Return to Alexandria

Name: Return to Alexandria
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SKU: 9781598741919
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An Ethnography of Cultural Heritage Revivalism and Museum Memory

By Beverley Butler

Series: UCL Institute of Archaeology Critical Cultural Heritage Series

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Summary

Return to Alexandria examines the revival of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a UNESCO and Egyptian government initiative launched in the 1990s to restore the legacy of the ancient Alexandria Library. Beverley Butler's ethnographic study reveals the project's complexities, including its emphasis on the city's Greek past over centuries of Islamic scholarship and the social disparities it highlighted. The book offers a nuanced postcolonial critique of memory, cultural revival, and the challenges faced by scholars involved in this modern cultural landmark.
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Format: Paperback / softback

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Return to Alexandria

$93⁹⁹

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This work is ideal for museologists, historians, archaeologists, cultural scholars, and heritage professionals interested in postcolonial studies, cultural memory, and the politics of cultural heritage.

Beverley Butler’s ethnography of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina project critiques the underlying western foundational concepts and values behind the Library in a nuanced postcolonial examination of memory, cultural revival, and homecoming.

Description

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina was launched with great fanfare in the 1990s, a project of UNESCO and the Egyptian government to recreate the glory of the Alexandria Library and Museion of the ancient world. The project and its timing were curious—it coincided with scholarship moving away from the dominance of the western tradition; it privileged Alexandria’s Greek heritage over 1500 years of Islamic scholarship; and it established an island for the cultural elite in an urban slum.

Beverley Butler’s ethnography of the project explores these contradictions, and the challenges faced by Egyptian and international scholars in overcoming them. Her critique of the underlying foundational concepts and values behind the Library is of equal importance, offering a nuanced postcolonial examination of memory, cultural revival, and homecoming. In this, she draws upon a wide array of thinkers: Freud, Derrida, Said, and Bernal, among others.

Return to Alexandria will be of great value to museologists, historians, archaeologists, cultural scholars, and heritage professionals.

Series: UCL Institute of Archaeology Critical Cultural Heritage Series

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781598741919

Publisher: Left Coast Press Inc

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 15 November 2007

Country: United States

Imprint: Left Coast Press Inc

Audience: Tertiary education

DIMENSIONS

Width: 152.0mm

Height: 229.0mm

Weight: 521g

Pages: 299

Collections

Beverley Butler Education & Reference Non-Fiction Science & Nature Series: UCL Institute of Archaeology Critical Cultural Heritage Series

About the Author

Dr Beverley Butler Coordinates an M.A. in Cultural Heritage Studies and lectures in Cultural Heritage Studies, Museum History and Theory, and Cultural Memory at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. Her interests are alternative theorisations and reconceptualisation of cultural heritage studies; museum historiography and museological theory; and the application of intellectual history, philosophy, psychoanalysis, literary theory, postcolonial theory, deconstruction, and memory-studies to cultural heritage/museum studies.Her recent research work has focused on the application of ethnographic methods and anthropological theory to cultural heritage/museum studies; themes of cultural loss and revivalism; critical studies of the archive and cultural transmission; postcolonial politics of memory-work; reconceptualisations of cosmopolitanism and humanism within cultural heritage discourse; and cultural/human rights and marginalised histories/memory. Her special focus is on North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean and on Alexandrian/Egyptian and Palestinian cultural heritage and cultural politics.

Return to Alexandria