Text

theses

The dissertation examines the proliferation of activist initiatives in response to the multiplication and exacerbation of public sexual violence in Egypt following the January 25 Revolution. Drawing on feminist geography, social movement scholarship, affect theory, and critical urban studies, this work revises and complicates feminist scholarship on sexual violence against women in two important ways. First, it decenters the experience of white, middle-class, US/Western European women to examine the embodied and spatial effects of actual and potential sexual violence in Egyptian women’s urban practices. The research pays particular attention to the nexus of gender and class in women’s exposure to a wide range of risks, including—but not limited to—public sexual violence. Second, it analyzes public sexual violence in its specificity, not as a universal or timeless phenomenon but as a form of social action that emerges as a consequence of, and is shaped by, historical processes. Filling a gap in the literature, the project traces the occurrence of public sexual harassment in Cairo back to the late 19th century and situates the appearance of this phenomenon in relation to processes of rural-urban migration, urbanization, modern state formation, and nation building. The dissertation draws upon a number of methods, including (auto)ethnographic observations and in-depth qualitative interviews with members of activist groups and non-activist women conducted in Cairo between 2012 and 2015, as well as content analysis of diverse materials. Through the case study of OpAntiSH and HarassMap, the research examines how these projects of direct action and community intervention promoted horizontal expressions of care and solidarity and forms of collective risk-taking that challenged the logic of sexual governmentality that positions women in public space as simultaneously at risk and a risk. Through the case study of The BuSSy Project and WenDo Egypy, it examines how these initiatives opened up avenues for testifying to the experience of sexual harassment and assault while encouraging alternative performances of femininity in public space. The dissertation discusses the transformative and generative potential of these interventions to produce spaces for intentional acts of risk-taking against the backdrop of the increased securitization and militarization of public space, notably following the 2013 military coup in Egypt.

ETD_9512

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Susana Maria Galan Julve

doi:10.7282/t3-239v-9d18

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.