To write/to revolt: Egyptian women novelists writing the revolution

Most of the accounts, whether in Arabic or English, which deal with the first 18 days (25 January – 11 February) of the 2011 Egyptian revolution highlight the unity of the Tahrir days. This paper investigates the homogenous Tahrir experience from the perspective of three Egyptian women writers who lived this experience. I analyse the intersection between the personal and the political in three texts: Ahdaf Soueif’s memoir Cairo: My City, Our Revolution, Mona Prince’s testimony Ismi Thawra (My Name is Revolution) and Donia Kamal’s novel Sigarah Sab‘a (A Seventh Cigarette). All three texts were published in 2012. The paper engages two specific feminist concepts: Judith Butler’s performativity and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s strategic essentialism. The paper is divided into three parts. The first part briefly outlines the theoretical framework. The second part situates the revolution and the writers in the context of Egyptian women’s earlier struggle for the nation, whilst exploring Nira Yuval-Davis and Ell...