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Whatever is happening to the Egyptians, Pt. 5: colonizing Egyptian bodies

Nariman El-Mofty AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.Edward Said dedicated his career to the theorising of Orientalism and to proving a point: the grouping of
everyone non-European into the devalued category of the ‘orient’ was
simultaneously a cause and an effect of European aspirations to develop
themselves as sole representatives of humanity.

The question that arises is, when did the
“orient” become convinced by such a euro-centric conceptualization of
humanity? Why did they identify themselves as an extension of the European “human”, who were
they supposed to juxtapose themselves against, given that the very construction
of the European identity they were imitating was created on the basis of being
the “orient’s” antithesis?

In the first article
of this series, I shone the light on a potential answer in the form of the valuable work of Galal
Amin “Whatever Happened to the Egyptians”, which also inspired the title of this series.
Although he did not make this argument explicitly, his excavation of the
changes in the Egyptian middle-class’ standards and aspirations demonstrated
the persistence of an image of a classical imperialist aristocracy that was inspired
by European bourgeois conceptions.

Amin traced an
alternative elite-model, triggered by post-Infitah mass immigration to
the Gulf, in which Gulf Sheikhs, rather than European aristocrats, served
as the compass for aspiring ‘elitism’.

In both cases, Amin
recognised that in both models, a local other – grouped, degraded and
disdained in the same way that the classical imperialists did the ‘orient’ – had been created. This Other is often popularly referred to as ‘balady’, an
Arabic term which literally translates into local, i.e. embodying local, rather
than European, traits and culture.

Thus, to understand
the Egyptian “neo-bourgeoisie”, a combined understanding of the European or Gulf models that this class aspires to, as well as the “orient” local (balady) image
they seek to break away from, is required.

Egypt’s
neo-bourgeoisie’s construction of a balady ‘other’ was not only a psychosocial
project, but a project that had material implications for the daily practices of
this class.

These material
creations, such as the creation of gated communities, reinforced the
psychosocial image of the disdained, threatening and dehumanising the local
“other” while enabling the gated class to rationalise why they need to isolate themselves inside these gated communities.

The gates here serve
as an intersection between ideational and physical class segregation. The
ideational pertains to gated communities as a socioeconomic border; conceptualising the balady as a threat and solidifying
the concept of societal exclusivity and purity. The physical, on the other
hand, pertains to the gates as a physical border and the distance of these
compounds from the capital.

But these gates do not
prevent the two classes from interacting in what remains of public space
(mainly roads, markets, and government agencies). In order for the neo-bourgeoisie
to distinguish themselves in these public spaces, a more portable border (than
the heavy gates) had to be exported from European aristocrats.

Here, we must
note that European imperialists did not only live far from their colonised
“black” or “brown” communities, they were also “white”. They were identified
and recognised by their colour, and possessed their own racial gates. This is,
however, tricky when it comes to the differentiation within Egypt, in which no
significant skin-color difference is present a priori.

Nonetheless, the
creation/division of socio-racial differentiation on bases other than
skin-color was possible. Physical differences were artificially created through
a new ideational-physical conception of ‘class’.

This article is an attempt to shed light on this new development; particularly on how the bodies
of the Egyptian middle-class were used as a means of differentiating between the
“local/balady” and the Europeanised “neo-bourgeoisie”, the latter holding the
virtue and appearance of elite humanity, while the former embodied failure
to aspire to full human functioning/appearance (in a European sense).

What covers the body: the political economy of clothing

The most obvious bodily-appearance politics concerns what the body is covered in: clothing.  The widespread terms of ‘white-collar’ and
‘blue-collar’ to distinguish middle-class from working-class subjects demonstrates
vividly the decisive role clothing plays in defining class worldwide.
Clothing also distinguishes the outdated from the modern and the oriental from
the European or ‘European-look-alike’.

I remember seeing
almost all male role-players in the American University in Cairo’s (AUC) simulation
of an Egyptian hara (slum) wearing a tarbosh: a head-cover from
the nineteenth century never worn widely in a hara, as it was the dress
code of an Effendi’s (middle-class bureaucrats) not the hara’s working-class. Only
when I heard an organiser speak of the hara as part of Egyptian history,
did I recognise how the tarbosh could pertain to it.

