SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Ethel Mannin’s Lance for the Arabs: Revolutionary Counter-Reconnaissance

Ethel Mannin (1900-1984) was a prolific author of popular novels, travel literature and life-writing. She was also an anti-colonial activist, a supporter of Arab nationalist and liberation movements, an anarchist sympathiser and a pioneering feminist. In spite of this she has become a much marginalised figure, seemingly because her writing has been dismissed as either middle brow or overly polemical. However, what this reaction to her work serves to obscure is the extent to which she could be seen as ahead of her times in a number of respects.  This paper will explore some of the paradoxes entailed in the above, particularly with respect to Mannin’s championing of Arab causes. In doing so, the paper will entertain the notion of revolutionary counter –reconnaissance, or the strategic use of informed narratives, and propose how Mannin’s significance may be re-evaluated in the light of the recent Arab uprisings.

Caroline Rooney is Professor of African and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Kent. From 2009-2012, she held an ESRC/AHRC Global Uncertainties fellowship with a research programme entitled Radical Distrust. She is currently a Global Uncertainties Leadership Fellow, conducting a programme which examines the roles played by utopian thinking and arts activism in the imagining of a common ground.