Graffiti narratives: securitization, beautification, and gender in 25 January Revolution Cairo

Abstract

The article focuses on the corner of Mohamed Mahmoud Street and Youssef El-Gendy Street in Cairo, Egypt, to examine the gendered and classed underpinnings of urban processes of securitization, privatization, and beautification during the 25 January Revolution, notably following the 2013 military coup. This particular intersection was the scene of many of the protests that ultimately led to Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in February 2011. Throughout the revolutionary process, its walls became a contested site of representation through, on the one hand, graffiti engaging the revolution along the fault lines of gender and class and, on the other hand, its periodical whitewashing by public and private campaigns. Taking up visual cultural production as a primary site of analysis, the article draws on visual ephemera written on this corner between 2011 and 2017, online debates about these changes, and interviews with some of their protagonists to discuss the significance of this place in relation to questions of access to and control of public/private urban spaces, and memory. Adopting a feminist perspective that foregrounds gender and class as the main categories of analysis, it focuses on two particular moments—WOW Unchained in 2015 and Calligraphy Nefertiti in 2017—to investigate the transformation of this area through the erasure of the traces of the revolution via public/private beautification projects articulated around transnational discourses of women’s empowerment and neoliberal notions of gender and class respectability, and its implications for Egyptians’ access to public space in post-coup Cairo.

Keywords:

• Cairo
• gender
• graffiti
• public space
• revolution
• securitization

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. Mary Hawkesworth for her insightful comments and helpful criticism on our work leading to this collaborative essay.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The fieldwork of alma aamiry-khasawnih was supported by funding from the Chester Fritz Fellowship for International Research & Study of the Graduate School at the University of Washington, Seattle, and by her family. The fieldwork of Susana Galán was supported by funding from the Rutgers’ Graduate School-New Brunswick.

Notes on contributors

alma aamiry-khasawnih

alma aamiry-khasawnih is Assistant Professor in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The College of New Jersey. Her current monograph project examines ephemeral visual culture production of the 25 January Egyptian Revolution as a site of orienting and reorienting nationalism and citizenship debates. Her work on this topic has been published in InVisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture and is forthcoming in two edited volumes on Middle East women, street art, and communication.

Susana Galán

Susana Galán is a researcher in gender studies and the digital sphere in the Dimmons research group (IN3, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya). She has a PhD in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Rutgers University. Her dissertation examined activist practices against public sexual harassment and assault in the 25 January Egyptian Revolution. Her work on this topic has been published in the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Kohl: Journal for Body & Gender Research, the Observatori del Conflicte Social, the Journal of International Women’s Studies, Jadaliyya, and the edited volume Beyond the Square: Urbanism and the Arab Uprisings.