Ian Almond
Biographic Data
| ID | 537420 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ian Almond |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ian |
| FAMILY NAME | Almond |
| SIGNATURE | ALMOND I |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bosphorus University, Istanbul, Turkey |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7753-2801 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Some Brief Reflections on the Function of Myth in Agha Shahid Ali’s The Country Without A Post Office
It is almost thirty years since the publication of The Country Without A PostOffice (henceforth Country), years which (sadly) have done little to make theviolence and suffering Shahid Ali depicts in the book outdated or historical.The most recent violence brings an undesirable relevance to poetry which manypeople would prefer to date historically. Earlier this year – and in the wakeof the bombing of Gaza – I watched Elia Suleiman’s The Time That …
Caught Between Rights and Vows
This study examines how U.S. immigration policies enact legal violence and multigenerational punishment through the spousal reunification process, particularly in mixed-status, transnational families. Building on the concept of “deportability,” we introduce “importability” to describe a beneficiary’s potential to secure permanent residency, which varies according to social markers such as race, gender, and region of origin. Drawing from a content…
The Hotel Narrative in Turkish, Mexican, and Bengali Fiction
This webinar was presented on November 27, 2020 at the Fall 2020 Seminar Series organized by the Department of English and Humanities (DEH), University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB). The lecture was transcribed by Khadija Rubaiyat Tasmia (Supervisor, The English Zone, ULAB), Mashiur Rahaman, Vincent Dip Gomes, and Shahriyer Hossain Shetu (students of DEH). It is based on a chapter taken from Ian Almond, World Literature Decentered: Beyond the…
Representing the representers
How do writers from regions with a historical experience of colonialism depict Western Orientalists in their work? What exactly does it mean to “reverse the gaze” and include the Orientalist within the frame of representation? The article considers the non-Western representation of Orientalists and Orientalism in literary texts from three different regions (Turkey, Mexico, and Bengal), concentrating in particular on Oguz Atay’s Tutunamayanlar (Th…
Melancholy, ghostliness and economy in the short fiction of Amit Chaudhuri
This essay examines the motifs of melancholy, fantasy and economy in Amit Chaudhuri’s short fiction, and ultimately links them together existentially as a postcolonial symptom (and strategy) of an India whose increasing commodification of daily life is increasingly transforming culture into an appendage of capital. In a manner reminiscent of the sociologist Bourdieu’s terminology, Chaudhuri’s stories depict an urban India whose individuals are co…
Two Faiths, One Banner
When Englishman and Turk fell side by side in the killing fields of the Crimea, it was not the first time that Christian and Muslim blood was shed, and intermingled, in the cause of battling a common foe. It is fashionable today to talk of a ‘clash of civilizations’, and of an unbridgeable chasm between the Islamic world and Christendom. But in this bold and iconoclastic book Ian Almond demonstrates that in Europe, the heart of the west, Muslims …
Two Versions of Islam and the Apocalypse
This brief article deals with the persistence of a single motif — the medieval Christian association of Islam with the Apocalypse — in the vocabulary of an early modern thinker (Schlegel), and its reappearance in the geopolitical mindscapes of two postmodern philosophers (Žižek and Baudrillard). The medieval motif has two variants: a thirteenth‐century Franciscan version (one which sees Muslims as unconvertible signs of the Apocalypse to come) an…
The New Orientalists
Sufism and Deconstruction
Examinung a series of common features in the works of Derrida and the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi, considered to be one of the most influential figures in Islamic thought, the author addresses the significant absence of attention on the relationship between Islam and Derrida. Presenting a deconstructive perspective on Ibn 'Arabi, the book's features include:* the opposition to systematizing representations of God/reality/the text * a re-emphasis on the …
The Imbalance of Islam
Nietzsche's Peace with Islam
This article examines the many references in Nietzsche's work to Islam and Islamic cultures, and situates them in the general context of his thought. Nietzsche's praise of Islam as a ‘ ja–sagende semitische Religion’, his admiration for Hafiz, his appreciation of Muslim Spain, his belief in the essentially life–affirming character of Islam, not only spring from a desire to find a palatable Other to Judaeo–Christian–European modernity, but also co…
Islam, Melancholy, and Sad, Concrete Minarets
This article examines, in the work of a contemporary Turkish novelist, the repeated association of Islam with a variety of different sadnesses-melancholy arising from the demise of the secret, from a certain awareness of the death of metaphysics, the end of our ability to believe in such stories and yet our simultaneous inability to carry on living without them. The implications such 'Western' ideas have in the text of an 'Eastern' novel-resurrec…
Darker Shades of Malgudi
Doing Violence upon God
The Other resembles God . To welcome the Other absolutely is to preserve the Other as a state of irreducible uncertainty, to suspend the desire to ascertain exactly who or what the Other is, to suppress the wish to name, and to avoid assimilating or incorporating the Other into a reassuringly familiar vocabulary. The object of this paper is a tentative comparison between Eckhartian gelâzenheit and Derridean openness. I will compare the Derridean …
Nietzsche's Peace with Islam
This article examines the many references in Nietzsche's work to Islam and Islamic cultures, and situates them in the general context of his thought. Nietzsche's praise of Islam as a ‘ ja–sagende semitische Religion’, his admiration for Hafiz, his appreciation of Muslim Spain, his belief in the essentially life–affirming character of Islam, not only spring from a desire to find a palatable Other to Judaeo–Christian–European modernity, but also co…
Representing the representers
