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Women of the Midan: The Untold Stories of Egypt's Revolutionaries
In Women of the Midan, Sherine Hafez demonstrates how women were a central part of revolutionary process of the Arab Spring. Women not only protested in the streets of Cairo, they demanded democracy, social justice, and renegotiation of a variety of sociocultural structures that repressed and disciplined them. Women's resistance to state control, Islamism, neoliberal market changes, the military establishment, and patriarchal systems forged new paths of dissent and transformation. Through firsthand accounts of women who participated in the revolution, Hafez illustrates how the gendered body signifies collective action and the revolutionary narrative. Using the concept of rememory, Hafez shows how the body is inseparably linked to the trauma of the revolutionary struggle. While delving into the complex weave of public space, government control, masculinity, and religious and cultural norms, Hafez sheds light on women's relationship to the state in the Arab world today and how the state, in turn, shapes individuals and marks gendered bodies.
- GenresNonfictionFeminismEgypt
264 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 12, 2021
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September 21, 2023
Women of the Midan, the 2019 book written by University of California, Riverside professor Sherine Hafez, is a powerful deviation from the androcentric historiographical trend presiding over anthropological studies of the Middle East. In her book she focuses on the Egyptian Revolution beginning in 2011, which unfolded around the titular midan al Tahrir, “Tahrir (liberation) Square.” The revolution has previously been studied as a watershed moment in Egyptian history: the revolutionaries ousted former president Hosni Mubarak, and the Muslim Brotherhood-backed candidate Mohamed Morsi became the new president only to be toppled in a coup d'état by Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, all against a backdrop of many deaths and innumerable arrests. Hafez, however, reexamines the historiographical record by narrating history through her ethnographic interviews with the women at the heart of Tahrir Square. Crucially, Hafez does not aim to “set the record straight” (xxvi); rather, by combining historical and anthropological approaches through the lens of women’s lives and memories, Hafez records a new parallel history of the Egyptian Revolution, not just of its events, but of the people–the women–who caused them. To that end, Hafez, drawing on theoretical works from the likes of Paul Connerton and Judith Butler, pays particularly close attention to women’s “rememory” of the revolution as well as to the gendered corporeality of women’s dissenting revolutionary bodies.
At both the beginning and the end of her book, Hafez states clearly for the reader the methodological parameters precluding her study. Over a five-year period, Hafez made several visits to Egypt to conduct interviews with nearly one hundred women who both shaped and were shaped by the revolution. Her interlocutors came from a wide variety of ages, socioeconomic classes, religious creeds, and neighborhoods around Cairo, all of whom were brought together by the singular cause of demanding change from the government. Unless requested by her interlocutors, Hafez does not utilize pseudonyms; while contrary to conventional ethnographic practice, the use of real names canonizes these women within the historical record, an honor which Hafez asserts has been long overdue. Hafez also commits herself to the fluid and messy nature of rememory by relaying stories exactly as they are relayed to her, retaining all their discontinuities and non-chronology.
Through her conversations with her interlocutors, Hafez elaborates on the intersectional positionality of the gendered body at the heart of the Egyptian Revolution. One such intersection Hafez discusses is the intersection of the gendered body and Egypt’s neoliberal economic policy. From the politically active Zeinab, to the sushi-eating entrepreneur Samya, to the Coptic hairdresser Attiya, women from all walks of life came together in revolt at Tahrir Square to protest the pressure applied to their lives in the domestic sphere by the government’s neoliberal policies. Hafez reemphasizes this point frequently throughout her book: the revolution yielded an unprecedented unification of Egypt’s female population around one common goal. This observation is substantiated by the socioeconomic diversity of Hafez’s interlocutors–through the memories of the interlocutors, the reader witnesses firsthand the sheer diversity of the women at Tahrir Square, making it abundantly clear just how monumental it was for them all to unify.
