Chihab El Khachab
Biographic Data
| ID | 119230 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Chihab El Khachab |
| GIVEN NAMES | Chihab |
| FAMILY NAME | El Khachab |
| SIGNATURE | EL KHACHAB C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4113-1424 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Notes on the Difficulty of Studying State Archives in Egypt
This article describes how Egyptian state documents are scattered between governmental institutions, private collections, and the second-hand book and paper market. This scattering raises a practical question about the conditions under which official documents become discardable and commodifiable by bureaucrats, their families, and second-hand dealers. This scattering also raises a theoretical question about the nature of a state which takes unev…
Objects, memories, and storytelling: Experiments in narrating ideas of home
How do objects narrate the past, the everyday, and interrogate im/ possible futures? How do they undo our 'ideas of home'? What affects do they gather and what subjectivities and different forms of intimacy do they call into conversation? This compendium article brings a visual artist together with nine early career academics researching and archiving fragments from homes in Egypt, Sudan, and Palestine (and their global connections). In doing so …
Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood by Vanessa Díaz
Reviewed by: Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood by Vanessa Díaz Chihab El Khachab Vanessa Díaz, Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020. 328 pp. Manufacturing Celebrity is an ethnography of the celebrity media industry based in Los Angeles, with an emphasis on the precarious work of paparazzi and celebrity reporters working with magazin…
Making Film in Egypt: How Labor, Technology, and Mediation Shape the Industry
A brief history of the future of culture in Egypt
This essay offers a brief intellectual history of the discourse surrounding “the future of culture” in Egypt. Starting with reflections on the future of the official cultural apparatus after the 2011 revolution, the essay moves on to three significant moments in the longer history of such reflections, each with its own set of concerns. These concerns range from culture and globalization in the 1990s and early 2000s, to cultural planning and devel…
Virtues and Tragedies of Surrealism in Egypt
The author begins by providing a summarized timeline of the beginning and development of surrealism in Egypt, with a focus on the activities of the Art and Liberty group, inspired and established in 1939 by Georges Henein. Nearly 50 years later, in 1986, the author published Surrealism in Egypt and Plastic Arts (Cairo: Ministry of Culture, Foreign Cultural Relations, 1986), a historical account of surrealism in Egypt and the artistic and societal…
The Last Nahdawi: Taha Hussein and Institution Building in Egypt
Satire as safety valve: Moving beyond a mistaken metaphor
The safety valve metaphor is ubiquitous in scholarship on satire and usually implies that, although the genre seems intent on upsetting the political order, it really has unintended conservative effects which maintain the status quo. Although there is previous criticism of the safety valve theory, which focuses on the inadequacy of its empirical predictions or the flawed theoretical foundations of the associated relief theory of humor, the metaph…
The reification of concrete work in Egyptian film production
The anthropology of cinema has been instrumental in describing the 'unseen' labour invested in making films. What has been less explored is film workers' erasure of each other's concrete effort in a similar manner. This process is what I call 'reification'. Extending Georg Lukács's reflections, I argue that the relations of production throughout the film-making process seem to be transformed into relations between things (images and sounds) in a …
Two Questions to Marxist Anthropology
“Marxist anthropology” is typically understood as a phase within the history of Euro-American anthropology, which is said to have fizzled out in the 1980s. Since some spectres are difficult to chase, however, Marx’s critique of capitalism continues to haunt the discipline’s output, which is not necessarily couched in Marxist language nor inserted in an explicitly Marxist framework. This essay will not diagnose the reasons behind the waning of “Ma…
State Control Over Film Production in Egypt
This essay is part of an ethnographic study of Egyptian film production conducted between August 2013 and September 2015. The study is centered on participant observation within two main film companies, New Century Film Production and Al-Batrik Art Production, in addition to interviews conducted with key actors in the industry as well as all workers involved in two film projects, Décor (dir. Ahmad Abdalla, New Century, 2014) and Poisonous Roses (…
Compressing Scales: Characters and Situations in Egyptian Internet Humor
This article examines common political assumptions made in Egyptian internet comics, mainstream television discourse, and everyday conversation in Cairo. These assumptions compress local, national, and global scales of analysis into a manageable set of characters (e.g., the President, the People) interacting in everyday situations. Arguing against psychological interpretations, the article highlights the social and historical context within which…
What Does It Look Like: On the Use of Intermediary Images in Egyptian Film Production
This article examines the use of intermediary images in the process of commercial film production in Egypt. Without being integrally part of the film product, intermediary images play a vital role in mediating interactions in the production process by anchoring the filmmakers’ multiple and sometimes conflicting representations of “the film” in visual proxies. Focusing on scouting work in two recent Egyptian films, Décor (2014) and Poisonous Roses…
