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...