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Postcolonial Masculinities
 The Feminist Imagination –
Europe and Beyond
Series Editors: Kathy Davis, Utrecht University, The Netherlands and
Mary Evans, London School of Economics, UK

With a specific focus on the notion of ‘cultural translation’ and ‘travelling theory’,
this series operates on the assumption that ideas are shaped by the contexts in
which they emerge, as well as by the ways that they ‘travel’ across borders and
are received and re-articulated in new contexts. In demonstrating the complexity
of the differences (and similarities) in feminist thought throughout Europe and
between Europe and other parts of the world, the books in this series highlight the
ways in which intellectual and political traditions, often read as homogeneous, are
more often heterogeneous. It therefore provides a forum for the latest work that
engages with the European experience, illuminating the various exchanges (from
the USA as well as Europe) that have informed European feminism. The series
thus allows for an international discussion about the history and imaginary of
Europe from perspectives within and outside Europe, examining not only Europe’s
colonial legacy, but also the various forms of ‘cultural imperialism’ that have
shaped societies outside Europe. Considering aspects of Europe ‘abroad’ as well
as Europe ‘at home’, this series is committed to publishing work that reveals the
central and continued importance of the genealogy of feminist ideas to feminism
and all those interested in questions of gender.

Also in this series

Repudiating Feminism
Young Women in a Neoliberal World
Christina Scharf

Transatlantic Conversations
Feminism as Travelling Theory
Edited by Kathy Davis and Mary Evans

Framing Intersectionality
Debates on a Multi-Faceted Concept in Gender Studies
Edited by Helma Lutz, Maria Teresa Herrera Vivar and Linda Supik
Postcolonial Masculinities
Emotions, Histories and Ethics

Amal Treacher Kabesh

University of Nottingham, UK
© Amal Treacher Kabesh 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Amal Treacher Kabesh has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

Published by
Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company
Wey Court East 110 Cherry Street
Union Road Suite 3-1
Farnham Burlington, VT 05401-3818
Surrey, GU9 7PT USA
England

www.ashgate.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Kabesh, Amal Treacher
Postcolonial masculinities : emotions, histories and ethics / by Amal Treacher Kabesh.
pages cm. – (The feminist imagination : Europe and beyond)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-2238-9 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-4724-1233-1 (ebook) – ISBN 978-
1-4724-1234-8 (epub) 1. Masculinity–Cross-cultural studies. 2. Masculinity–Developing
countries. 3. Masculinity–Western countries. I. Title.
HQ1090.K33 2013
155.3'32–dc23
2013005639

ISBN 9781409422389 (hbk)

ISBN 9781472412331 (ebk-PDF)
ISBN 9781472412348 (ebk-ePUB)

III
I dedicate this book to Ahmed Kabesh and Amir Hawash
with love and gratitude.
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Contents

Acknowledgements   ix

1 In the Shadow of the Other   1

2 Landscapes of Masculinities   25

3 The Necessity of the Other   43

4 Visceral Anxiety: Inhabiting Fear   65

5 Insidious Humiliation: Invidious Shame   85

6 Precarious Power   103

7 Cutting Tails   119

8 Silences, Spectres and Shards   141

Afterword   159

Bibliography   163

Index   175
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Acknowledgements

I am fortunate to work at the School of Sociology and Social Policy that provides
a collegiate and supportive atmosphere and a sabbatical both of which have
enabled me to develop this monograph. I am grateful to Srila Roy for the initial
idea for this book and to Nick Stevenson for suggesting two of the novels that
I have used. I am very thankful to Alison Pilnick and the late and much missed
Bill Loach who read the manuscript and due to their generous encouragement
and engagement provided a much needed boost of confidence. I also thank Clare
Hemmings for reading the final chapter and for her exceptionally useful advice.
My thanks to Rebecca Swift and Alison Haigh who tolerate my inefficiencies and
numerous administrative queries with good humour and have stepped into help
on far too many occasions.
Paul Cowdell is a gift of a copy editor and I am grateful to him for his careful
reading of the manuscript. I thank Agnes Bezzina who pulled together the
references with careful attention. I also thank Neil Jordan at Ashgate for his help
and efficiency and especial thanks are due to Neil for suggesting such an evocative
image for the cover. Kathy Davis and Mary Evans are exemplary editors and I
cannot thank them enough for their careful editorial suggestions, enthusiasm and
gentle encouragement and faith in this project.
I owe a long-standing debt to the Editorial Collective of Feminist Review for
thoughtful dialogue and disagreements over many years and these debates have
influenced my thinking and analysis – I thank them all. For standing by me and
providing cups of tea, conversation, distraction, support, laughs and numerous acts
of friendship and kindness I thank: Alice Bloch, Annabell Bell-Boule, Christian
Karner, Clare Hemmings, Clemens Scheidegger, Graham Lee, Helen Crowley, Ian
Greenway, Jan Lees, Julia O’Connell Davidson, Lucy Sargisson, Mandy Roland-
Smith, Nick Stevenson, Pauline Henderson, Sally Alexander (to whom I owe a debt
which reaches back to my days as an undergraduate), Sally Weintrobe, Stephanie
Newell, Susannah Radstone, Thomas Herzog, Tracey Warren and Volker Scheid.
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Chapter 1
In the Shadow of the Other

In the Spectre of the Postcolonial

A number of years ago I was on a long train journey, sharing a table with three men
who were immersed in conversation. I was absorbed in my novel, which I quickly
finished, so with nothing to do I started to eavesdrop on their conversation, that
mainly focused on sport. Initially I was bored, but something about the quality
of the conversation began to interest me and I listened more intently. I suddenly
recognised the variety and intensity of feelings being articulated by these men,
ranging from pleasure to hurt, anger to jealousy, betrayal to despair.
Postcolonial Masculinities: Emotions, Histories and Ethics started on that train
journey. It has had a long gestation since I first pondered the matter of masculinity
and emotion and my perceptions, feelings and thoughts changed thanks to my
shameless eavesdropping. It was through listening to these men (who I do not know
but I thank them nonetheless) that my previous thinking began to shift as I realised
the depth and sincerity of the emotions that they expressed. Before this incident
I had gone along unthinkingly with the commonplace assumptions that men are
rational, out-of-touch with their feelings and shy away from expressing affect. At the
beginning of my eavesdropping I was caught in the banal and dismissive views that
all men talk about is sport and while it is true that sport (specifically football) was
the focus of their discussion I began to recognise that it is through sport that so much
more is expressed. I then began to reflect on men that I know (family and friends)
and started to understand the various modes of expression that men use to express
themselves, engage with others and make themselves known and recognised.
This monograph is my engagement and attempt (at times struggle) to listen
differently and understand men anew in relation to emotions. If that was not
enough, my engagement has widened to thinking through Egyptian and British
masculinities and exploring what may be their distinctive and shared characteristics.
I am working across a web of interconnected themes – masculine subjectivity,
emotion and narrative, socio-political events – that at times coincide, and at
other times pull in different directions. Postcolonial Masculinities focuses on
exploring emotions and (I have to acknowledge) negative emotions. It elucidates
some beliefs and fantasies that men hold about each other and the complexity of
men’s relations to other men and to women, and it attempts to illuminate a few
internalised socio-cultural narratives and representations.
This book attempts to bring various shadows – emotions, fantasies, other
human beings, society, history – into relief. It is an attempt at understanding a few,
crucial, psychosocial themes relating to postcolonial masculinities. Interspersed
2 Postcolonial Masculinities