Hafez also pays particular attention to the physical connotations of the gendered body in revolutionary space. She cites instances of the female body being both punished and celebrated in the revolution, discussing the Egyptian government’s infamous virginity tests as a case of the former and the iconification of the “girl in the blue bra” by female protestors as a case of the latter. In Hafez’s analysis, the female body constructs and is constructed by every aspect of the revolution. Moreover, the very presence of female bodies at Tahrir Square is in itself a revolutionary act. As an example, Hafez discusses “Mama Khadiga” (161), who was beaten by a soldier after asserting that she was as old as his mother. Khadiga occupied space at Tahrir Square as a matriarchal force, in direct opposition to the paternalistic ethos of the Egyptian government. Her story, among others, illustrates that the revolution could not have transpired without the presence of dissenting female bodies, which are by nature antithetical to the Egyptian sociopolitical status quo in a way which men fundamentally are not. And yet the instrumental role of women in the revolution has been widely understudied by androcentric historians; for this reason Hafez devotes her entire anthropological study to giving women the attention they deserve.
It is in this regard that Hafez’s book succeeds the most. Hafez dedicates herself to unequivocally centering the words and deeds of her interlocutors. After the introduction, Hafez opens with three episodes from Tahrir Square, immediately demonstrating her commitment to her interlocutors’ experiences. Furthermore, rather than considering her interlocutors solely as a nebulous collective of women revolutionaries, Hafez treats their stories with individual attentiveness, such that the women at Tahrir Square are not pawns in an argument but characters in a larger story. She gives each interlocutor her own section with its own header, thereby creating room in the text itself for the individual stories of these women to be received, a gesture of paramount importance to Hafez’s mission of bringing to light the individual women behind the revolution. Hafez’s goals are also well-served by the diversity of her interlocutors; because she works with women from such a wide array of backgrounds, Hafez is able to create an intricate mosaic of the scene at Tahrir Square, giving heightened granularity to her ethnography.
Where Women of the Midan struggles, however, is in its discussion of rememory. The concept of rememory, borrowed from Toni Morrison, is repeated with great frequency throughout the book, and yet it never seems to mean much. Whereas Hafez’s theoretical discussion of gendered corporeality complements the stories of her interlocutors, the notion of rememory is scarcely evoked to say anything more than “memory is vivid.” Hafez argues that rememory–which does not operate in her book in any meaningfully different way from standard memory–causes a “reactivation of revolutionary experiences” and invites her interlocutors to “reimagine their corporeality” (194). While this may be true, it is unclear how this notion deviates from any lay understanding of memory, and it is further unclear why the “reactivation of revolutionary experiences” is important to the revolutionary cause itself. As the book stands now, the discussion of rememory could be removed with almost no consequence on the book’s tremendous historiographical impact as a female-forward study of the Egyptian Revolution.
Hafez notes in her introduction that, while the uprisings were underway in Egypt, she chose to remain in the U.S. to “explain the uprisings to a western audience” (xxxiv). With Women of the Midan, Hafez goes a step beyond explanation by illustrating the tangible effects of the revolution on its most important participants through her sensitive treatment of her interlocutors’ stories. Combined with her more concrete (but, crucially, still gendered) timeline of the revolution and her theoretical discussions of gendered corporeality, Hafez’s Women of the Midan is the quintessential text on the Egyptian Revolution, for academics and non-academics alike, to learn about the revolution from the perspective of the powerful women at its center.
At both the beginning and the end of her book, Hafez states clearly for the reader the methodological parameters precluding her study. Over a five-year period, Hafez made several visits to Egypt to conduct interviews with nearly one hundred women who both shaped and were shaped by the revolution. Her interlocutors came from a wide variety of ages, socioeconomic classes, religious creeds, and neighborhoods around Cairo, all of whom were brought together by the singular cause of demanding change from the government. Unless requested by her interlocutors, Hafez does not utilize pseudonyms; while contrary to conventional ethnographic practice, the use of real names canonizes these women within the historical record, an honor which Hafez asserts has been long overdue. Hafez also commits herself to the fluid and messy nature of rememory by relaying stories exactly as they are relayed to her, retaining all their discontinuities and non-chronology.
