, whether those pieties belong to civilizations, empires, nation-states, or humankind."
and#151;Wilson Jacob, author of Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870and#150;1940
and#147; [On Time] constitutes a fascinating contribution to a growing field of inquiry and#150; namely, the social construction of time in colonial contexts. Through a close reading of a breathtaking variety of sources, ranging from newspapers to fatwas, from advice books to train schedules, On Barak develops a compelling narrative of how Egyptians, through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, developed what he calls and#145;counter-temposand#8217; and#150; approaches to apprehending and navigating the and#145;homogenous, emptyand#8217; time of Western modernity in profoundly subversive ways."
and#151;Paul Sedra, author of From Mission to Modernity: Evangelicals, Reformers and Education in Nineteenth-Century Egypt
and#147;On Time is a compelling argument about the institutionalization of modern temporality in Egypt, the subjectivities and attitudes it fostered, and the resistances it encountered. With a creative flourish, Barak renders time immanent in this book by tracking its transformation through the use of new technologies (clocks, telegraph, calendars, railways, trams, telephones) all of which in turn changed how Egyptians thought about themselves and related to each other. Through a keen playful analysis of culture, capitalism, and modernity, Barak reminds us how we are made and unmade in time.and#8221;
and#151;Saba Mahmood, author of Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject
Review
andldquo;Among the most brilliant moments of historical writing are often those that reveal the amazing and unique stories of dramatic change in things we usually take as givens. Wishnitzerandrsquo;s Reading Clocks, Alla Turca is one such moment. His meticulously detailed account of perceptions, technologies, and the regulation of time in the vast Ottoman Empire of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is a wide-ranging, exciting adventure in learning why time matters!andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;The social construction of time is an astonishingly difficult topic to pursue, and Wishnitzer brilliantly mines almanacs, timetables, and schedules for what they can reveal about how the peoples of the Ottoman Empire experienced and discussed timeandmdash;but more impressively, he brings his analytical skills to bear on literary sources one might not expect, notably poetry, to broaden and deepen his account. Through a nuanced reading of these varied sources, Reading Clocks, Alla Turca demonstrates that there was no sudden shift from the seasonally oriented forms of reckoning time that prevailed among the Ottomans before the modern period, to the abstract, homogeneous form of time which dominates modern life today. This is an ambitious and important examination.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;If you want to understand nineteenth-century Ottoman history through the story of time, then this is your book. Wishnitzer tells a complex tale, not of one single temporal culture, but of time organization as an arena of competition waged by state and societal forces, meshing andlsquo;centerandrsquo; and andlsquo;peripheriesandrsquo; and featuring variegated practices. This book will fascinate Middle East historians and any scholar interested in the riddle of modern time.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Wishnitzerandrsquo;s Reading Clocks, Alla Turca breaks new ground in the study of the late Ottoman Empire by examining the shift from old-style to new-styleandmdash;mean-timeandmdash;temporal reckoning.and#160;By focusing on the important but overlooked question of this crucial transition in its many vicissitudes, ranging from the way that schedules increasingly regulated daily activities to an internalized clock consciousness, Wishnitzer skillfully demonstrates the value of what he aptly terms andlsquo;temporal cultureandrsquo; for elucidating some of the many changes affecting late Ottoman society.and#160;At the same time, the book is alive to both the continuities and the changesandmdash;the losses as well as the gainsandmdash;involved in adjusting to the new temporal order and is careful to include these in the elegant analysis offered in these pages.andrdquo;
Review
"A book of impeccable scholarship."
Synopsis
In this pioneering history of transportation and communication in the modern Middle East, On Barak argues that contrary to accepted wisdom technological modernity in Egypt did not drive a sense of time focused on standardization only. Surprisingly, the introduction of the steamer, railway, telegraph, tramway, and telephone in colonial Egypt actually triggered the development of unique timekeeping practices that resignified and subverted the typical modernist infatuation with expediency and promptness. These countertempos, predicated on uneasiness over and#147;dehumanizingand#8221; European standards of efficiency, sprang from and contributed to non-linear modes of arranging time.
Barak shows how these countertempos formed and developed with each new technological innovation during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, contributing to a particularly Egyptian sense of time that extends into the present day, exerting influence over contemporary political language in the Arab world. The universal notion of a modern mechanical standard time and the deviations supposedly characterizing non-Western settings and#147;from time immemorial,and#8221; On Time provocatively argues, were in fact mutually constitutive and mutually reinforcing.
Synopsis
Up until the end of the eighteenth century, the way Ottomans used their clocks conformed to the inner logic of their own temporal culture. However, this began to change rather dramatically during the nineteenth century, as the Ottoman Empire was increasingly assimilated into the European-dominated global economy and the project of modern state building began to gather momentum.and#160; In
Reading Clocks, Alla Turca, Avner Wishnitzer unravels the complexity of Ottoman temporal culture and for the first time tells the story of its transformation. He explains that in their attempt to attain better surveillance capabilities and higher levels of regularity and efficiency, various organs of the reforming Ottoman state developed elaborate temporal constructs in which clocks played an increasingly important role. As the reform movement spread beyond the government apparatus, emerging groups of officers, bureaucrats, and urban professionals incorporated novel time-related ideas, values, and behaviors into their self-consciously andldquo;modernandrdquo; outlook and lifestyle. Acculturated in the highly regimented environment of schools and barracks, they came to identify efficiency and temporal regularity with progress and the former temporal patterns with the old political order.
Drawing on a wealth of archival and literary sources, Wishnitzerandrsquo;s original and highly important work presents the shifting culture of time as an arena in which Ottoman social groups competed for legitimacy and a medium through which the very concept of modernity was defined. Reading Clocks, Alla Turca breaks new ground in the study of the Middle East and presents us with a new understanding of the relationship between time and modernity.
About the Author
On Barak is Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern history at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of Names Without Faces: From Polemics to Flirtation in Islamic Chat-room Nick-naming (Uppsala University Press, 2006).
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Introduction: Another Time?
1. En Route
2. Double Standards
3. Effendi Hauntologies
4. Harmonization and Its Discords
5. The Urban Politics of Slowness
6. Counterclockwise Revolution
7. On Hold
Conclusion: Countertemporality
Notes
Bibliography
Index