How do writers from regions with a historical experience of colonialism depict Western Orientalists in their work? What exactly does it mean to “reverse the gaze” and include the Orientalist within the frame of representation? The article considers the non-Western representation of Orientalists and Orientalism in literary texts from three different regions (Turkey, Mexico, and Bengal), concentrating in particular on Oguz Atay’s Tutunamayanlar (Th…
Melancholy, ghostliness and economy in the short fiction of Amit Chaudhuri
This essay examines the motifs of melancholy, fantasy and economy in Amit Chaudhuri’s short fiction, and ultimately links them together existentially as a postcolonial symptom (and strategy) of an India whose increasing commodification of daily life is increasingly transforming culture into an appendage of capital. In a manner reminiscent of the sociologist Bourdieu’s terminology, Chaudhuri’s stories depict an urban India whose individuals are co…
Darker Shades of Malgudi
Doing Violence upon God
The Other resembles God . To welcome the Other absolutely is to preserve the Other as a state of irreducible uncertainty, to suspend the desire to ascertain exactly who or what the Other is, to suppress the wish to name, and to avoid assimilating or incorporating the Other into a reassuringly familiar vocabulary. The object of this paper is a tentative comparison between Eckhartian gelâzenheit and Derridean openness. I will compare the Derridean …
Darker Shades of Malgudi
Nietzsche's Peace with Islam
This article examines the many references in Nietzsche's work to Islam and Islamic cultures, and situates them in the general context of his thought. Nietzsche's praise of Islam as a ‘ ja–sagende semitische Religion’, his admiration for Hafiz, his appreciation of Muslim Spain, his belief in the essentially life–affirming character of Islam, not only spring from a desire to find a palatable Other to Judaeo–Christian–European modernity, but also co…
Islam, Melancholy, and Sad, Concrete Minarets
This article examines, in the work of a contemporary Turkish novelist, the repeated association of Islam with a variety of different sadnesses-melancholy arising from the demise of the secret, from a certain awareness of the death of metaphysics, the end of our ability to believe in such stories and yet our simultaneous inability to carry on living without them. The implications such 'Western' ideas have in the text of an 'Eastern' novel-resurrec…
Sufism and Deconstruction
Examinung a series of common features in the works of Derrida and the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi, considered to be one of the most influential figures in Islamic thought, the author addresses the significant absence of attention on the relationship between Islam and Derrida. Presenting a deconstructive perspective on Ibn 'Arabi, the book's features include:* the opposition to systematizing representations of God/reality/the text * a re-emphasis on the …
The Imbalance of Islam
The New Orientalists
Two Faiths, One Banner
When Englishman and Turk fell side by side in the killing fields of the Crimea, it was not the first time that Christian and Muslim blood was shed, and intermingled, in the cause of battling a common foe. It is fashionable today to talk of a ‘clash of civilizations’, and of an unbridgeable chasm between the Islamic world and Christendom. But in this bold and iconoclastic book Ian Almond demonstrates that in Europe, the heart of the west, Muslims …
Two Versions of Islam and the Apocalypse
This brief article deals with the persistence of a single motif — the medieval Christian association of Islam with the Apocalypse — in the vocabulary of an early modern thinker (Schlegel), and its reappearance in the geopolitical mindscapes of two postmodern philosophers (Žižek and Baudrillard). The medieval motif has two variants: a thirteenth‐century Franciscan version (one which sees Muslims as unconvertible signs of the Apocalypse to come) an…
Melancholy, ghostliness and economy in the short fiction of Amit Chaudhuri
This essay examines the motifs of melancholy, fantasy and economy in Amit Chaudhuri’s short fiction, and ultimately links them together existentially as a postcolonial symptom (and strategy) of an India whose increasing commodification of daily life is increasingly transforming culture into an appendage of capital. In a manner reminiscent of the sociologist Bourdieu’s terminology, Chaudhuri’s stories depict an urban India whose individuals are co…
Representing the representers
How do writers from regions with a historical experience of colonialism depict Western Orientalists in their work? What exactly does it mean to “reverse the gaze” and include the Orientalist within the frame of representation? The article considers the non-Western representation of Orientalists and Orientalism in literary texts from three different regions (Turkey, Mexico, and Bengal), concentrating in particular on Oguz Atay’s Tutunamayanlar (Th…
The Hotel Narrative in Turkish, Mexican, and Bengali Fiction
This webinar was presented on November 27, 2020 at the Fall 2020 Seminar Series organized by the Department of English and Humanities (DEH), University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB). The lecture was transcribed by Khadija Rubaiyat Tasmia (Supervisor, The English Zone, ULAB), Mashiur Rahaman, Vincent Dip Gomes, and Shahriyer Hossain Shetu (students of DEH). It is based on a chapter taken from Ian Almond, World Literature Decentered: Beyond the…
Some Brief Reflections on the Function of Myth in Agha Shahid Ali’s The Country Without A Post Office
It is almost thirty years since the publication of The Country Without A PostOffice (henceforth Country), years which (sadly) have done little to make theviolence and suffering Shahid Ali depicts in the book outdated or historical.The most recent violence brings an undesirable relevance to poetry which manypeople would prefer to date historically. Earlier this year – and in the wakeof the bombing of Gaza – I watched Elia Suleiman’s The Time That …
Caught Between Rights and Vows
This study examines how U.S. immigration policies enact legal violence and multigenerational punishment through the spousal reunification process, particularly in mixed-status, transnational families. Building on the concept of “deportability,” we introduce “importability” to describe a beneficiary’s potential to secure permanent residency, which varies according to social markers such as race, gender, and region of origin. Drawing from a content…
Philosophy (10 works) · Art (8 works) · History (7 works) · Literature (7 works) · Islam (6 works) · Linguistics (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · History (4 works) · Law (4 works)