Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Madina Cham
Guest: Wendell Marsh
Episode: Wendell Marsh, "Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Date: September 22, 2025

Overview

This rich, nuanced episode centers on Wendell Marsh’s forthcoming book, Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities. Through an engaging dialogue, host Madina Cham and Marsh explore the book’s central themes — the legacies of West African Islamic scholarship under colonialism, the meaning and fate of the humanities, and the enduring importance of the textual, or philological, life. The discussion also ranges through Marsh's personal journey, the intersection of black studies and Islamic thought, and the political, pedagogical, and public impact of studying texts in depth.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Author’s Trajectory and Motivation ([04:01]–[09:38])

• Overcoming a Speech Impediment and Discovering the Power of Language:

  • Marsh recounts his childhood struggle with a severe speech impediment, noting formative moments where his older sister "translated" for him. This early challenge inspired a lifelong appreciation for language, translation, and study.
    • "Not even my parents could actually understand me often. And they would ask [my sister] what was I saying? Well, anyway, what that kind of early experience did for me is really made me appreciate the power of language." ([04:01])
  • The role of formal language study, particularly French, became instrumental in his eventual path toward Pan-African solidarity and Black internationalism.

• Encounter in Senegal and Draw to Islamic Intellectual Traditions:

  • During college, a trip to Senegal introduced Marsh to Sheikh Hassan Cisse, an influential Tijani Sufi leader, whose room overflowed with people and texts in multiple languages — especially Arabic.
    • "What literary traditions were available to me that could take me beyond the plantation and the colonial school? And so Sherhasan Sise embodied those things that I knew very early on, right? The power of Language, the importance of translation and the necessity of study." ([07:40])

2. Sheikh Moussa Kamara – Life, Works, and Contemporary Reception ([10:36]–[16:39])

• Introduction to Sheikh Moussa Kamara:

  • Kamara was a late 19th–early 20th-century Senegalese Muslim scholar prolific in Arabic writing, known especially for Zuhur al Bassettin Fitarikh es Sawaddin ("Flowers from Among the Gardens in the History of the Blacks").
  • Marsh emphasizes Kamara's unique position within a vibrant West African Islamic intellectual culture, noting Kamara's idiosyncrasies and poetic sensibility.

• Recent Resurgence and Scholarly Interest:

  • The last decade has seen renewed scholarly work on Kamara, spurred by modern concerns (e.g., the Mali insurgency, debates over jihad).
  • Kamara's critical stance on jihad — arguing the modern absence of prophetic leadership and the immense loss of Muslim life — resonates with contemporary calls for Islamic quietism.

• Parallel with Black Feminism:

  • The rediscovery of Kamara in the post-independence period is likened to the recovery of Zora Neale Hurston by Black feminists in the U.S.
    • "In ways that aren't too dissimilar to the ways in which black feminists in the United States recovered someone like Zora Neale Hurston..." ([15:34])

• The Parable of the Humanities:

  • Kamara’s lifelong struggle for his work’s publication serves as a microcosm for broader questions about the fate of knowledge, translation, and the humanities.
    • "That story...is a compelling parable...not only the story of his life, but a larger story about the fate of the humanities amidst political, technological and epistemic change." ([16:12])

3. The Historical Context: Islam, Colonialism, and Futa Toro ([19:10]–[29:46])

• Understanding Senegal’s Intellectual Terrain:

  • Marsh lays out the nuanced relationships between Islam and colonialism in Futa Toro (border of modern Senegal and Mauritania), through three key 19th-century figures:
    1. Bul Mogdad Sec: First African salaried colonial employee, representing Muslim civil society and collaboration with colonial powers.
    2. Hajj Omar Tal: Influential Tijani Sufi who led social, political, and religious reform, centered Islam, and opposed both ancestral religions and, controversially, Muslim states.
    3. Louis Faidherbe: French military engineer and colonial administrator, instrumentalizing Islam to build governance frameworks and educational institutions.

• Debate, Negotiation, and Resistance:

  • Marsh traces how these figures’ differing visions for Islam and society set the stage for Kamara’s intellectual and social world.
    • "Between these three, you can kind of triangulate an understanding of Islam as one of debate, one of a fertile kind of intellectual life." ([27:14])

4. Philology, “Textual Life,” and the Fate of the Humanities ([31:28]–[41:54])

• Philology Reframed:

  • Marsh redefines philology not just as a technical or colonial discipline, but as “the love of study”—a deep, cross-cultural orientation toward interpretation, reading, and learning.
    • "If we approach it differently, as a human tradition across time and cultural difference, as indeed the love of study, we might better appreciate what the textual attitude has meant in places as diverse as Malcolm X's prison cell and Kamaran's riverside village..." ([32:40])
  • Philology, when freed from representing reality, signals “a future for the humanities beyond the world slavery and colonization made.”

