Official state texts are contaminated by the reality they claim to regulate

Evidence

Like the case of the incomplete printed military regulations, this case is interesting because it draws our attention to the problems inherent in writing the history of nineteenth-century Egypt using the official pronouncements of Mehmed Ali or the various blueprints, laws and regulations that were passed during his time. As Mitchell has cleverly shown in his Colonising Egypt and as the previous chapter has attempted to make clear, these were impressive texts and do carry within themselves an important inherent element of power. Nevertheless, behind the neat, clean façade of these impressive texts lay a much more complicated reality. The tension inherent in the text is not only based, as this chapter has attempted to show, on the discrepancy that separates it from the reality it tries to regulate; that text is itself a reflection of this reality, in spite of its pretence to the contrary, in spite of its presumed primordial, detached nature. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 962

As Mitchell has cleverly shown in his Colonising Egypt and as the previous chapter has attempted to make clear, these were impressive texts and do carry within themselves an important inherent element of power. Nevertheless, behind the neat, clean façade of these impressive texts lay a much more complicated reality. The tension inherent in the text is not only based, as this chapter has attempted to show, on the discrepancy that separates it from the reality it tries to regulate; that text is itself a reflection of this reality, in spite of its pretence to the contrary, in spite of its presumed primordial, detached nature. Even before seeing how the soldiers might have reacted to the power of the modern state, the texts which annunciate that power, the laws, blueprints and government regulations, are themselves already compromised and “contaminated” by the reality they set out to organize, regulate and “inscribe.” — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 962

Categorization

• XREF: Continues the book’s central methodological argument against reading state documents as transparent evidence — echoes Mitchell’s Colonising Egypt, which the reader has encountered in earlier chapters of this book. — connects to: The NDAA legalized undisclosed pro-government propaganda aimed at US citizens
• DEFINE: Explains ‘enframed’ representation as Mitchell uses it — an official text’s claim to detached, primordial depiction of order.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 962