ROSIE BSHEER. Archive Wars: The Politics of History in Saudi Arabia. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020. Pp. 416. $30.00, paperback. ISBN 9781503612570.

Abstract

geographicalbased segregation by linking such projects to colonialism. Nonetheless, these models were viewed as beneficial by opposing camps who considered education reform as an opportunity for the production of ideal Iraqi women. Iraq’s educational development emerged from a colonial-linearity that aimed to yield specific subjects: its opposition evidently indicates that Iraqi women ‘believed they could better serve the nation’s interest by overthrowing the existing political order than by learning how to efficiently manage a household’ (105). The state of scholarship on Iraq is such that very few studies have consulted the country’s rich archives or conducted research within its borders. Of course, Pursley anticipated this otherwise minor critique by noting that the ‘very limited state of scholarship on Iraq means that many available sources remain unexamined and many of those that have been examined remain open to alternate readings’ (28). Familiar Future will interest scholars engaged with economic development projects, gender studies, postcolonial studies, national imaginaries, and the manufacturing of subjectivity. In a Koselleckian tradition, Pursley not only offers us a tantalizing critique of modernization and modernity, but also challenges us to rethink the boundaries between history, historiography and theory: an opportunity to reflect on the positioning of the history of Iraq within interdisciplinary theories.