Review of Mériam Belli’s An Incurable Past: Nasser’s Egypt Then and Now in Arab Studies Journal 23, 1 (2015), 404-407. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Haunted histories: Nasserism and the promises of the past
Haunted histories: Nasserism and the promises of the past, 2019
Abstract: This article revisits the Nasserist project through the lens of haunting. It explores the afterlives of Nasserism, in particular in relation to Egypt’s move toward a free market economy from the 1970s onwards. To do this, I explore the Nasserist project in order to excavate some of the promises that were made and to trace the legacies these created. I argue that both these promises—only partially fulfilled—and the social violence they at times contained—continued to act as powerful political memories that limited Egyptian politics in the decades that followed. Thinking of Nasserism as a form of haunting allows for a deeper understanding of how different political projects seep into one another, problematizing the notion of a linear teleological or providential trajectory consisting of distinct eras. In distinction to work that has mobilised the concept of haunting (originally theorized by Jacques Derrida) in order to elaborate on the historical manifestation of damaging or violent legacies in the present, I argue that Nasserist forms of haunting should be read as both a productive and destructive normative force in the present. This article puts forward examples of both, particularly in relation to questions of social justice, socialism, and anti-imperialism.
Hikāyāt sha‛b - stories of peoplehood: Nasserism, popular politics and songs in Egypt, 1956-1973.
PhD Thesis, 2012
This study explores the popular politics behind the main milestones that shape Nasserist Egypt. The decade leading up to the 1952 revolution was one characterized with a heightened state of popular mobilisation, much of which the Free Officers’ movement capitalized upon. Thus, in focusing on three of the Revolution’s main milestones; the resistance to the tripartite aggression on Port Said (1956), the building of the Aswan High Dam (1960-1971), and the popular warfare against Israel in Suez (1967-1973), I shed light on the popular struggles behind the events. I argue that to the members of resistance of Port Said and Suez, and the builders of the High Dam, the revolution became a struggle of their own. Ideas of socialism and Arab nationalism were re-articulated and appropriated so that they became features of their identities and everyday lives. Through looking at songs, idioms and stories of the experiences of those periods, I explore how people experimented with a new identity under Nasser and how much they were willing to sacrifice for it. These songs and idioms, I treat as an ‘intimate language’. A common language reflecting a shared experience that often only the community who produces the language can understand. I argue that songs capture in moments of political imagination what official historical narratives may not. Furthermore, I argue that these songs reveal silences imposed by state narratives, as well as those silences that are self-imposed through the many incidents people would rather forget. The study contributes to an understanding of the politics of hegemony, and how an ideology can acquire the status of ‘common sense’ through being negotiated, (re)-articulated, and contributed to, rather than enforced on a people suppressed. It also contributes to our understanding of popular politics, and the importance of exploring the experiences and intentions of people behind historical and political milestones; understanding politics beyond the person of politicians and the boundaries of the nation state. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/687/1/Mossallam\_Stories\_of\_peoplehood.pdf
The Era of Nasser, 2023
The thesis provides a multidisciplinary approach to the topic, drawing from academic literature, primary sources, and online resources to explore the history, politics, and ideology of Gamal Abdel Nasser and his impact on the Middle East. It includes sections on the history of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, Nasser's rise to power, American involvement in the region, and the development of Nasserism.
International Politics Reviews, 2021
There has been a consistent effort over the last couple of decades to re-think the translation and the instantiation of anticolonial nationalism, with its hopes, desires, betrayals, and exhilaration, into the reality of the postcolonial state (Scott 2004, Prashad 2007, Wilder 2015, Sajed and Seidel 2019, Gruffydd-Jones, 2019, Getachew 2019). The debates have brought forth a number of heavy and important questions: why has the postcolonial state ‘failed’? Was anticolonial nationalism the wrong question to ask? Can the promise of anticolonial nationalism be revived and redeemed? David Scott (2004: 2, 4) talks about ‘anticolonial utopias […] gradually wither[ing] into postcolonial nightmares,’ and wonders whether the questions asked by the anticolonial narrative continue to be questions worth responding to at all. Indeed, he echoes many current criticisms of the ‘failures’ of postcolonial states to materialize the aspirations of their revolutionary beginnings. The contributions to this book forum by Adam Hanieh, Randolph Persaud and Zeyad el Nabolsy both deepen and complicate Salem’s excellent discussion of the politics of the Nasserist project. It is obviously beyond the scope of this introduction to the forum to do proper justice to the nuanced, layered and rich engagements of each of the contributors. The reader will benefit immensely from each of these fantastic conversations with Salem’s book. However, I want to focus on and highlight three main areas of discussion on which the three contributions seemed to converge in consensus. First, the attachment of the term ‘socialist’ to the Nasserist project requires a more careful engagement. Second, all three contributors see the book’s emphasis on the ruptures and breaks between the Nasser and Sadat eras in need of further discussion. Rather, we should examine what focusing on continuities (and indeed deep complicities) between these eras might reveal. Third, the three contributors offer a re-thinking of Fanon’s deployment of ‘national bourgeoisie’ and its role in the decolonization and post-independence eras.