Through her conversations with her interlocutors, Hafez elaborates on the intersectional positionality of the gendered body at the heart of the Egyptian Revolution. One such intersection Hafez discusses is the intersection of the gendered body and Egypt’s neoliberal economic policy. From the politically active Zeinab, to the sushi-eating entrepreneur Samya, to the Coptic hairdresser Attiya, women from all walks of life came together in revolt at Tahrir Square to protest the pressure applied to their lives in the domestic sphere by the government’s neoliberal policies. Hafez reemphasizes this point frequently throughout her book: the revolution yielded an unprecedented unification of Egypt’s female population around one common goal. This observation is substantiated by the socioeconomic diversity of Hafez’s interlocutors–through the memories of the interlocutors, the reader witnesses firsthand the sheer diversity of the women at Tahrir Square, making it abundantly clear just how monumental it was for them all to unify.
Hafez also pays particular attention to the physical connotations of the gendered body in revolutionary space. She cites instances of the female body being both punished and celebrated in the revolution, discussing the Egyptian government’s infamous virginity tests as a case of the former and the iconification of the “girl in the blue bra” by female protestors as a case of the latter. In Hafez’s analysis, the female body constructs and is constructed by every aspect of the revolution. Moreover, the very presence of female bodies at Tahrir Square is in itself a revolutionary act. As an example, Hafez discusses “Mama Khadiga” (161), who was beaten by a soldier after asserting that she was as old as his mother. Khadiga occupied space at Tahrir Square as a matriarchal force, in direct opposition to the paternalistic ethos of the Egyptian government. Her story, among others, illustrates that the revolution could not have transpired without the presence of dissenting female bodies, which are by nature antithetical to the Egyptian sociopolitical status quo in a way which men fundamentally are not. And yet the instrumental role of women in the revolution has been widely understudied by androcentric historians; for this reason Hafez devotes her entire anthropological study to giving women the attention they deserve.
It is in this regard that Hafez’s book succeeds the most. Hafez dedicates herself to unequivocally centering the words and deeds of her interlocutors. After the introduction, Hafez opens with three episodes from Tahrir Square, immediately demonstrating her commitment to her interlocutors’ experiences. Furthermore, rather than considering her interlocutors solely as a nebulous collective of women revolutionaries, Hafez treats their stories with individual attentiveness, such that the women at Tahrir Square are not pawns in an argument but characters in a larger story. She gives each interlocutor her own section with its own header, thereby creating room in the text itself for the individual stories of these women to be received, a gesture of paramount importance to Hafez’s mission of bringing to light the individual women behind the revolution. Hafez’s goals are also well-served by the diversity of her interlocutors; because she works with women from such a wide array of backgrounds, Hafez is able to create an intricate mosaic of the scene at Tahrir Square, giving heightened granularity to her ethnography.
Where Women of the Midan struggles, however, is in its discussion of rememory. The concept of rememory, borrowed from Toni Morrison, is repeated with great frequency throughout the book, and yet it never seems to mean much. Whereas Hafez’s theoretical discussion of gendered corporeality complements the stories of her interlocutors, the notion of rememory is scarcely evoked to say anything more than “memory is vivid.” Hafez argues that rememory–which does not operate in her book in any meaningfully different way from standard memory–causes a “reactivation of revolutionary experiences” and invites her interlocutors to “reimagine their corporeality” (194). While this may be true, it is unclear how this notion deviates from any lay understanding of memory, and it is further unclear why the “reactivation of revolutionary experiences” is important to the revolutionary cause itself. As the book stands now, the discussion of rememory could be removed with almost no consequence on the book’s tremendous historiographical impact as a female-forward study of the Egyptian Revolution.
Hafez notes in her introduction that, while the uprisings were underway in Egypt, she chose to remain in the U.S. to “explain the uprisings to a western audience” (xxxiv). With Women of the Midan, Hafez goes a step beyond explanation by illustrating the tangible effects of the revolution on its most important participants through her sensitive treatment of her interlocutors’ stories. Combined with her more concrete (but, crucially, still gendered) timeline of the revolution and her theoretical discussions of gendered corporeality, Hafez’s Women of the Midan is the quintessential text on the Egyptian Revolution, for academics and non-academics alike, to learn about the revolution from the perspective of the powerful women at its center.
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