with these more abstract theoretical concerns is my attempt to understand those

men who are important to me – my father, stepfather, husband, brothers (half- and
step-), cousins and friends. These men are both Egyptian and English. My own
geo-emotional-historical-cultural location is Egyptian and English: my father was
an Egyptian Muslim, as is my husband, and my mother and stepfather were English
and Christian. Emotionally and politically I am concerned with developing a more
adequate theoretical understanding of the shared diversities and similarities of
these two seemingly different societies and cultures.
Shadows, haunting, mimicry, repetition despite the desperate attempts to
make something anew, loss and absence, grief, aggression, the drive to power,
vexed emotions and loaded beliefs are the stuff of this book and drive it, albeit
in jagged ways. I rely totally on a psychosocial framework with an emphasis on
psychoanalysis, as no other conceptual framework enables me to make sense of this
particular web of socio-cultural-emotional complexes.1 I rely on psychoanalysis,
moreover, because it offers a means of understanding the irrational and what
cannot easily be made sense of, the uncertain pushes and pulls that constitute so
much of human beings, our human relationships and social life. Psychoanalysis,
as is well known, does not deliver certainty, but rather explores the elusive and
precarious aspects of subjectivity; as I am attempting to understand subjectivity
this cannot, indeed should not, be pinned down and made concrete. I do not want,
however, to make a virtue out of uncertainty, as if the use of words such as fluidity,
complexity and nuanced permits us to write or speak anything that comes to mind.
There remains continually the relentless, concrete and problematic issue of the
societies and political spheres we all inhabit, and there is no easy analysis which
we can mobilise at will. This echoes a theme in the work of Avery Gordon (1997)
which describes partly the affective realm and partly what eludes understanding.
A strength of the psychosocial studies framework is its emphasis on history as
that which endures and resonates with tolerance and sufferance. We cannot make
sense of events without understanding the place of history and the impact of the
past, which bear down on the present and involve unyielding repetition despite our
best – perhaps our finest – intentions. Colonialism endures and cannot be safely
located in the past: as Carby argues, in this ‘contemporary age of imperial ventures
and colonial violence and exploitation, the “post” is increasingly redundant, if
not blatantly anachronistic’ (Carby 2007: 216). The contemporary troublesome
political context, the current invasions and the exploitations and abuses of civil
liberties require us to think through precisely what we mean by postcolonial. As
Hazel Carby argues, while the term postcolonial ‘suggests an historical break
or transition, actually much of what postcolonial theory seeks to understand is
either the residue of colonial and imperial history or evidence of its late modern
incarnation’ (Carby 2007: 215).

1 For a sustained discussion of the importance of the psychosocial framework see

Frosh: Psychoanalysis Outside the Clinic (2010) and the Work of the Midlands Psychology
Group which is easily accessible on the web.
 In the Shadow of the Other 3

Reference to 11 September 2001 cannot be avoided, as it was apparently the

event that changed the world. While I would wish to resist such emotively laden
language, this event has nonetheless had a powerful impact on representations,
discourses, imaginings of and feelings towards those who are or are perceived as
the Muslim/Arab other. Those of us identifying with the secular and the left in the
Middle East (and they are not necessarily the same) are caught and cornered, for
none of us wants to live under either the conservative regimes of the ‘West’ or those
of Al-Qaeda and, specifically in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafeen
(the ultra-Conservative political party). I have been and remain exhausted both
with Western imperialism and its self-righteous discourses and with the continual
resort to blaming Western imperialism for all that is corrupt in the Middle East.
Weariness aside, the relentless media portrayal that people of colour are at best
problematic and at worst people to be feared has to be of profound concern.
This is a snapshot of one day of news in early November 2010: the news was
dominated by a failed terrorist attack and the British government’s responses, mid-
term American election, with much time given over to the American political party:
The Tea Party, and a wedding that took place in the Maldives at which the officiator
apparently did not speak the wedding vows but rather uttered offensive language.
This story was represented as proof that you cannot trust a foreigner, and as if
somehow weddings in Europe never go adrift or the staff involved are never bored.
Worryingly, Margaret Thatcher was voted as the role model by and for women.
These categories – the West, Islam, the Arab Region and America – are terms
that obfuscate more than they reveal. As Diane Robinson-Dunn points out

Despite the underlying unity and stability implied by the terms English, British
or Muslim, they were used to describe people with diverse interests, perspectives
and concerns, as well as multiple ways of identifying themselves. The instability
of the terms is used to define identity as well as the continually fluctuating nature
of the imperial cultural system which belies the concrete material realities
which often resulted from these ideas, as well as the obstacles and limitations
experienced by individuals operating in this system. (2006: 4)

While Robinson-Dunn locates this in the past I would argue that matters of
representation and identity, and their various obstacles, persist into the present.
There is a theoretical and political difficulty centring on how to elucidate these
competing discourses that operate so powerfully. Moreover, there is a further
layer of complexity which focuses attention on understanding the specificities of
cultures without over-emphasising differences or similarities.
These precarious understandings exist within unequal power and material
relationships. It is all too easy to represent Egypt as an inferior culture to the
supposed superiority of England and to behave as if these two societies existed
without reference to each other. I am insisting that there is a process of entanglement
between the West and the Rest, which belies the dichotomies that both assert.
Representations of the Orientalised other and the Occidentalised subject are
4 Postcolonial Masculinities

