- 24 Nov 2021
[Book Discussion] Archive Wars: The Politics of History in Saudi Arabia
(This event is organised by MEI Diffusion of Ideas – Gulf research cluster.)
Abstract
The production of history is premised on the selective erasure of certain pasts and the artifacts that stand witness to them. From the elision of archival documents to the demolition of sacred and secular spaces, each act of destruction is also an act of state building. Following the Gulf War in 1991, political elites in Saudi Arabia pursued these dual projects of historical commemoration and state formation with greater fervor to enforce their postwar vision for state, nation and economy. Seeing Islamist movements as the leading threat to state power, they sought to de-center religion from educational, cultural and spatial policies.
With this book, Dr Rosie Bsheer explores the increasing secularisation of post-war KSA and how it manifested in assembling a national archive and reordering urban space in Riyadh and Mecca. The elites’ project was rife with ironies: in Riyadh, they employed world-renowned experts to fashion an imagined history, while in Mecca they were overseeing the obliteration of a thousand-year-old topography and its replacement with commercial megaprojects. Archive Wars: The Politics of History in Saudi Arabia shows how the Saudi state’s response to the challenges of the Gulf War served to historicise a national space, territorialise a national history and ultimately, refract both through new modes of capital accumulation.
This public talk will be conducted online via Zoom on Wednesday, 24 November 2021, from 4.00 pm to 5.30 pm (SGT). All are welcome to participate. This event is free, however, registration is compulsory. Successful registrants will receive a confirmation email with the Zoom details closer to the date of the event.
About the Speakers
Assistant Professor of History, Harvard University
[Moderator] Fauzan A Roslee
Research Associate, MEI (NUS)
Dr Rosie Bsheer is Assistant Professor of History at Harvard University, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on oil and empire, social and intellectual movements, urban history and historiography and the making of the modern Middle East. Dr Bsheer is a contributing editor of the journal Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (CSSAME) and is co-editor of Jadaliyya, an independent E-zine produced by the Arab Studies Institute. She is also Associate Producer of the 2007 Oscar-nominated film My Country, My Country. Dr Bsheer is the author of several articles, She received her PhD in History from Columbia University in 2014 and taught at Yale University’s history department between 2014 and 2018.
[Moderator] Mr Fauzan A Roslee is a Research Associate at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS). He has a MA in Southeast Asian Studies from NUS and a BA from the International Islamic University Malaysia, where he majored in Usuluddin (Islamic theology and philosophy) and minored in political science. He has worked as a research officer at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute and prior to that, Mr Fauzan was a research editor with Dow Jones Risk and Compliance.