• Hope for the Humanities:

  • Marsh distinguishes between the institutional crisis of higher education (budget cuts, closures, anti-intellectualism) and the enduring value of the humanities as a way of being.
    • "Fundamentally, the crisis that we're kind of dancing around isn't really the crisis of the humanities. It's a crisis of higher education more broadly." ([35:37])
    • "The humanities is much more than a set of disciplines ... it's the commitment to reading again." ([36:11])
  • Drawing on Talal Asad and Toni Morrison, Marsh differentiates hope (a matter of belief and commitment) from optimism based on calculation.
    • "Hope, he argues, is distinct from optimism or pessimism, because hope isn't bad based on calculation. It is actually about a deeply profound commitment that is only founded on belief." ([41:44])

5. Pedagogy: Practicing the Textual Attitude ([42:04]–[45:42])

• “Notice, Describe, Question”:

  • Marsh describes his teaching method at Rutgers — focusing on slowness, care, and attention. He trains students in "notice, describe, question" (NDQ) as a mode of deep engagement with texts and images, inspired by Kamara's own practices.
    • "I give them a certain protocol for reading, right? Which I developed in studying Kamara...notice it, describe it, and then...formulate a question." ([42:04])
  • The aim is to cultivate a living, not dead, relationship with language, echoing Toni Morrison’s call in her Nobel lecture.

• Sustaining Life and Critical Needs:

  • Courses are organized around “critical breath, housing, water, food, pleasure,” valuing what is needed to sustain life, and encouraging students to approach texts with that in mind.

6. Beyond the Classroom: “Powers of the Unseen” Exhibit ([45:42]–[51:44])

• Curatorial Practice:

  • Marsh discusses curating “Powers of the Unseen” at Express Newark — an art exhibit using the Sufi/Islamic concept of the ghayb (the Unseen) as a framework to interrogate representation.
    • "Powers of the Unseen, at its core, is about the politics of representation, but it uses a core Sufi and more generally Islamic concept of the ghayb, or the unseen, as a way to kind of see through this problem." ([46:32])

• Community Impact:

  • Notably, an elder from the local Muslim community interprets the exhibition’s journey as moving from “Islam” (outward practice) to “Iman” (faith) to “Ihsan” (spiritual excellence).
    • "When you come upstairs...they take you from Islam to Iman or Faith...by the time you get into Powers of the Unseen, you arrive to Ihsan, right, Or Spiritual Excellence." ([49:01])
  • Marsh is deeply moved by this response, viewing it as a mark of successful engagement across academic and community lines.

7. What’s Next? Looking to Africa ([52:35]–End)

• New Position in Morocco:

  • Marsh will join Mohammed VI Polytechnic University as Associate Professor of African Literature and Philosophy, focusing on grounded, continent-based networks and scholarship.

  • He plans to continue both making Kamara’s work available and collaborating with African-based decolonial and research initiatives.

    • "As far as I can tell from every indication, the future looks African." ([52:35])

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Philology's Power:
  “Philology as the love of study and the cultivation of the textual attitude promises a future for the humanities beyond the world slavery and colonization made.” ([32:40])

• On Hope vs. Optimism:
  “Hope...is actually about a deeply profound commitment that is only founded on belief.” ([41:44])

• On the Pedagogical Method:
  “What I'm teaching there is this textual attitude, that engagement. But I'm also teaching something else...the commitment to life.” ([45:02])

• On the Exhibit’s Community Reception:
  “They take you from Islam to Iman or Faith...you arrive to Ihsan, or Spiritual Excellence. I was really struck by her reading of the exhibit.” ([49:01])

Key Timestamps

• 04:01 – Wendell Marsh discusses his early experiences with language and motivation for Black Studies and Islam in West Africa.
• 10:36 – Introduction and importance of Sheikh Moussa Kamara.
• 20:18 – Placing Kamara within the larger historical context (Futa Toro, key 19th-century figures).
• 31:28 – The book’s core: Not biography, but a meditation on philology and its relevance.
• 32:40 – Marsh reads his definition of philology from the book.
• 35:37 – Differentiating the “fate of the humanities” from crises in higher education.
• 42:04 – Marsh’s classroom philosophy: “notice, describe, question.”
• 45:42 – The “Powers of the Unseen” exhibit and its intersection with Islamic aesthetics.
• 49:01 – Memorable account of community engagement with the exhibit.
• 52:35 – What’s next: Marsh’s move to Morocco, plans for future research, and commitment to Africa.

Conclusion

This episode weaves together personal narrative, historical analysis, and cultural critique to illuminate Textual Life’s bold thesis: that the humanities, grounded in the love of study and deep attention to texts, maintain vital power to shape collective life and knowledge – even amid political, technological, and institutional upheaval. Through stories of scholars like Kamara, the lessons of classroom practice, and the spirit of artistic curation, Wendell Marsh offers both a diagnosis and a defense of the humanities “beyond the world slavery and colonization made.”

For listeners and readers:

• Textual Life will be available from Columbia University Press (discount code: CUP20).
• The episode encourages not only reading Kamara’s and Marsh’s work, but living and advocating for the deep textual engagement that is at the heart of humane scholarship.