frequently stereotypical and fix identities as secure and straightforward. The

narratives and representations of masculine identity that circulate deny complex
identities and force binary positions of victim/victimisers and oppressors/
oppressed. These representations have limited explanatory power as they do not
engage with the rich nuances of human life, everyday living and socio-political
complexity. Both political and social systems in the UK and Egypt are at risk of
being close to a ‘narcissism of self-bewitchment’, to use a poignant phrase of
Freud, in which there is little attempt to think about or respond to the other without
making the other into an objectified being.
This is an ethical and political matter which hinges on matters of recognition of
the centrality of other human beings to subjectivity. Psychoanalytic understandings
insist that all human beings, whatever our diverse heritages, live under the shadow
of the other. The other human being is crucial for our development from infancy
to adulthood, and the other human being is central to our sense of self. This
echoes Adriana Cavarero’s assertion (2000) that we are utterly dependent on the
other for life itself.2 The relationship with the other brings joy, pleasure, love and
sustenance, and provokes envy, fury, disappointment, hurt and betrayal. In short,
as Judith Butler (2004) asserts, we are done and undone by the other.
This emphasis on the irreducibility of the other has been taken up by various
intellectuals (Frosh 2002a, Eng and Kazanjian 2003, Ahmed 2004, Butler 2004)
to think through such diverse but interlinked issues as loss and melancholia, an
ethics based on recognition of the diversity of socio-political relationships and
analysis of the inter-relationships between people, and the vexed complex of
emotion and imaginings evoked. In his committed essay Stephen Frosh (2002a)
explores the crucial importance of the other human being on subjectivity and
on the troublesome socio-political context that we inhabit and internalise.
Frosh, drawing on the work of Jean Laplanche and Judith Butler, elucidates the
irreducible and alien otherness at the heart of subjectivity. This intricate otherness
consists of the unconscious, emotions, fantasies and other human beings: this
complex is powerfully omnipresent, and continually works within and through us,
acting on our feelings and imaginings towards others. Awareness of the existence
of the other inside us and of how this ‘dominates our existence is too painful, too
terrifying, to be maintained’ (Frosh 2002a: 396). While we spend most of our
time fending off this awareness and defensively sloughing off our dependencies
and obligations, we nevertheless have an ethical responsibility to acknowledge
the contempt, hatred, disappointment, envy and rage that frequently dominate our
relationships with others.
I am concerned with issues of recognition and identification, and with how we
can reach across to one another in ethical relatedness with understanding, if not

2 In Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood (2000) Cavarero, working from a

philosophical perspective and drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, provides a sustained
discussion of how the self cannot come into being unless it is in the presence of another
human being.
 In the Shadow of the Other 5

with enjoyment. This is not to wipe out the difficulties of the persistent problem
of how we relate to the ‘fact of the other’s independent consciousness, a mind
that is fundamentally like our own but unfathomably different and outside our
control’ (Benjamin 1998: xii). Our capacity for misrecognition can, and frequently
does, ‘further impede our recognition of others, to bridge or obfuscate differences
between us’ (Benjamin 1998: xiii). At this current political conjuncture there
seems to be little recognition, understanding or identification. There is much talk
of the enemy, of threats from within and outside (mainly Muslim young men), and
of the continual danger of terrorism. The discourse of a ‘clash of civilisation’ is
implicit and yet powerful. Apparently no talk can take place. Only aggression and
defence will do. I want to adhere to Erlich’s plea that ‘it is probably as creative an
act as we may ever be able to perform, to be able to regard an enemy as part of us
and yet as existing separately and in his or her own right’ (1997: 125). As Erlich
(1997) puts it, our feelings and fantasies of the person who is deemed as other
can be marked by feelings of hatred and rivalry that can exist alongside positive
feelings of love, admiration, and the wish to identify and emulate.
There are different talks and a colony of difference between talk that reaches
across and talk that distances. Similarly, different motivations are at work
between what seeks to understand and to be changed by an encounter and what
searches for opportunities to dominate and subjugate. Recognition, identification
and knowledge are demanding, since to engage in that endeavour requires that
we pay attention to our intransigent fantasies, stubborn feelings, heartfelt beliefs
and those thoughts that flit across the mind that are seemingly innocuous but
problematic in their capacity to alienate and entrench the self and others in well-
worn tropes and empty representations.
The demand for ethical relatedness, which is taken up more closely in Chapter
8, calls upon us to draw on a different notion of the person who is other and who
is so often represented and positioned as the scapegoat. We should acknowledge
some historical lessons, for the scapegoat has changed meaning over time.
Eagleton explores how the scapegoat historically was a sacred thing, as

The scapegoat is both holy and cursed, since the more polluted it becomes by
absorbing the city’s impurities, the more redemption it brings. The redemptive
victim is the one who takes a general hurt into its own body, and in doing so
transforms it into something rich and rare. (2005: 131)

From a different angle Marina Warner explores the peculiarly modern phenomenon
of treating the other as different and as a threat. She explores how the new and the
strange did not always shock, for ‘they can lure, they can delight. The Other in
history has exercised a huge power of attraction, not repulsion’, and recognising
that there are different and enjoyable ways of living with otherness ‘can then stretch
and deepen the language of pleasure’ (2002: 20). In short, and optimistically, the
discourses that surround us at present are neither the only ones available nor are
they inescapable. There are, however, different investments at work; as the social
6 Postcolonial Masculinities

historian Catherine Hall argues, while in a sense postcolonial societies want to

know about their history of colonisation and slavery, in England there is more
ambivalence and the Empire is viewed as a source of guilt and embarrassment, as
a period of history best forgotten, or even as a source of nostalgia (2002: 5).
The matter of adherence to problematic beliefs does not just pulse through
the work of psychoanalysis. It is equally troubling for postcolonial theory, which
challenges many commonly held stereotypes and imagined relationships that
exist across societies. The challenge also exists for academics, and the gauntlet
was thrown down by Edward Said in his influential book Orientalism (1978).
Orientalism changed the landscape of much theoretical work, as Said forced
academics to think about and face up to their political allegiances and how those
loyalties (frequently to the West) informed their analysis despite the appearance
of objectivity. For Said nothing and no-one is immune from the effects of social
conditions. Furthermore, the ideologies which we inhabit (inevitably formed for
Said by colonial relations) permeate our thinking, and our seemingly objective
observations and perceptions. Said passionately believed in the importance of
thinking anew and continually striving for self-consciousness, and in the obligation
of beginning anew to revisit one’s previous beliefs and thinking. Said argues for
‘beginning as a state of mind’ to explore the world from a different vantage place.
This involves exploring the ‘very idea of what it means to be a human being
understood both locally and globally’ (Hussein 2002: 75).
The deepening of such understandings is urgent, as we all inhabit a troubled
and contentious political period which challenges us to re-think our assumptions,
perceptions and responses. At this period of social and political history there is much
assertion of identity, which frequently is expressed through the nation, tradition
and adherence to a particular group, and this can lead, if it ever did otherwise,
to a rigidity of beliefs and values, and an absence of emotional relatedness. A
prominent viewpoint divides the world into the superior West and the inferior
Rest, and this polarisation leads to other beliefs which focus on the ‘normal and
the abnormal, the developed and the undeveloped, the vanguard and the led, the
liberated and the salvable’ (Nandy 1983: x). Frequently these deeply held attitudes
permeate, consciously and unconsciously, identity itself.
We inherit socio-political belief systems and this becomes the stuff of who
we are – in short, we take in the social profoundly. Importantly this is not just a
psychological issue, for it impacts crucially on socio-political relationships. This
monograph is predicated on the conviction that we have to – we have no choice
emotionally, socially, politically and ethically but to – recognise our web of inter-
subjectivities. Rose speaks of the matter in this way:

Even when we dream, we are not alone. Our most intimate psychic secrets are
always embedded in the others – groups, masses, institutions and peoples – from
which they take their cue, playing their part in the rise and fall of actions. Not
to recognise this is, finally, the greatest, most dangerous, illusion of them all.
(2004a: xxxix)
 In the Shadow of the Other 7

Myths, illusions and profound fantasies exist in both the UK and Egypt, and I
frequently have difficulty translating across these two cultures. It is perhaps more
profound because I often do not understand the questions I am being asked, or,
perhaps more accurately, I have difficulty gleaning the motivations pulsing away
beneath the questions. I end up feeling suspicious and insecure, and frequently I
do not know what to think. I feel afraid of misrepresenting Egypt and the UK in
the face of these circulating beliefs and fantasies, and afraid that I will reinforce
the prevailing views of Egypt as a culture of oppression. Ironically I can feel
silenced both out of an anxiety of betrayal and also when I try to explore issues of
corruption, power, resistance or lack of resistance, by declarations of an ostensible
sympathy that maintains ‘it is like this in England’.
It is one-sided to present these simplistic representations as only circulating
in the West. As Said points out, myths exist in the Middle East towards America
and the West, and these centre on the beliefs that they are all oversexed, free
and liberated, they can do what they want, and everything is available (2004a:
pp 233–47). The beliefs of superiority and inferiority circulate in contradictory
narratives and belief systems. For example, as Salwa Ismail (2006) points out,
some conservative Islamic groups in Egypt profoundly believe in their own
superiority and purity thanks to their religious heritage and virtuous intent. The
other as inferior is not just the Westerner for these conservative Islamic groups,
as they also deem communism, Marxism, psychoanalysis and, needless to say,
feminism as part of what must be rejected. While these discourses are in powerful
circulation there is another which is as strong, called the khwagga complex.
Khwagga means foreigner, and the khwagga complex is used to indicate that
which is foreign is inherently superior and that which is Egyptian is intrinsically
inferior. As Marilyn Booth writes, in Egypt (if not the Arab world in general)
there is much ambivalence towards the West as al-gharb [the West] is ‘both the
focal point of admiration and emulation and the source of social disintegration and
decay … threat and as promise’ (1997: 832).
The issue of superiority and inferiority is closely tied into temporality. For
the Conservative Islamic Group in Egypt called Salafi (the nomenclature has
resonances of ancestry and a return to the past) the past is glorious and pure, and
superiority is guaranteed by a return to the time of the Prophet Mohamed. One
way, though, of insisting that one is a liberal democrat in Egypt is to insist that
‘I am modern’, where modernity is used to distance the self from conservatism
and to align the self with the avowed values of the West. The West, however, is
convinced both of its own progressiveness and the value of modernity. It berates
the Middle East generally for being outdated, and uses that chastisement as proof
of its own ‘progressive’ belief systems. The issue of temporality and loss is taken
up in closer detail in Chapter 8.
8 Postcolonial Masculinities

In the Presence of Emotions and the Word

This hierarchical world privileges whiteness, demarcates human beings into those
who are superior or inferior, and functions within a hierarchy of dominance and
subordination. There is nothing abstract or elusive about these categories, which
are felt intensely and known by all. As Fanon (1986) points out repeatedly, none of
us is outside these psychic and social structures. We are all embedded and formed
within them and transmit their messages consciously and unconsciously. To speak
of the unconscious here is not to render any of us exempt but, rather, is to address
the social institutions and practices that structure our lives. It is a continual matter
of subjection which, following Fanon, affects all men – and indeed women –
whatever the history of coloniser or colonised.
I use the term subjectivity to indicate how masculinities are formed and
inhabited within a particular socio-cultural period and how this has consequences
on men and how lives are lived. In this account, subjectivity indicates how men
are subject to the social order with all the attendant meanings, injunctions, beliefs
and values that are imbibed, inhabited and lived out. Masculinity as an identity
is gained not just from the family or individual predispositions but, much more
critically, from wider social structures, including language and social, economic,
and cultural institutions. In addition men inherit historical conditions which, as
Silverman (1992) argues, involve historical trauma. I widen this out to include
historical conditions that are not necessarily traumatic but events that have, and
continue to have, profound effects on masculinities no matter the discourses
or narratives to the contrary. This, importantly, involves a close analysis of the
coloniser and the colonised and the damage done to both. This monograph is
devoted to understanding masculine subjectivity, and Chapter 2 is given over to
a detailed account of contemporary understandings of masculinities. For now I
want to assert that I rely heavily on postcolonial theory and psychoanalysis that
argue that the black man and the white man, crudely defined, are both precarious,
subject to socio-political constraints, and complicit with problematic political
discourses and unequal power relations. I am mindful of Fanon’s imperative that
we do not deny interiority or resort to simplistic assertions of resistance, innocence
or victimhood. It is commonly argued that a preoccupation with interiority is a
Western concern. I am not convinced, and I hold firmly to the view that complexity
is the mark of being human. I should, however, acknowledge a problem that haunts
my thinking. This is the question of how to recognise and understand the unequal
power relations, and the power of the West, without reinforcing the West’s view of
itself as all-powerful and the centre of the universe.
I focus on emotions and narratives as a route into a partial – in both meanings
of the word – elucidation and analysis of certain aspects of masculine subjectivity.
There are two questions, at least, to be asked. The first must be why pay attention
to the emotions, which are seemingly the most private and individual aspects
of subjectivity? Put simply, I resist the common claim that men are rational
and either do not have feelings or, if they do, have difficulty expressing them.
 In the Shadow of the Other 9