'Nasserism'. In: Ghazal, Amal and Hanssen, Jens, (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle-Eastern and North African History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016., 2016
This chapter revisits the political phenomenon of “Nasserism,” acknowledging that it has multiple connotations and yet enduring significance across the Arab world. It discusses Nasserism under Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918–1970) during his 1952–70 leadership, and Nasserism as the political tradition that survived him. The chapter’s range generates the conclusion that Nasserism has transcended its historical origins. It is now widely employed in political contestation to signal a set of enduring principles and aspirations for sovereignty and dignity across the Arab world. At the same time, it is an important node in critiques of contemporary political centralization and authoritarian rule in Arab republics. Sparking debate between these poles continuously, and as a political tradition with movements in most Arab countries today, Nasserism is set to remain a force to be reckoned with in Egyptian and Arab politics for the foreseeable future.
Socialism without Socialists: Egyptian Marxists and the Nasserist State, 1952-65
This thesis investigates the interaction between Egyptian Marxists and the Egyptian State under Gamal Abd Al-Nasser from 1952 to 1965. After the Free Officer coup of July, 1952, the new government launched a period of repression that targeted many political organizations, including the communists. Repression against the communists was interrupted during a brief interlude from mid-1956 until the end of 1958, when Nasser launched a second period of repression heavily aimed at the communist left. Utilizing quantitative data of the communist prisoner population as well as qualitative first-hand accounts from imprisoned communists, this thesis reconstructs the conditions, demographics, and class status of the communists targeted by the repressive apparatus of the Egyptian state. It also explores the subjective response of the Egyptian communists and their ideological shifts vis-à-vis changing material and repressive conditions. It argues that a combination of state-capitalist reforms, intense state repression, pragmatic influence of the Soviet Union, capitulation to a hegemonic nationalist discourse, and imperialist threat converged to direct Egyptian communist thought. In the end, the Marxist movement was incapable of acting as the vanguard of the Egyptian revolution.
This article addresses the Egyptian women's movement of the 1950s–1970s through a recent film entitled Four Women of Egypt, which focuses on the lives of four prominent Egyptian women active in the movement during that period. Using the concept of political memory, the article traces some of the major debates within the women's movement throughout this era. By focusing on the ways in which these women conceptualize the geopolitical, I show that the twin concepts of imperialism and capitalism were central to the ways in which they understood gender. The result was a complex understanding of how gender intersected with Egypt's position within a broader global system of imperial capitalism. Following the transition in the 1970s to an open-market economy, the women's movement shifted away from critiques of imperialism and capitalism. This shift can be understood only in terms of geopolitics: the rise of neoliberalism in Egypt. New neoliberal policies had dramatic effects on the women's movement, showing why both the rise and fall of the movement must be contextualized geopolitically and transnationally. The 1950s saw Egypt gain independence from Britain and establish its first independent government, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Free Officers. Memories of this period can often be nostalgic, as people recall a time during which there was a strong women's movement<1> that was active and that managed to achieve crucial gains. In this article I raise several questions about the Nasser years and the women's movement, and argue that in order to understand the ways in which it has been remembered, we need to look at the geopolitical situation on the one hand, the women's movement on the other, and the ways in which these constituted each other. What was the role of geopolitics in the Egyptian women's movement during the 1950s and 1960s, and how did this build on feminist activism of the previous era? How did this particular geopolitical context affect the ways in which feminists negotiated difference and what does this reveal about sites of contestation? Finally, how did the shift to an open-market economy in the 1970s affect feminist organizing and in turn construct the 1950s as a time of intense activity and advancement? Numerous scholars have pointed to the importance of regional and international factors in the development of the Egyptian women's movement (. I argue that in the case of the Nasser era, many feminists focused on geopolitics via the concepts of imperialism and capitalism, and that this stemmed from the 1952 revolution and the focus on Egyptian independence. This particular era also saw rich debates around Marxism and socialism, and this too affected the ways in which Egyptian feminists debated issues of gender as it provided a structural lens through which to understand inequality. Gender liberation was understood through the lens of independence— in the broadest sense of the word. There was an explicit critique of " Western feminism " that saw gender as the main axis of oppression that united women universally, and a clear articulation of nationalism, anti-imperialism, and anticapitalism as the main problems facing