Action, imagination, institution, natality, revolution

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• Egyptian revolution
• women
• natality
• action

Notes

This essay owes much to Dalia Mostafa and Shuruq Naguib, who first gave it a hearing, Arthur Bradley’s erudition and Sina Birkholtz’s generosity with her cutting-edge research. Their input and support are, hereby, gratefully acknowledged.

1. Translations from the Arabic original into English are mine.