Feelings, according to the stereotype, belong to women, who apparently feel

more and seemingly have no difficulty of expression. I have to acknowledge
that I have made my fair share of cheap cracks in relation to men and intimacy,
flippantly joking that the chapter on intimacy would be the thinnest chapter here.
The issue of intimacy is taken up in Chapter 3. There may be, however, a truth
(and I use truth here unashamedly) that men have difficulties in expressing their
emotions. Perhaps a better way of thinking it through is that men express emotions
and feelings covertly. I turn to novels and autobiographies here in the hope that
emotions are more readily expressed through fiction and autobiographies. The
novels are, of course, fiction but that does not mean that the emotions expressed
are either unreliable or false. I have used novels as my entry into male selfhood as
fiction enables me to elucidate male subjectivity more closely, than say interviews.
It is not that I mistrust men and what they will reveal about themselves or not,
though there are of course methodological issues to be thought through, it is more
I do not quite trust that I will be able to prise apart their narratives. I have always
been an avid reader and novels have enabled a necessary paradox of closeness and
distance for this project. This necessary paradox is essential as both closeness and
distance are required in order to explicate and analyse the various narratives and
discourses in operation.
The second question is why such a close focus on the negative emotions of
anxiety, shame, humiliation, loss and grief? Partly this is because, as Adam Phillips
rather ruefully points out, ‘intellectuals are rarely impressed by people who are
happy’ (1994: 135), and I am suspicious of some of the current moves towards
promoting happiness, hope and opportunity in whatever situation. Importantly I
argue that emotions and fantasies impact on the socio-political spheres in a variety
of ways. Emotions cause conflict, they bind people together, and they are both
caused by and have effects upon the societies we inhabit. Emotions are not just felt
within the private sphere but pulse powerfully through the body politic.
One challenge is to understand the language of emotions and the precise
meanings in a particular culture and at a particular historical period. For example,
the word ‘nervous’ in Arabic has a much more serious meaning than in English,
and it is used to indicate agitation, vulnerability and the possibility that a loss
of temper will occur. Joanna Bourke writes that as words change so too does
the meaning of the emotion within a particular culture. She quotes Wittgenstein
that ‘mental language is rendered significant not by virtue of its capacity to
reveal, mark, or describe mental states, but by its function in social interaction’
(Bourke 2005: 75). Emotions and narrative are inextricably linked: to draw on
Bourke again, the act of narrating emotions ‘to oneself as much as to others is
dependent upon the ordering mechanisms of grammar, plot and genre. To the
extent that these mechanisms are historical, the way emotions are experienced
have a history’ (2005: 288–9).
Emotions have a history and are felt within a socio-political context, and
to elucidate their various meanings and use requires – demands may be more
appropriate – the ‘art of listening’ (Back 2007). At the risk of appearing pretentious
10 Postcolonial Masculinities

I have attempted to listen carefully to various talk, I have noted down conversations
and, at the risk of offending people I am close to and to whom I am affectionately
tied, I have done my best to use anecdote and observation carefully. In any case
an issue remains: what are the social norms in expressions of emotions? There
are different talks and different demands. Different ‘technologies of the self’
(Foucault 1988) in operation are frequently missed in attempts to distinguish
Western and Arab identities. There are two further issues that need noting, firstly,
that the emphasis on difference problematically bypasses matters of similarity,
and secondly, that the conceptual work of distinguishing the emotions frequently
replicates superiority and inferiority. For example, many articles attempt to
distinguish between shame and guilt (see Pines 1995 for an example). This has
always irked me, mainly because embedded in these attempts is the judgement
that those in the West are psychologically more developed and possess a more
mature sensibility. Guilt is seen as a higher emotion than shame, and apparently
those in the West feel guilty while those in the Middle East are more prone to
feeling shame. These assertions have never felt right but I have not been able to
understand precisely why and what was being missed. It remained a puzzle until
recently, finally becoming clearer during a long and circuitous discussion with my
husband – Amir – about what we had done in our lives that made us feel guilty.
We spent much of the early part of the discussion not understanding one another. I
could not understand why he did not see that the numerous clumsy and thoughtless
examples I was providing were instances of guilt. I suddenly understood that
different meanings were in operation. This may seem obvious, but we cannot stop
discussion or thought on what might be self-evident as that moment of theoretical
interruption frequently obfuscates understanding. In Egypt guilt is used as a much
more legal term. It is taken very seriously, and the term cannot be used loosely.
While in the UK we may use the word guilt freely, or use it in everyday parlance,
in Egypt the term is used sparingly and with utmost respect.
Martha Nussbaum’s magisterial Upheavals of Thought (2008) explores
emotions primarily through a Winnicottian framework. Nussbaum argues that
we are always formed as human beings through the ‘shadow of the object’, a
phrase initially used by Freud to describe the formation of the ego and also the title
of a book by Christopher Bollas (1989). Nussbaum provides a deeply historical
account of the emotions, and argues that all relationships and objects of love and
affection ‘bear the traces of earlier objects; one’s emotions towards them are
frequently therefore also, in both intensity and configuration, emotions towards
one’s past’ (2008: 175). Nussbaum develops this to state that in a ‘deep sense all
human emotions are in part about the past, and bear the traces of a history that is
at once commonly human, socially constructed, and idiosyncratic’ (2008: 177).
I would extend her argument to argue for the impossibility of focusing on one
specific emotion, as one emotion bleeds into another emotion, just as one thought
merges into another thought, one fantasy fuses into another fantasy. This is the
complexity of being human and the ‘shreddedness of lived experience’ (Bollas
 In the Shadow of the Other 11

1995:118). Human beings are not always benign, and certainly never simple and
or straightforward. As Nussbaum’s account suggests

We are never dealing with a purely benign picture, into which hatred will
enter only if we put it there. The roots of anger, hatred, and disgust lie very
deep in the structure of human life, in our ambivalent relation to our lack of
control over objects and the helplessness of our own bodies. It would be naïve
to expect that projections of these negative emotions onto other people will
not take place – although we may certainly hope to moderate their number and
intensity. (2008: 234)

While emotions are like magic lanterns ‘colouring the room one is actually
in with the intense images of other objects, other stories’ (Nussbaum 2008:178),
they are never personal, never arise from the self and are always embedded within
socio-cultural-political spheres. Here it would be commonplace to reach out for
a social constructionist explanation and to draw on a narrative approach, both of
which imply that there is no body to the emotions at all: everything is reduced to
discourse, and human beings are only in thrall to socio-political discourses that
control all that can be spoken and felt. I do think emotions are gained from the
social spheres. I do think we inherit emotions, values and belief systems from our
families, and families in turn have gained their emotional system from society.
I do think emotions are visceral – we literally feel them. I do not know how to
make sense of the visceral quality of emotions and the bodily sensations that are
produced, and I do not want to place embodiment outside of the social. But – and
this is a big but – my continual difficulty with a social constructionist approach
is that it can strip us of surprises, as if somehow the world is already known and
understood. The strength of Back’s monograph The Art of Listening (2007) is that
in his subtle way he urges sociologists and cultural theorists to continually be
surprised, to be taken aback by what has not been glimpsed or understood, and
not to make concrete what is persistently elusive. Importantly, as Back writes,
‘being a partisan to the human story in all its manifold diversity does not exclude
maintaining a critical orientation to it’ (2007: 8).
I use novels and autobiographies, along with historical events and contemporary
examples, as a route into exploring the various emotions embedded in masculine
subjectivity. The novels and autobiographies are important as they allude to, and
gesture at, what is present and absent. The novels express, articulate and ‘suggest the
existence of other things, beyond or at least different from that articulation. In gender
formations, this means that the seeming security of, for instance, “masculinity”
hints at what else might have been, what is lost or hidden, what loves prohibited
and intimacies renounced’ (Frosh 2002b: 18). Novels and autobiographies are
different genres and yet I argue that they share important characteristics. First,
they are read through multiple, partial and fractured lenses. Second and perhaps
more important ‘literary texts reveal “traces” of their own history and of the many
other texts from which they derive … texts are part of a community of writings
12 Postcolonial Masculinities

