Rule of Experts or Hitler

Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity

Author: Timothy Mitchell

Can one explain the power of global capitalism without attributing to capital a logic and coherence it does not have? Can one account for the powers of techno-science in terms that do not merely reproduce its own understanding of the world?
Rule of Experts examines these questions through a series of interrelated essays focused on Egypt in the twentieth century. These explore the way malaria, sugar cane, war, and nationalism interacted to produce the techno-politics of the modern Egyptian state; the forms of debt, discipline, and violence that founded the institution of private property; the methods of measurement, circulation, and exchange that produced the novel idea of a national "economy," yet made its accurate representation impossible; the stereotypes and plagiarisms that created the scholarly image of the Egyptian peasant; and the interaction of social logics, horticultural imperatives, powers of desire, and political forces that turned programs of economic reform in unanticipated directions.
Mitchell is a widely known political theorist and one of the most innovative writers on the Middle East. He provides a rich examination of the forms of reason, power, and expertise that characterize contemporary politics. Together, these intellectually provocative essays will challenge a broad spectrum of readers to think harder, more critically, and more politically about history, power, and theory.

Read also Triple Cross or I Write What I like

Hitler

Author: Joachim C Fest

A bestseller in its original German edition and subsequently translated into more than a dozen languages, this book has become a classic portrait of a man, a nation, and an era. Index. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Booknews

**** Reprint of the HBJ edition originally published in English in 1973 and endorsed by BCL3. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)