Working at the Limits of Anthropology

Lengthy, incisive, and erudite, Formations of the Secular 's final essay telescopes inward like a book within a book. Its sober title, “Reconfigurations of Law and Ethics in Colonial Egypt,” is followed by fifty-one pages of compact argumentation and elaborate engagements with legal historians, scholars of Islam, and Nahda luminaries. The chapter discusses the subtle and yet transformative work of Western imperialism by examining several legal reforms advocated for and enacted throughout the long nineteenth century. In what follows, I reflect on the critical relationship that Asad's essay maintains with the academic discipline that made it possible, namely anthropology. More than the essay's reception within anthropological circles, it is how Asad strategically navigates the discipline's limitations and possibilities that interests me here.