Desert Imaginations

Desert Imaginations traces the cultural and intellectual histories that have informed the prevalent ideas of deserts across the globe. The book argues that Saharanisma globalizing imaginary that perceives desert spaces as empty, exploitable, and dangeroushas been at the center of all desert-focused enterprises. Encompassing spiritual practices, military thinking, sexual fantasies, experiential quests, extractive economies, and experimental schemes, among other projects, Saharanism has shaped the way deserts not only are constructed intellectually but are acted upon. From nuclear testing to border walls, and much more, Brahim El Guabli articulates some of Saharanisms consequential manifestations across different deserts. Desert Imaginations draws on the abundant historical literature and cultural output in multiple languages and across disciplines to delineate the parameters of Saharanism. Against Saharanisms powerful and reductive vision of deserts, the book rehabilitates a tradition of desert eco-care that has been at work in desert Indigenous peoples literary, artistic, scholarly, and ritualistic practices.