Nineteenth-century Egypt diagnosed political crisis as a crisis of writing and authority

Evidence

Marsafi’s book was suspicious of printing and suggestive of Ibn Khaldun. Printing was part of the general problem of the ‘spreading of words’ that seemed somehow the nature of the political crisis. Political authority, in turn, was associated with the authority of writing. Extending the authority of writing, through schools and proper learning, was the means to restore and make secure political authority. The importance of Ibn Khaldun was that he addressed the general question of authority in terms of the question of authorship, thus directly linking the political crisis to the issue of writing. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 433

Categorization

• XREF: The suspicion of printing and the authority/writing link mirrors the arguments in Ong’s Orality and Literacy and echoes the general McLuhanist claim about medium and social order. — connects to: The 1847-8 crisis produced a cultural crisis of representation. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 1648