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Abstract
This article revisits the Nasserist project through the lens of haunting. It explores the afterlives of Nasserism, in particular in relation to Egypt’s move toward a free market economy from the 1970s onwards. To do this, I explore the Nasserist project in order to excavate some of the promises that were made and to trace the legacies these created. I argue that both these promises—only partially fulfilled—and the social violence they at times contained—continued to act as powerful political memories that limited Egyptian politics in the decades that followed. Thinking of Nasserism as a form of haunting allows for a deeper understanding of how different political projects seep into one another, problematizing the notion of a linear teleological or providential trajectory consisting of distinct eras. In distinction to work that has mobilized the concept of haunting (originally theorized by Jacques Derrida) in order to elaborate on the historical manifestation of damaging or violent legacies in the present, I argue that Nasserist forms of haunting should be read as both a productive and destructive normative force in the present. This article puts forward examples of both, particularly in relation to questions of social justice, socialism, and anti-imperialism.
Key Words:
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Nivi Manchanda and Noor Amr for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts, as well as Aya Nassar, Dina Makram-Ebeid and Rafeef Ziadah who have helped me think through many of these ideas.
Notes
1 Avery Gordon (Citation2008) Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (Twin Cities: University of Minnesota Press), p. 1.
2 Quoted in Michael Sprinker (ed.) (1999) Ghostly Demarcations: A symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx (London: Verso), p. 39.
2 Quoted in Michael Sprinker (ed.) (1999) Ghostly Demarcations: A symposium on Jacques Derrida's Specters of Marx (London: Verso), p. 39.
3 Jacques Derrida (Citation2012) Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International (London: Routledge).
4 Ibid, p. viii.
5 Ibid, p. xv.
6 Ibid, p. viii.
7 Ibid, p. x.
8 Ibid, p. xvi.
9 Ibid, p. 1.
10 J. E. Muñoz (Citation2009) Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York University Press).
11 Ann Stoler (Citation2006) Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American history (Durham: Duke University Press), pp.1–22.
12 A. Stoler (Citation2008) Imperial Debris: Reflections on Ruins and Ruination, Cultural Anthropology, 23(2), pp. 191–219; and idem (2016) Duress: Imperial Durabilities in our Times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press).
13 Cruising Utopia, p. 21.
14 Arwa Salih (Citation2018) The Stillborn (Calcutta: Seagull Books).
15 Specters of Marx, p. 18.
16 Joseph Massad (Citation2001) Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 277–278.
17 Adam Hanieh (Citation2013) Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East (London: Haymarket).
18 Frantz Fanon (Citation1963) The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove Press), p. 78.
19 Ibid, p. 81.
20 Ibid, p. 152.
21 Gordon, Ghostly Matters, p. 2.
22 Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, p. 97.
23 Salih, The Stillborn, p. 1.
24 Joel Beinin (Citation2005) The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press), p. 153.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid, p. 581.
27 Ibid, p. 582.
28 Ibid, p. 131.
29 Ibid.
30 Salih, The Stillborn, p. 23.
31 Beinin ‘The Communist Movement’, p. 585.
32 Salih, The Stillborn, p. 28.
33 Ibid, p. 3.
34 Samia Mehrez (Citation2011) The Literary Life of Cairo: One hundred years in the heart of the city (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 45–46.
35 Ibid, p. 37.
36 Salih, The Stillborn, p. xvi.
37 Ibid, p. xvii.
38 Ibid, p. xvi.
39 Salih, The Stillborn, p. 17.
40 Specters of Marx, p. 46.
41 Ibid, p. xv.
42 Timothy Mitchell (Citation2002) Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 276.
43 Nazih Ayubi (Citation1980) Bureaucracy & Politics in Contemporary Egypt (No. 10), Middle East Centre, Oxford University Press, p. 282.
44 Hazem Kandil (Citation2014) Soldiers, Spies, and Statesmen: Egypt’s Road to Revolt (London: Verso), p. 352.
45 T. Mitchell (Citation1999) No factories, No Problems: The Logic of Neo‐liberalism in Egypt, Review of African Political Economy, 26(82), p. 458.
46 Mark Cooper (Citation1979) Egyptian State Capitalism in Crisis: Economic Policies and Political Interests, 1967–1971, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 10(4), p. 488.
47 Ibid, p. 489.
48 Ibid, p. 488.
49 Ibid.
50 Specters of Marx, p. 123.
51 Stephen Roll (Citation2010) ‘Finance Matters!’ The Influence of Financial Sector Reforms on the Development of the Entrepreneurial Elite in Egypt, Mediterranean Politics, 15(3), p. 350.
52 Take the example of Samih Sawiris, member of Egypt’s richest business family, and his move to register Orascom—one of Egypt’s biggest companies—as a Swiss company in order to avoid interference from the Egyptian government; cited Roll, ‘Finance Matters!’ p. 366.
53 Maha Abdelrahman (Citation2014) Egypt’s Long Revolution: Protest Movements and Uprisings (London: Routledge), p. 15.
54 Brecht de Smet (Citation2016) Gramsci on Tahrir: Revolution and Counter-revolution in Egypt (London: Pluto Press), p. 174.
55 Ibid.
56 Kandil, Soldiers, p. 353.
57 Gordon, Ghostly Matters, p. 7.
58 Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, p. 63.
59 Ibid, p. 12.
60 Ibid, 18.
61 Ibid, 64.
62 Selim in Salih, The Stillborn, p. xxvii.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid, p. 115.
65 Ibid, p. 124.