that can only be read in conjunction with one another’ (Frosh 2010: 70). I read
these texts through an intertextual lens by attempting to elucidate unconscious
traces that belong not to the individual author but rather are possibly revealing
of this particular contemporary period as all narratives and stories told are not
just ‘a version of what might be, they hint, individually and collectively, at some
other demand, some hope for recognition and acknowledgement’ (Frosh 2002b:
18). Male subjectivities are complex, subtle and full of emotions and fantasies
and replete with a nuanced psychic life. The surface of male selfhood frequently
alludes to the bubbling cauldron of doubts, ambivalences and precariousness of
identity. We mistake surface with depth at our analytic, if not personal, peril.
This monograph is about too much and yet somehow too little, in that the issues
of misunderstanding, misrecognition and miscommunication are prevalent and
problematic. Postcolonial Masculinities: Emotions, Histories and Ethics is too jagged,
and yet somehow overly smoothed, and does not quite capture the complexity of
human lives and the ‘shreddedness of lived experience’. It is an attempt to challenge
the dominant discourses that reinforce a seeming clash of civilisations (Huntington
1996), and to provide the beginnings of a bridge between dangerous brown patriarchal
men and seemingly trouble-free white men. It endeavours to develop the beginnings
of a more sustained analysis of the links between these two societies.

In the Shadow of Numerous Histories

An important theme of Edward Said’s work is his insistence that the present is
always shot through with the past, and that the present cannot be made anew as if
history does not continue to influence current life. He asserted, importantly, that
social beliefs and attitudes to those who are represented as ‘other’ reside resolutely
within us. In short, it is not only ‘out there’: rather, the implications of being of
the West or of the Arab region have their effects. Inheriting a history of coloniser
or colonised persists in subjective life and internal experience. As Baldwin points
out, people are trapped in history and history is trapped in them (quoted in Hall
2002: 1). The past is problematic for while in one sense it is past, there is always
the continual threat of the repressed reappearing persistently. Colonialism haunts,
for, as Elliott argues, societies and present lived experience always risk becoming
haunted by what is excluded. The more rigid the position the greater the ghost,
and the more threatening it is in some way (Elliott 2002: 153). These insights were
not, for Said, a point of resignation, for he was convinced that one way forward
was to speak relentlessly of difficult truths. He drew upon Coetzee, who writes
‘perhaps it is the case that only that which has not been articulated has to be lived
through’ (Coetzee 2000: 70).
I spend much of my intellectual and emotional time attempting to make links
across and between Egypt and England. I have various moods, feelings and states of
mind that range across pleasure, bewilderment, contentment, love, disappointment
and anger. These feelings exist alongside the ordinary effort required to sustain
 In the Shadow of the Other 13

relationships and relatedness; I want to be truthful because I am preoccupied with

understanding masculinities, as I often find men perplexing. The attempt to bring
together in a robust relationship with each other two diverse societies – England
and Egypt – speaks to my autobiography. My father was Egyptian and Muslim and
my mother English and Christian. It is a mirror of my family, and is replete with
my emotional-political-theoretical investments. My loving and close relationships
are to Egyptian men – they get under my skin, cut through my being, penetrate
me in a way that European men do not, and my relationships with them are full
of ‘stuff’, fantasy and emotion; they ‘are with me, as it were, when no other can
be there’ (quoted in Suleri 2003: 68). I have spent much energy, both physical and
emotional, much time and much intellectual exploration remaining by my father’s
side. He and Egypt dominate my narrative, leaving my English stepfather and
England always in the shadow.
My father and mother met in London during the late 1940s when my father was
undertaking his Doctorate in nuclear physics at Imperial College. They met at the
Egyptian Embassy where my maternal grandfather was the caretaker, they fell in
love and decided to marry. In 1952 my mother travelled to Cairo to wed my father
and to make a new life there. I imagine and trust that they started their life together
with hope and optimism. 1952 is a significant year. It was the year of the Egyptian
Revolution, when the British were thrown out of Egypt. My young mother (she
was twenty) arrived knowing no Arabic and nothing of Egyptian social and cultural
mores and, as if that was not enough, entered a political atmosphere in which
the Egyptian people were full of triumph at achieving full independence from
the colonising nation, England. This mixed-race, mixed-class, mixed-religion
marriage did not cohere and they were divorced by the end of the 1950s. My
parents had two daughters, my sister Amany, born in 1959, and myself, born in
1954. Following their divorce, my father married a French and Catholic woman.
Their son Ashraf was born in 1964. In 1968 my mother married my stepfather, a
widower whose wife had died tragically when their two sons were very young.
My father was a complex man, full of pride, yearning and ambition and, above
all, dominated by disappointment and a subtle melancholia. On the extraordinary
occasions when he became emotional the intensity was startling. At those rare
moments he was overcome by his passions and his feelings broke through his
guard. While Sara Suleri (2003) describes her father as vocal, incorrigible and
irascible, my father possessed none of these attributes. He was much more
controlled and precise. He was proud that he only spoke when he had something
to say, that he never wasted a word and he certainly never indulged in idle chitchat.
My father was never banal. He possessed a precise and analytic intelligence, and
valued thought and ideas above all else; those who unthinkingly follow others
and ‘do not think for themselves’ infuriated him. Of course he also wanted to be
admired: in an ironic moment of oedipal reversal, coming across a quote from
Lyotard in something that he had written I declared my surprise that he had read any
postmodernism. My father was not offended by his daughter’s rather patronising
14 Postcolonial Masculinities