The tarbosh here
signified the clothing of old Egypt, that was outdated by the standards of modern European attire.
Those wearing a tarbosh and living in a hara were regarded as
part of “history”, as one of the organisers explicitly uttered. That is not
because the balady hara people no longer existed, because they
actually do, but because their existence in itself is an extension of a history
that failed to ‘modernise’. Part and parcel of this modernisation is dressing “modern-ly”,
dressing like a European (event is covered in detail in
the first article of this series).

The turmoil of this
“clothing” class-war is quite evident in the ferocious crackdown on hijab,
the Muslim headscarf for women. Most A-class public spaces (starting from beaches prohibiting Burkas to the abandonment of muhajjabat from almost
all spots of classy nightlife – including AUC’s graduation party!), ferociously exclude muhajjabat (women with
the head scarf).

Even private
universities, so-called international universities, distinguish themselves from
‘local’ universities through enforcing a European dress code. I know for sure
that the British University in Cairo, where I used to work, have a clear ‘clothing’
policy that explicitly forbids both female abayas and male jellabiyas. This is accompanied by an equivocal decision to abandon short skirts, leggings
and men’s shorts from public universities.

there is a violent struggle in which
two opposing classes compete over and through women’s bodies

This extends to being a
global phenomenon. From Nice in France to La Vista, a
gated community in Egypt. There seems to be a serious problem with what women
cover their bodies with. In both cases, there is a violent struggle in which
two opposing classes compete over and through women’s bodies: an “oriental”
class that sees the exposure of female bodies as a serious threat to its
cultural tradition, versus a “Europeanised” class that sees the covering of
female bodies as a serious threat to its modernising project.

In both cases, the
female’s agency, her very ownership over her body and personal right to choose to expose or cover parts of it, is utterly ignored. In both cases, there is a serious
existential threat to the very notions and traditions that define each of the
two misogynist classes. On one hand, this may reflect their weakness in controlling “their women”. On the other, it means they lose the battle against the men
in the ‘other’ misogynist camp.

Maybe this explains
why some middle-class Egyptians found Nice’s incident troubling, but not La
Vista’s. The first was perceived as an attack on the right of a global Muslim
population, which they belong to. The second was an attack on a class of
local (balady) citizens, which they wish to exclude from their
semi-European communities.

This contradiction
shows that it is not a burkini problem after all. It is not the clothing
per se, but the socioeconomic class the clothes (burkini) symbolise.
Although the two incidents were extremely similar, women were asked to remove their
clothes or leave, there was a key difference: the ‘class’ each woman represented.

Egypt Air vs. Rashid Boat: unequal bodies of the dead

Class is also what differentiated two cases of Egyptians losing their lives in a shocking accident on their way
to Europe. The first was those who passed away in EgyptAir’s MS804 plane-crash. This accident was followed by a shower of
official and unofficial condolences, beginning from the presidency down to the
media and ordinary middle-class citizens. Egypt was in mourning because of the
accident.

This discrepancy exposed how classist
people are even when it comes to death.

However, none of that
was done when the same number of souls were lost as they attempted to cross the
Mediterranean by boat on their way to Italy. This discrepancy exposed how classist
people are even when it comes to death.

This discrepancy is also
vivid in the media coverage of militant operations in Sinai. When the dead are
in uniform, their bodies are mourned as martyrs. When they are not, their
bodies are shamed as terrorists. Rarely is any further scrutiny made.

To beard or not to beard? The political economy of facial hair

Some other body
features are sometimes scrutinised to distinguish the corpse of a ‘terrorist’
from the corpse of a ‘martyr’. The beard, for instance.

The beard has been a
point of intersection between the two battling classes. The oriental,
traditional, class puts on a beard or other forms of facial hair for religious
or traditional reasons. The Europeanised does it for fashion, as it suddenly
became a code for sexiness and class.

