JRS 2-2020 Amira Abdelhamid-1(1).pdf (239.88 kB)
'When will we be ready for democracy?': the mobilisation of deviance as counterrevolutionary technology in Egypt
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 22:54 authored by Amira AbdelhamidIn a 2011 interview, then-Vice President Omar Suleiman declared that Egyptians are not ready for democracy, in response to mass anti-regime protests around Egypt. More peculiarly, protesters have been accused of trying to implement foreign (western) agendas, being perverts and homosexuals, and disrupting domestic cohesion. Discourses that attach deviance—ascribed as a western attribute—to open resistance have since prevailed. This article argues that the historical imagination of the evils of westernisation, delegitimises the revolution and its revolutionaries, while at the same time reproduces the figure of the monolithic normative (Honourable) Egyptian citizen, as docile and counterrevolutionary. In employing figuration as a method, I examine the emergence of the figure of the Egyptian Male Homosexual through the 2001 Queen Boat incident and argue that the mobilisation of figures of deviance acts as a counterrevolutionary technology that long preceded revolution. I suggest that rather than designate failure to the revolution, we should look elsewhere for the new potential for a resistance that disrupts these figurations and their effects. Through a counter-conduct analytic, the article posits that local human rights work is undertheorized as an important space to contest the power that conducts and encourages resistance.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Published version
Journal
Journal of Resistance StudiesISSN
2001-9947Publisher
Irene PublishingPublisher URL
Issue
2Volume
6Page range
51-85Department affiliated with
- International Relations Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2021-01-27First Open Access (FOA) Date
2021-02-17First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2021-01-26Usage metrics
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