Living in darkness: Internet humour and the politics of Egypt's electricity infrastructure
Power cuts have become a lively subject of discussion in Egypt, and they have been extensively mocked in internet memes. Based on a selection of images from the popular Asa7be page, this article examines the visual techniques and joking conventions employed in online memes in order to criticize the Egyptian state's management of the country's electricity infrastructure
Secular Preachers: Watching Television Pundits in Post-Revolutionary Egypt
Sometime in 2013, while I was doing fieldwork in Cairo, I stopped watching Egyptian television. One of the triggering events was a segment on Youssef el-Husseiny's show, el-Sada el-Mohtaramoun (Res
Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa: Into the new millennium by Hafez, Sherine and Susan Slyomovics
The Logical Goodness of Abduction in C. S. Peirce's Thought
The term “abduction” has been used with different meanings since its introduction in C. S. Peirce’s writings. It has been used to refer to inference to the best explanation, hypothetical inference, inference to new explanations, and a guessing-instinct. These meanings converge to solve a central problem: how do new ideas emerge in inquiry? Different authors defend different meanings of “abduction” which, in their view, resolve this fundamental pr…
Objects, memories, and storytelling: Experiments in narrating ideas of home
How do objects narrate the past, the everyday, and interrogate im/ possible futures? How do they undo our 'ideas of home'? What affects do they gather and what subjectivities and different forms of intimacy do they call into conversation? This compendium article brings a visual artist together with nine early career academics researching and archiving fragments from homes in Egypt, Sudan, and Palestine (and their global connections). In doing so …
Living in darkness: Internet humour and the politics of Egypt's electricity infrastructure
Power cuts have become a lively subject of discussion in Egypt, and they have been extensively mocked in internet memes. Based on a selection of images from the popular Asa7be page, this article examines the visual techniques and joking conventions employed in online memes in order to criticize the Egyptian state's management of the country's electricity infrastructure
The reification of concrete work in Egyptian film production
The anthropology of cinema has been instrumental in describing the 'unseen' labour invested in making films. What has been less explored is film workers' erasure of each other's concrete effort in a similar manner. This process is what I call 'reification'. Extending Georg Lukács's reflections, I argue that the relations of production throughout the film-making process seem to be transformed into relations between things (images and sounds) in a …
Compressing Scales: Characters and Situations in Egyptian Internet Humor
This article examines common political assumptions made in Egyptian internet comics, mainstream television discourse, and everyday conversation in Cairo. These assumptions compress local, national, and global scales of analysis into a manageable set of characters (e.g., the President, the People) interacting in everyday situations. Arguing against psychological interpretations, the article highlights the social and historical context within which…
Secular Preachers: Watching Television Pundits in Post-Revolutionary Egypt
Sometime in 2013, while I was doing fieldwork in Cairo, I stopped watching Egyptian television. One of the triggering events was a segment on Youssef el-Husseiny's show, el-Sada el-Mohtaramoun (Res
A brief history of the future of culture in Egypt
This essay offers a brief intellectual history of the discourse surrounding “the future of culture” in Egypt. Starting with reflections on the future of the official cultural apparatus after the 2011 revolution, the essay moves on to three significant moments in the longer history of such reflections, each with its own set of concerns. These concerns range from culture and globalization in the 1990s and early 2000s, to cultural planning and devel…
Satire as safety valve: Moving beyond a mistaken metaphor
The safety valve metaphor is ubiquitous in scholarship on satire and usually implies that, although the genre seems intent on upsetting the political order, it really has unintended conservative effects which maintain the status quo. Although there is previous criticism of the safety valve theory, which focuses on the inadequacy of its empirical predictions or the flawed theoretical foundations of the associated relief theory of humor, the metaph…
The Logical Goodness of Abduction in C. S. Peirce's Thought
The term “abduction” has been used with different meanings since its introduction in C. S. Peirce’s writings. It has been used to refer to inference to the best explanation, hypothetical inference, inference to new explanations, and a guessing-instinct. These meanings converge to solve a central problem: how do new ideas emerge in inquiry? Different authors defend different meanings of “abduction” which, in their view, resolve this fundamental pr…
Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa: Into the new millennium by Hafez, Sherine and Susan Slyomovics
What Does It Look Like: On the Use of Intermediary Images in Egyptian Film Production
This article examines the use of intermediary images in the process of commercial film production in Egypt. Without being integrally part of the film product, intermediary images play a vital role in mediating interactions in the production process by anchoring the filmmakers’ multiple and sometimes conflicting representations of “the film” in visual proxies. Focusing on scouting work in two recent Egyptian films, Décor (2014) and Poisonous Roses…
Living in darkness: Internet humour and the politics of Egypt's electricity infrastructure
