The Calligraphic State, Brinkley Messick

Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society, 1992, Berkeley, UofCaliforniaP. On Yemen.

Pragmatics writ large. The theoretical imagination of it, the scope. The « textual polity » (polities) of the shari’a, and the practices of authority generated through it. And the usual historic fold when the nation-state establishes its framework, and own « total discourse » (Mauss) – which means, specific articulation, including divisions, of domains.

Studying authority, of the textual variety here. The intelligence of imagining that authority is carried through texts, genres, interpretative practices, modes of récitation and documentation …