The Leader as Groom, the Nation as Bride. Patriarchal Nationalism under Nasser and Sisi

Rim Naguib

doi:10.17192/meta.2020.14.8232

Rim Naguib Forum Transregionale Studien

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17192/meta.2020.14.8232

Keywords: Nationalism, Gender, Nasser, Sisi, Coup d’état, 25th January Revolution

Abstract

This article surveys and analyzes the gendered symbols and imageries in the hegemonic nationalist discourse in Egypt, under Nasser and under Sisi. It advances that gender binaries are projected onto the relation between ruler and ruled, state and nation, military and civilian, as a means to demobilize and subordinate “the people” following coups d’état. The article also analyzes the negative feminization of the Egyptian populace under Sisi, which serves to discredit demands for political participation and social justice and to legitimate their suppression, especially following the mass mobilizations of January 25, 2011.

Author Biography

Rim Naguib, Forum Transregionale Studien

Rim Naguib is a EUME fellow, at the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin. She received her PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University (2016) and her MA from Sciences Po Aix-en-Provence (2006). Her PhD dissertation is titled “Intelligentsia Class Formation and Ideologies in Peripheral Societies: Comparing Egypt and Iran, 1922-1952”. She was recently a post-doctoral fellow with the Arab Council for the Social Sciences. Based in Cairo, she taught in several alternative education initiatives, seeking to popularize the critical social sciences. Her current research interests address three different, but not unrelated, fields: the genesis and development of Egyptian patriarchal nationalism; the formulation of the first Egyptian nationality law; and the practice of deporting internationalist foreigners in interwar Egypt. She is also writing and illustrating a graphic novel on the latter topic, and has co-translated several graphic novels into Arabic.