Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « Cosmopolitanism – Egypt – Cairo »

Art in Egypt during the first half of the twentieth century has frequently been understood as closely tied to Egyptian nationalism, emerging suddenly in 1908 with the founding of the Cairo School of Fine Arts to provide the nation with visual representations. I look at art writing during the first half of the twentieth century in both the Arabic and French-language Egyptian press to show instead that a public discourse surrounding the fine arts emerged slowly over the course of several decades to constitute a locus for the negotiation of mutually constitutive cosmopolitan and national subject positions. Through their work, artists and critics positioned themselves, often ambivalently, in relation to the manifold claims of Egyptian, Arab, and European identity jostling for recognition within the context of the British occupation and the struggle for independence.

Abstract In the aftermath of the Egyptian uprising in 2011 when Egypt witnessed the emergence of a new Islamist political elite, nostalgia for the country’s glorified past took on an increased political value for those who opposed the new rulers. A Cairo-based milieu of socioeconomically privileged actors, who anxiously observed the election victories of the Muslim Brotherhood, criticized the political developments in light of an imagined Egyptian past. In this article I analyze their discourses and practices and show how they instrumentalized notions of an ancient Egyptian civilization and Egypt’s imagined cosmopolitan past in their critique of the new rulers. It illustrates how, in the political climate of growing tensions after the election of Muhammad Morsi, references to an imagined past, one that was more tolerant, civilized and cosmopolitan, provided a critical resource for those who opposed the new rulers. In the article I locate these propagated visions of cosmopolitanism in the context of Egyptian nationalism and the grand narrative of the Egyptian state.

Cette étude présente, dans le sillage des travaux sur la construction des identités des communautés italiennes à l’étranger, les modalités de rassemblement et d’unification de la colonie italienne du Caire de 1861 à la Première Guerre mondiale et ses vecteurs identitaires. Elle remet en question à cette occasion la vision littéraire du cosmopolitisme égyptien au XIXe siècle, de cet âge d’or dont on déplore la disparition, tout en mettant en évidence le mouvement véritablement cosmopolite des revendications sociales et indépendantistes du début du XXe siècle. Une étude des liens de sociabilités formels de la colonie italienne du Caire et de son discours identitaire permet en effet d’observer de manière approfondie le discours tenu par les associations de la colonie autour du cosmopolitisme et d’en observer l’inadéquation à la réalité. Le cosmopolitisme est surtout employé comme justification de la présence italienne en Egypte et comme moyen de se démarquer face aux colonies françaises, grecques et anglaises. Par ailleurs la colonie cairote à partir des années 1880 se compose d’une majorité d’ouvriers et artisans. L’étude des sociabilités informelles (liens d’amitié, de parenté, relations de voisinage et de travail) permet d’observer les rapports de la colonie au sens large avec le milieu cairote, qui sont caractérisés par des relations s’inscrivant dans une indifférence réciproque ponctuée de désordres imprévisibles plutôt que dans le cosmopolitisme tant vanté par les textes littéraires. Pourtant ce cosmopolitisme a une réalité car il est présent au cours des luttes sociales du Caire du début des années 1900 à travers l’union des ouvriers italiens, grecs et égyptiens dans les premiers mouvements de grève cairote. L’insertion des anarchistes italiens dans ce contexte permet de relier ces évènements à un mouvement plus global de luttes sociales à travers l’Europe et même l’Amérique latine, annonciateur de modernité
In the wake of previous works on the building of identities of Italian communities abroad, this study analyses how the Italian community of Cairo took shape from 1861 until the First World Wide War, as well as its identity factors. In doing so, it questions the litterary claim of a true Egyptian cosmopolitism in the ninetieth century, this much missed golden age, but also highlights the truly cosmopolitan movement of social and independence demands of the early twentieth century. Indeed, the study of formal social ties of Cairo Italian colony and its identity discourse leads to great detail on the official speech of its societies about cosmopolitism and puts it largely into perspective. Cosmopolitanism appears to be mainly claimed as a justification of the Italian presence in Egypt and as a way to stand apart from the French, Greek and English colonies. Moreover, the Cairo colony of 1880 consisted mainly of workers and craftsmen. The study of informal social relationships (friendships, family ties, neighborhood and work bonds) shows the links of the colony as a whole with its Cairo environment were characterized by mutual indifference punctuated by unpredictable disturbances - as opposed to the much touted cosmopolitanism claimed by literary texts. Yet cosmopolitism actually did exist as it was present in Cairo social struggles in the early 1900s through the union of Italian, Greek and Egyptian workers during the first strikes ever to happen in the city. The participation of Italian anarchists in this context made these events part of a global movement of social struggles across Europe and even Latin America that were the promise of a new modern era

Defence date: 31 May 2017
Examining Board: Professor Heba Raouf Ezzat, Cairo University; Professor Anna Triandafyllidou, European University Institute; Professor Jean-Pascal Daloz, CNRS/MISHA Strasbourg; Professor Olivier Roy, European University Institute
As a contribution to the diverse field of cosmopolitan scholarship, engaging with ‘cultural cosmopolitanism’ often understood in a vernacular sense as the capacity to meditate between different cultures, religions and ways of life, the thesis locates and analyses cosmopolitan discourses and cosmopolitan material practices within the cultural and socio-political conditions in which they were uttered in the Muslim majority context of Egypt. While issues concerning religion have been at the crux of contemporary Middle East scholarship, less often addressed are discursive and material spaces in which other types of imaginaries can prosper. As an interdisciplinary study, informed by ethnographic inquiry, the thesis engages in analyzing a cosmopolitan social imaginary as well as expressions of differing aspirations - that were framed in cosmopolitan terms - during the period between the Egyptian revolution in January 2011 and the military coup d’état in summer 2013. Witnessing profound political changes with new actors such as the Muslim Brotherhood entering the political arena, the period constitutes a historically significant moment for the analysis of discourses and practices with a cosmopolitan reference. The research grounds cosmopolitan theories in space and time and reflects on the appropriation of the cosmopolitan concept. Consequently, it casts a critical look at how there was a materialization of cosmopolitan notions of self-reflexivity and detachment – the ability to see the world from the viewpoint of one’s cultural ‘others’. On the one hand, the study discusses how nostalgia for the past, framed in cosmopolitan terms, relates to the present, and on the other, how contemporary cosmopolitan discourses and practices, enabled through global market forces, materialized in the Egyptian context in the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution of 2011. Within the political setting of post-2011 revolution Egypt, this research observes how social distinction can be enacted through cosmopolitan references. Viewed in relation to the socio-political realities of the location under study, it points to social hierarchies, which the differentiation ‘global’ and ‘local’ helps to create, and to appropriations of the contextual distinctiveness and specificity of the cosmopolitan imaginary. While discussing social distinction through an analysis of cosmopolitan imaginaries, the thesis contributes to the fields of both elite scholarship and cosmopolitan scholarship.
Chapter 6 ‘The gendered self and the other' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'The gender dimension of the authoritarian backlash' (2015) in the journal ‘Turkish policy quarterly’