The revolution shall not pass through women's bodies: Egypt, uprising and gender politics

Abstract

This article analyses the outcome of the Egyptian uprising on women's issues by focusing on women's bodies and the discursive ways by which they are constituted and constitute themselves. Three vignettes illustrate the centrality of female corporeality in the political transformations taking place post the 25 January revolution. While these ‘feminine’ bodies are disciplined and regulated through discourses of patriarchy, Islamism and secular modern masculinity, they are also sites of dissent and revolution. These bodies as shown in the vignettes offer novel forms of corporeal practices that as they appropriate systemic forms of discipline and regulation also reconstitute them into new and personal ways of expressing counter-discursive means of resistance.