astonishment, but rather delighted that he had surprised me. Even more crucially
he was delighted that he was intellectually of the moment.
I remember my father’s authoritative tone when he spoke – although ‘declared’
might be a more honest description. Either way, he spoke with an authority that
did not always allow or facilitate discussion. In this way at times he could inhabit
patriarchal authority. In some ways, and much to my surprise, he shared many
traits with my stepfather. Both could be patriarchal, neither could countenance
disagreement, they could be enormously kind and while my stepfather had a
warmth, my father could be cold and at times ruthless. Both these patriarchal men,
who, as I have indicated, did not brook having their authority challenged, adhered
stubbornly to their beliefs and values. They were also facilitative and proud of
their children’s achievements, despite their ambivalence.
Politically, they believed in completely different political ideologies. My
father throughout his life held to a Marxist analysis and framework, although I
could never quite grasp his views on the corresponding role of the State, while
my stepfather was conservative and profoundly nationalistic, bordering on the
xenophobic. He voted Conservative for most of his life and towards the end of his
life voted, much to my shame, for the United Kingdom Independence Party. While
my father was resolute in a persistent political analysis, my stepfather was much
more given to clichés and repetition of socially and politically conservative, if not
racist, understandings of world events. For example he voiced the belief that the
Third World has been in a mess since Great Britain left, and verged on believing
that the map of the world should still be coloured pink.3
I am, though, unfair to my stepfather, who did not have the glamour and allure
of my father. He was solid, talkative, kind and generous, and my mother frequently
remarked that ‘he does not have a selfish bone in his body’. My mother’s
sentimentality aside, my stepfather gave much and wholeheartedly to his wife (my
mother), his family (all of whom he treated equally, including my sister and me),
and his community. He was a man of faith throughout his life and attended a High
Anglican church. My father was more complex when it came to religious practices.
I remember him praying when I was a child, and he became increasingly religious
as he got older. He would often use religious practices as a way of denying how his
body had aged. He used to enjoy drinking whisky, for example, but as he got older
it began to affect him adversely physically. He then declared that Islam forbade
alcohol and that, of course, was why he had given it up!
My investments work away while I explore these matters of masculinity. I
cannot bear to know about men’s failures and vulnerabilities, and when I know
about men’s humiliations and failings I weep copiously. Despite my feminism
I am invested in the fantasy of the phallus and I can rush to defend, every so
often unthinkingly, Egyptian men. I cannot abide the relentless representations of
Middle Eastern men as patriarchal and oppressive, and I am frequently exhausted
with the banal and empty rhetoric of the ‘clash of civilisations’. I witness men

3 For a careful discussion of these issues see Thomas (2012).

 In the Shadow of the Other 15

struggling to make a life with varying degrees of economic and professional

success. As will be obvious by now, I may live thousands of miles away but my
attachments are resolutely to Egyptian men and I remain, as I have always been,
my father’s daughter.
Interspersed with this family story are significant political events and a long
history of the interrelationship between Egypt and England going back to the
nineteenth century. Many popular representations of Egypt probably coincide
with most people’s primary school knowledge of the pharaonic era. These
representations reinforce an imaginary with images of an exotic Egypt like the
pyramids, the sphinx, the Sahara desert and the Nile. The history is nonetheless
complex. In 1882 Britain decided to occupy Egypt from its economic desire to
control the Suez Canal and thereby secure the trade route to India. As Osman
points out, Egypt never officially became a colony despite the occupation; this was
not from any honourable considerations, but because the British government could
not afford to offend the other European powers with a stake in Egypt (Osman
2010: 7). Osman argues that the image of internationalism had to be maintained:
Britain could not risk provoking Russia and France, thereby endangering access
to the Suez Canal.
The British exercised considerable power in Egyptian affairs, and British
officials expanded their involvement in the political, social, economic and
judicial life of the country. British advisors were installed in key ministries and
all Egyptian ministers (who, in any case, held inferior positions) were required
to obey their British ‘advisors’. Failure to do so resulted in dismissal (Osman
2010: 8). Egypt was in fact a veiled protectorate. The Governor Lord Cromer,
Earl of Baring, considered both Egyptians and Indians to be subject races in need
of leadership. He believed strongly that autocratic rule was necessary because the
people of these countries were used to ‘despotism’, and, fundamentally, he argued
that you cannot make a ‘Western silk purse out of an Eastern sow’s ear’ (Osman
2010: 8). Plus ça change, I caustically think. I am confronted, again, by how
offensive this is on so many levels, not least of which is the reference to pigs and
the sheer arrogance of the beliefs.
During the 1860s and 1870s British influence increased in Egypt, especially
economically. Britain instituted banks and merchant houses and continued to
invest heavily in the financing of the Suez Canal. Political and economic matters
continued with little resistance until 1919 when an Egyptian national party was
forged. This is a key date, as the national party Al-Wafd (meaning the delegation)
developed the struggle for independence from occupation by a European power
(Osman 2010: 25). The year 1919 was a milestone due to the ever-increasing
demand by Egyptian subjects for Egypt to rule itself. It was, of course, a nationalist
movement, and involved the demand for the creation of an Egyptian nation
state and the full representation and equality of its citizens. In 1922 the British
government recognised Egypt’s independence, but Britain continued to rule
powerfully by proxy until 1945. The struggle for independence did not abate, and
the slogan ‘the Devil take the English’ resonated throughout the 1930s and 1940s.
16 Postcolonial Masculinities

Many Egyptians supported the Germans during the Second World War. Partly they
were bombarded with German propaganda, but I suspect more importantly the
support was based on the well-known phrase ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’.
Egypt is an important country geographically and politically. Egypt is next door
to Europe yet in the North of Africa, and it is close to the oil reserves in the Gulf.
It controls the Suez Canal, the world’s most important trade route. It continues to
play a pivotal role in the Arab/Israeli conflict and reconciliation. In addition, as
Osman points out, it is the birthplace and centre of a number of trends and ideas,
including Arab nationalism (Osman 2010: 5). Egypt, though, has a long history of
being colonised and invaded, from the later Islamic empires to Napoleon’s France
and colonial Britain. As Osman pithily expresses it ‘geography and nature have
been generous but history has been harsh’ (Osman 2010: 15). Egypt has frequently
fallen to invaders, and throughout its long history its inhabitants have been second-
class citizens, at best.
An important turning point in the history of Egypt came in 1952. A group of
army officers, the Free Officers under Gamal Abdul Nasser, led a military coup
that overthrew the Egyptian monarchy, which had been continually embroiled
in scandal, British rule and the Wafd Government. The Free Officers came from
upper working class/lower middle class backgrounds and, like many Egyptians,
were disaffected with the monarchy, the government and the dominant influence
of the British. Strong protests and demonstrations took place throughout 1952,
culminating in the Cairo Fire, which destroyed much of central Cairo including
Western shops and businesses. Nasser became President of Egypt in 1954 as
a symbol of hope, defiance and a living embodiment of the Egyptian peoples’
desires and will. Nasser was – perhaps still is – represented (and liked to represent
himself) as the architect of a redemptive grand Egyptian and Arab strategy against
the imperialist powers (Osman 2010: 43). A programme of social justice was
instituted. This was momentous. It was the first opportunity for an Egyptian to
rule Egypt after hundreds of years of colonial history. Nasser’s reputation as a
charismatic anti-colonialist leader was secured especially after the Tripartite War
of 1956, or the Suez Crisis as it is usually called in Britain. Nasser was a thorn
in the side of Anthony Eden, who was outraged that ‘this colonial upstart’ could
threaten and mount an act of aggression against Britain. The Suez Crisis marked
the beginning of the end of British colonial power.
Gamal Abdel Nasser was the first Egyptian to rule Egypt for centuries, and the
excitement and hope this raised cannot be overestimated. From 1952 the military
government took power securely and began to change internal politics, attempting
to build a fairer society. As Osman points out, the economic underpinning of the
Nasserite transformation was twofold: reform of landownership and reform of the
public sector (2010: 45). Land reform, a fairer distribution of land away from the
landowners and towards the fellaheen (peasantry) was popular and had immense
social effects. The Nasserite economic revolution also created a new public sector
and a new class of state-owned factories, companies and enterprises. In addition
almost all of Egypt’s sizable businesses were nationalised in an attempt to remodel
 In the Shadow of the Other 17