Despite the ironically
growing efforts to differentiate the cool from the uncool beard, it remains
hard to decipher which is which. But the growing beards on the faces of Egyptian
neo-bourgeoisie youth, who were one year earlier making fun of the same ‘look’
when it pertained to Salafis or other religious groups, remains one of
the most ironic scenes expressing this class’s contemporary condition.   

Getting 'ripped' for Marassi: muscles as symbols of class

Another ironic scene
is that of tanned Egyptians. Although both bodybuilding and tanning
have become a semi-global phenomenon, I would argue that this is more problematic
when it pertains to an impoverished African country.

The idea of an African
striving to be tanned is bizarre, for obvious reasons: we are already tanned! Less
obviously bizarre is the growing trend of bodybuilding within Egyptian rich
communities. Of course, the concept of
being healthy has been there for quite some time, but the particular notion of
building up a particular body form with a particular percentage of body-fat and
body mass index (BMI) is extremely recent.

Perhaps this shift is
was what inspired Marassi’s ads, as discussed here, persuading the Europe-aspiring masses to
differentiate themselves from the local others by investing in their ‘looks’. Perhaps it was the other way around: the sudden
aspiration of the rich to have a certain body form made those not in form
‘lose’ their class in the process?

Back in the day, weight
was seen as a symbol of luxury. An overweight man was dubbed Ibn ‘Ezz [the
son/product of luxury]. Today, with the rise of ‘efficiency’ as a guiding ethic
of exported European culture, the same ‘mass’ symbolizes inefficiency in
consumption and failure to control (eating) desires. The sexy, healthy, classy
Egyptian of earlier days – from King Farouq to Farid Shawki – are not in any
way similar to today's Egyptian elite.

The political economy of sexuality

Speaking of body
efficiency, sexual efficiency comes to mind, especially the fact that Egyptians have spent over 800 million dollars on sex-enhancing pills this year
alone.

Egyptians spent over 800 million dollars on sex-enhancing pills this year
alone

An
extremely informative anthropological study was conducted by Youssef Ramez. His
valuable research, a must-read, interrogated the socioeconomic rather than
scientific roots of a popular debate today in Egypt: is Viagra or Tramadol
(an opioid pain medication) better in enhancing sexual performance?

He concludes that
there are valid arguments for both Tramadol and Viagra, but each
argument pertains to a particular socioeconomic culture: the workingclass
favour longevity over activity. Thus, the majority of the working-class are Tramadol
users. The middle-class favour Viagra: power and vitality.  But the whole Viagra/Tramadol debate ignores a
more significant question: what defines “good” sexual performance?

The promise of ‘enhancing
sexual performance’ assumes a standard ‘performance’, in which those below
standard need enhancement and those up to standard to seek further promotion.  A reverberation of the modern day’s “efficiency”
discourse.

As such, the choice of
Viagra/Tramadol is pertinent to cultural taste and social background.

As sexual activity,
like other aforementioned social activities, was put into a classified
hierarchy, the issue moved from a social/private activity to a competition. In
this competition, like in the aforementioned hijab and bodybuilding
competitions, two repercussions take place: the first is misogyny – the fact that women are
not consulted about whether or not they prefer such ‘efficient’ to ‘durable’
intercourse, or vice versa. The other is inevitability, as ‘performance’ discourse becomes
ubiquitous and individual males cannot avoid the competition, for they will very likely find themsleves judged by widely-communicated ‘performance’ standards anyway.    

Conclusion: cultural imperialism revisited

Who went so far as to
determine not only what we wear, but what we eat, how we look and even how we
make love to our partners? Who colonised our thoughts, appearances and
standards? If this isn’t what Said called ‘cultural imperialism’, what is?

This is an invitation
to every Egyptian to revise what he/she really wants (where to live? where and
how to spend their leisure time? What to eat? What to wear? How to look? How to
make love?) and make active personal choices that transcend inherited
imperialist norms that have been determining everything we do or whatever ‘happens’
to us.

The question is: whatever IS happening to the Egyptians?

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