Hikāyāt sha‛b - stories of peoplehood: Nasserism, popular politics and songs in Egypt, 1956-1973. (original) (raw)
Related papers
This paper utilizes a multicultural feminist perspective to approach Boshret Kheir as a cultural artifact, whose production and consumption/reception simultaneously showcases the interrelation between the political and the cultural fields, illuminates (borrowing Stam's formulation) the colonizing of representation and the "power relations between the communities of the artifact" (1996 p.189). The aim is to give impetus to what Stam identifies as "a need for 'dialogic' and 'carnevelistique' theory of politics and popular culture" and shed light on the connection between the confluence of the engendering mechanism of neo-liberalization and authoritarianism. The paper's argument is for the correlation between populist and neo-liberal authoritarianism, which though "articulated in problematic way in critical literature"—especially in light of the implicit respect of "neoliberalism’s valorization of the ‘free market’ by way of an ostensibly anti-statist outlook" (Bruff 2016 p. 107-8)—is embodied in the hit song' corporate cultural politics of representation, its repertoire with the political culture of the nation-state and their effect on both marketing the popular rhetoric of formal politics and thereby naturalization of the gendered politics of populist authoritarianism. The paper argument/analysis is conducted and structured along three points: first, examination of the discursive process and construction of gendered designated identity of the Egyptian nationals geared towards amassing popular support for the voting process and reducing democracy to an electoral premises in accordance to the power centers (neo-liberal practice and militarized authoritarianism) governing the Egyptian setting; second, inspection of the song's audiovisuals and their effect on projecting an image of national collectivity honed to populist/popular imaginings and tethered to their informal fun poetics/poetics, yet away from people's material aspirations; third, an open query about the neo-singer of the nation-state and its implication with respect to both Egypt's location within the regional and international political economy and the end of nationalism/authoritarianism as 'we know it'. At the end of the day, despite its initial crazed popularity (played in the streets, cafes, voting polls and wedding parties—also used as ringtones), the hit song has sank into oblivion betelling of the transient nature of populist nationalist rendering and what Bruff (optimistically) formulates in terms of "the crisis of legitimation" of the neo-nationstate (non-market actor) feeding into a culture of protest that might " begin to reverse the tide of neo-liberal practices" and thereby prove subversive to authoritarian neo-liberalism (Bruff 2012 p. 114-15).
The Social Construction of a ‘Pan-Arab Hero’: Gamal Abdel Nasser
GAZİANTEP UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, 2022
This article investigates the construction of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s pan-Arab identity from a social constructivist theoretical approach. In this sense, it scrutinizes how Nasser came to be constructed as a pan- Arab hero by cleverly manipulating the symbolic politics and establishing socially and politically binding pan- Arab norms and eventually made himself constrained by them. This study also examines social constructivism’s explanatory power as a theoretical model in understanding and explaining Nasser’s political motives and moves by comparing it with that of rationalism. It is argued that Nasser’s power did not come from economic or military capabilities, as rationalism fails to explain, but his power came from his ability to frame the events within a historical narrative in such a rhetorical way to establish new Arab norms. He was the leading figure in the establishment of the United Arab Republic, the North Yemen Civil War and The Six-Day War of 1967, despite all were against his and Egypt’s absolute material national interests. This article analyzes the path to nationalist ascent and descent of Nasser’s Arabism by chronologically scrutinizing on the discourses and events in order to examine the power of the given theories in explaining each period.
Political upheaval in Egypt: Disavowing troubling states of mind
Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 2015
The hope and optimism following the 2011 revolution that took place in Egypt have been replaced with anger, despair and disappointment. The majority of the Egyptian population is struggling due to dire material conditions that are causing immense suffering. For many, increasing authoritarianism and the stronghold of the 'Deep State' is of profound concern and is perceived as a return of oppression. This pessimistic situation is a repetition of the circumstances following the Egyptian revolution of 1952. This essay will explore the effects of colonisation on subjectivity, effects that have been profoundly internalised in Egypt, despite the arguments or pleas that assert the opposite. By focusing on exploring identification and inter-generational transmission I aim to draw out how history persists in the present and how the weight of the past paralyses the possibility of forging a future based on social justice and equality of opportunity. The essay focuses on issues of identification and generational transmission in order to look at how a colonised past persists relentlessly in the present.
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.
Mediterranean Politics, 2024
The limited electoral success of pro-Revolution forces during the Arab uprisings is often attributed to their weak political and organizational resources. Yet, in the first round of Egypt’s historic 2012 presidential elections, pro-Revolution candidates Hamdin Sabahi and Abdel-Monim Abul-Futuh jointly outperformed both the ‘old regime’ and Muslim Brotherhood contenders, with Sabahi nearly reaching the runoff. Drawing on extensive fieldwork across Egypt between 2012 and 2013, this article examines how the campaigners of these two candidates translated the Revolution’s core ideals of freedom and social justice. It introduces the notion of citizenship imaginaries to capture how campaigners communicated these ideals across divergent experiences and narratives of relating to the state. It argues that the two campaigns—differently—compensated for their weaknesses by aligning their messaging with dominant imaginaries in three important ways: downplaying appeals to democracy and radical change except when engaging “cultured voters”; advancing a vague but credible pro-poor stance; and adapting appeals traditionally tied to the two more powerful political forces: stability, Islamism and patronage. By linking resources, imaginaries and the agency of social movement actors, the article offers new perspectives on electoral dynamics and the strategic communication of mobilization frames, especially in transitional and global South contexts.
'We are the people': Framing the notion of the people in the Egyptian revolutionary context
Mediterranean Politics, 2019
The long dismissed notion of the people has recently generated much interest in academic literature. Understood as an “emotional community”, the people has been returned to centre stage physically and symbolically by the emblematic slogan “The people want the fall of the regime”, during the Arab Spring. This themed issue investigates not only the heuristic interest of the notion of the people but also its multifaceted development in the revolutionary Egypt. Specifically, the authors explore the construction of the people’s legitimacy through revolutionary slogans, the emergence of the political subjectivity of child martyrs, and the way in which political actors used this notion during the 2011 elections.
Since late 2010, the Arab World has witnessed regime changes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya; and revolts by Arab citizens are still underway in Syria, Bahrain and Yemen, along with reform initiatives at different levels. These processes cannot be accurately be described by Orientalist terms such as 'Arab Spring', 'Arab unrest' or the 'Facebook Revolution', where such categorizations fail to account for the radical transformation in politics and values that the Arab World is undergoing and the significance that resides in the confluence of social and democratic demands. The ultimate fate of these popular uprisings remains in the balance, but it is all too clear that they have produced the most dramatic changes in the region since the mid-twentieth century which marked the end of the colonial era. This article aims to elucidate the import of term 'the people' and to whom it applies in the popular slogan: 'The people want the overthrow of the regime' (al-shaʿb yurıd isqaṭ al-niẓ am). It aims to identify the actors involved in the revolution, particularly the youth and participants among the labour movement. Through this analysis the study explores the new political subjectivity ushered in by these revolutions, in the specific form of individuality, or what is termed here reflexive individualism. This individualism, which is different from the neoliberal concept, is not a straightforward one predicated on anti-patriarchal authority, anti-tribe, anti-community or anti-political party sentiments. The political subjectivity of the individuals who have taken part is formed and shaped both within and across the shadowy edges of political institutions and their production of legitimacy and knowledge.