the structure of wealth by transferring ownership from a narrow capitalist class to

millions of ordinary employees, poor labourers and struggling workers. Nasser’s
project was given an inclusive national appeal by its emphasis on civic notions
such as social equality, identification with the poor and Egypt’s role as the leader
of the Arab world free of an Islamic dimension (Osman 2010: 51).
However, greater emphasis was placed on Egypt’s place on the international
scene, and the years from 1958 to 1967 saw Nasser attempting to fend off
interventions in the Middle East by America and Britain. Much effort was made
to establish a coherent Arab Region with power and influence but following the
humiliating defeat in 1967 by Israel, Egyptian morale plummeted. It cannot be
stated enough that despite the many failures of the Nasser Regime – and there
were many – Nasser represented hope and optimism. He was seen as a symbol of
regeneration, the lifting of oppression from Arab nations generally and Egyptians
specifically and above all, as a symbol of the restoration of dignity.
Egyptian society did not progress despite the Nasserite efforts. To be frank, on
many fronts it actually regressed. After Nasser’s death in 1970 Anwar Sadat was
President until his assassination in 1981. Sadat introduced a more liberal capitalist
system for the economy, usually described as al-infitah (opening up). This move,
undertaken in 1974, was designed to open Egypt up to foreign trade, investment
and market economics. Sadat was an important figure in Nasser’s government but
he had no real power. It can be argued that in 1973, when he led Egypt’s attack on
Israel, he managed to overthrow Nasser’s shadow.
Despite the introduction of a multi-party system in the 1970s and the holding
since then, of a number of parliamentary elections, democracy and respect
for the rights of the citizen have been diluted over the past six decades. The
rule of oppressive law has dominated. The political system has descended to
frightening levels of corruption, coercion, oppression and cruelty. Corruption in
Egypt under Hosni Mubarak’s rule was phenomenal. (As an example, to which
I should perhaps not confess, obtaining my Egyptian ID card and passport,
even with the correct papers which were all legal and in order, cost me £3000
sterling minimum). Mubarak ruled Egypt from 1981 until February 2011. At
the beginning of his Presidency he was perceived as a leader who would bring
balance to Egypt. He seemed to manage this, and his ‘speeches, his choice of
words, the way he described himself and his vision for the country’s future
suggested a man who was concerned less with his legacy or with how he was
viewed as a leader and more with his capacity to deliver. Mubarak seemed
pragmatic, wholly concerned with Egypt’s immediate economic problems, the
inheritance of al-infitah’ (Osman 2010: 167).
Needless to say this changed powerfully (and, at the beginning, imperceptibly).
The lack of a national project weakened Egypt’s material conditions drastically.
Economically Egypt is in the bottom 40 per cent of all developing countries
according to the United Nations 2007 Human Poverty Index. Education,
healthcare and transportation have deteriorated dramatically. Public hospitals are
slum buildings: I wish I was exaggerating. There are over 60 children to a class in
18 Postcolonial Masculinities

state schools (all middle class parents send their children to private schools) and
transportation is poor. Egypt is marked by crushing socio-economic conditions
and corruption. There is a dearth of information on social policy in Egypt. Past
government reports have skimmed over the extreme problems of health, poverty
and education, and it is unclear whether this will change under the present Regime.
This has resulted in a wide chasm between the actual state of profound difficulties
and the false image provided by government agencies. It is difficult to provide
adequate statistics for Egypt as these are largely massaged to provide a better
image than is actually the case. It is worth underlining there were many driving
motivations that led to the 2011 revolution in Egypt, including the absence of
proper political participation, the high cost of living and ever increasing inflation,
corruption, and a dire lack of employment prospects, especially for young men.
In short, the protestors expressed the profound necessity for social justice and
a political fury at the complete lack of equal opportunities for all. Part of the
continuing anger is directed towards Emergency Rule, a series of repressive laws
suppressing any political engagement or criticisms of the government and President.
Emergency Rule has been in place since 1981, and despite an announcement from
SCAF (Supreme Council of Armed Forces) that the law would be lifted in January
2012 it continues to be covertly implemented.
At present (December 2012) there is little hope – inflation is rocketing, and
is threatening to rise even further, unemployment is severe, and the cost of food
is extremely high. The overwhelming feeling amongst my family and friends
is that the revolution was stolen. We waited with little optimism and little hope
for the Presidential elections. The first stage of the election took place and the
second and final round of the election was contested between Mohammed Morsi
(Freedom and Justice Party the political organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood)
and Ahmad Shafiq a former Prime Minister under the Mubarak regime. There
are accusations of vote rigging and corruption and these were investigated and
dismissed. Mohammed Morsi was elected President of Egypt by a margin of
2 per cent approximately and the Muslim Brotherhood dominate Parliament.
Morsi promised to appoint a cross-gender and religion Senate but at this present
conjuncture (December 2012) he only appointed men who belong to the Muslim
Brotherhood. In addition and very worryingly the new Constitution (which
was approved in December 2012 by only 17 per cent of the population) denies
fundamental rights to women, children and Christians.
It is impossible to provide an overview of the history of the UK from the
1950s to the present day and it is a folly to even imagine that such an endeavour
can be achieved. I will explore what is termed the ‘neoliberal revolution’ as a
route through to providing a framework. As Rutherford and Davison assert the
‘neoliberal revolution began in the 1970s, as an – extremely successful – attempt
to roll back the gains of the post-welfare state, reverse the gains of liberation
movements and restore the dominance of business interests across the world’
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