Power cuts have become a lively subject of discussion in Egypt, and they have been extensively mocked in internet memes. Based on a selection of images from the popular Asa7be page, this article examines the visual techniques and joking conventions employed in online memes in order to criticize the Egyptian state's management of the country's electricity infrastructure
Secular Preachers: Watching Television Pundits in Post-Revolutionary Egypt
Sometime in 2013, while I was doing fieldwork in Cairo, I stopped watching Egyptian television. One of the triggering events was a segment on Youssef el-Husseiny's show, el-Sada el-Mohtaramoun (Res
State Control Over Film Production in Egypt
This essay is part of an ethnographic study of Egyptian film production conducted between August 2013 and September 2015. The study is centered on participant observation within two main film companies, New Century Film Production and Al-Batrik Art Production, in addition to interviews conducted with key actors in the industry as well as all workers involved in two film projects, Décor (dir. Ahmad Abdalla, New Century, 2014) and Poisonous Roses (…
Compressing Scales: Characters and Situations in Egyptian Internet Humor
This article examines common political assumptions made in Egyptian internet comics, mainstream television discourse, and everyday conversation in Cairo. These assumptions compress local, national, and global scales of analysis into a manageable set of characters (e.g., the President, the People) interacting in everyday situations. Arguing against psychological interpretations, the article highlights the social and historical context within which…
Two Questions to Marxist Anthropology
“Marxist anthropology” is typically understood as a phase within the history of Euro-American anthropology, which is said to have fizzled out in the 1980s. Since some spectres are difficult to chase, however, Marx’s critique of capitalism continues to haunt the discipline’s output, which is not necessarily couched in Marxist language nor inserted in an explicitly Marxist framework. This essay will not diagnose the reasons behind the waning of “Ma…
Making Film in Egypt: How Labor, Technology, and Mediation Shape the Industry
A brief history of the future of culture in Egypt
This essay offers a brief intellectual history of the discourse surrounding “the future of culture” in Egypt. Starting with reflections on the future of the official cultural apparatus after the 2011 revolution, the essay moves on to three significant moments in the longer history of such reflections, each with its own set of concerns. These concerns range from culture and globalization in the 1990s and early 2000s, to cultural planning and devel…
Virtues and Tragedies of Surrealism in Egypt
The author begins by providing a summarized timeline of the beginning and development of surrealism in Egypt, with a focus on the activities of the Art and Liberty group, inspired and established in 1939 by Georges Henein. Nearly 50 years later, in 1986, the author published Surrealism in Egypt and Plastic Arts (Cairo: Ministry of Culture, Foreign Cultural Relations, 1986), a historical account of surrealism in Egypt and the artistic and societal…
The Last Nahdawi: Taha Hussein and Institution Building in Egypt
Satire as safety valve: Moving beyond a mistaken metaphor
The safety valve metaphor is ubiquitous in scholarship on satire and usually implies that, although the genre seems intent on upsetting the political order, it really has unintended conservative effects which maintain the status quo. Although there is previous criticism of the safety valve theory, which focuses on the inadequacy of its empirical predictions or the flawed theoretical foundations of the associated relief theory of humor, the metaph…
The reification of concrete work in Egyptian film production
The anthropology of cinema has been instrumental in describing the 'unseen' labour invested in making films. What has been less explored is film workers' erasure of each other's concrete effort in a similar manner. This process is what I call 'reification'. Extending Georg Lukács's reflections, I argue that the relations of production throughout the film-making process seem to be transformed into relations between things (images and sounds) in a …
Objects, memories, and storytelling: Experiments in narrating ideas of home
How do objects narrate the past, the everyday, and interrogate im/ possible futures? How do they undo our 'ideas of home'? What affects do they gather and what subjectivities and different forms of intimacy do they call into conversation? This compendium article brings a visual artist together with nine early career academics researching and archiving fragments from homes in Egypt, Sudan, and Palestine (and their global connections). In doing so …
Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood by Vanessa Díaz
Reviewed by: Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood by Vanessa Díaz Chihab El Khachab Vanessa Díaz, Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020. 328 pp. Manufacturing Celebrity is an ethnography of the celebrity media industry based in Los Angeles, with an emphasis on the precarious work of paparazzi and celebrity reporters working with magazin…
Notes on the Difficulty of Studying State Archives in Egypt
This article describes how Egyptian state documents are scattered between governmental institutions, private collections, and the second-hand book and paper market. This scattering raises a practical question about the conditions under which official documents become discardable and commodifiable by bureaucrats, their families, and second-hand dealers. This scattering also raises a theoretical question about the nature of a state which takes unev…
Political science (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Law (9 works) · History (7 works) · History (7 works) · Art (6 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Media studies (5 works)