How I Met My Great-Grandfather

Research Article| May 01 2018 How I Met My Great-Grandfather: Archives and the Writing of History Sherene Seikaly Sherene Seikaly Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2018) 38 (1): 6–20. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-4389931 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter Email Permissions Search Site Citation Sherene Seikaly; How I Met My Great-Grandfather: Archives and the Writing of History. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 1 May 2018; 38 (1): 6–20. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201x-4389931 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsComparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East Search Advanced Search Seikaly’s article reflects on a decade of research, contingent, accidental, and unconsciously autobiographical, to explore archival practices and the writing of history. She recounts her experience of stumbling across family papers that carried the story of Naim Cotran as a “man of capital.” She details Naim’s consumerism, his financial investments and property, and his land dispute with his brother, and then traces his experience of dispossession after the Nakba as a refugee in Lebanon. What happened to a man of capital who survived the catastrophe of 1948? What allows an archive to survive that event? What stories does it record and what does it render invisible? archives, Palestine, capital, history, historiography, land, Israel The text of this article is only available as a PDF.