Action, imagination, institution, natality, revolution

TY - JOUR

T1 - Action, imagination, institution, natality, revolution

AU - Elmarsafy, Ziad

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - The article reinforces an evaluation of the 25 January 2011 revolution as opposed to conservative and traditional forces in Egyptian society and among the ruling elite. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s concept of natality, the article argues that a revolution cannot be imagined and enacted without women’s political action at its centre. Action, here, is envisaged as a challenge to the morbidity of moralising discourses which attempt to contain women/revolution. Here, natality, novelty and revolution go together; and natality provides the ontological ground for action. By looking at two early accounts written on the first 18 days of the revolution, Ahdaf Soueif’s Cairo: My City, Our Revolution, and Mona Prince’s Ismi Thawra (My Name is Revolution), the article highlights the linkage between women’s action and their imagination in configuring and expressing the revolutionary nature of the events which started on 25 January. Popular culture (the mulid) is also tapped for a reading that stresses the natality motif. Arendt’s natality is thus conceived as enabling newness and opening up possibilities previously unimagined. This is the substance of revolution; that is what makes it radical, unpredictable, creative and imaginative, as the article illustrates by unpacking the selected passages.

AB - The article reinforces an evaluation of the 25 January 2011 revolution as opposed to conservative and traditional forces in Egyptian society and among the ruling elite. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s concept of natality, the article argues that a revolution cannot be imagined and enacted without women’s political action at its centre. Action, here, is envisaged as a challenge to the morbidity of moralising discourses which attempt to contain women/revolution. Here, natality, novelty and revolution go together; and natality provides the ontological ground for action. By looking at two early accounts written on the first 18 days of the revolution, Ahdaf Soueif’s Cairo: My City, Our Revolution, and Mona Prince’s Ismi Thawra (My Name is Revolution), the article highlights the linkage between women’s action and their imagination in configuring and expressing the revolutionary nature of the events which started on 25 January. Popular culture (the mulid) is also tapped for a reading that stresses the natality motif. Arendt’s natality is thus conceived as enabling newness and opening up possibilities previously unimagined. This is the substance of revolution; that is what makes it radical, unpredictable, creative and imaginative, as the article illustrates by unpacking the selected passages.

KW - action

KW - Egyptian revolution

KW - natality

KW - women

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84929265022&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/14797585.2014.982917

DO - 10.1080/14797585.2014.982917

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84929265022

SN - 1479-7585

VL - 19

SP - 130

EP - 138

JO - Journal for Cultural Research

JF - Journal for Cultural Research

IS - 2

ER -