Challenges of thinking feminism and revolution in Egypt between 2011 and 2014

Abstract

The approach to politics by ruling elites in Egypt has been consistently patriarchal. In this context, feminism stands as a resilient revolutionary force, which over the twentieth and the twenty first century contributes to the complex cultural process that Michael Hardt conceptualizes as ‘human revolution’. Building on this concept, and on the history of Egyptian feminism, this essay analyzes the 25th January Revolution as a challenge to the remnants of the patriarchal culture. If feminized bodies, as the site of cultural and political contestation, have been constructed, in both nationalist and colonial discourses, as objects in need of protection, women's agency has challenged these narratives and, in the context of the 2011 revolution, has re-shaped the discourse about protection. The views and actions of the emerging women's movement are situated along the extended line of the feminist revolution, which here is examined through the methodology of oral history. Focusing on cultural, more than institutional, change, and shedding light on the shift from women to gender agency, this essay investigates the strategies through which the young revolutionaries in Egypt today are creating a new political discourse, imagining new forms of political participation.