Fahmy frames Mehmed Ali’s project as inscribing rather than enframing reality.

Evidence

While acknowledging the seductive appeal of viewing Mehmed Ali’s army, or Egypt at large for that matter, as an enframed reality, as a picture in an exhibition, I prefer to refer to what the Pasha and his men did in Egypt as a process of “inscribing” reality rather than “enframing.” This is not simply a linguistic ploy (if linguistic ploys could ever be simple); rather, it is a preference for a term that, while acknowledging the violence involved in discursive techniques of ordering and managing modern societies, still assumes an agent behind these techniques. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 746

Categorization

• XREF: Directly engages and revises Timothy Mitchell’s enframing thesis from Colonising Egypt; also a methodological stance worth holding up against Foucault’s deterritorialized power.
• SEED: The inscribing-versus-enframing distinction offers an essay angle on colonial-era power that insists on named agents and intentionality.