Sex(t)ing Revolution, Femen-izing the Public Square: Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, Nude Protest,

and Transnational Feminist Body Politics

Author(s): Karina Eileraas
Source: Signs , Vol. 40, No. 1 (Autumn 2014), pp. 40-52
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677073

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to Signs

This content downloaded from

195.49.216.244 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 15:01:10 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
40 y Symposium: Gendered Bodies in the Protest Sphere

Tamale, Sylvia. 2007. “Out of the Closet: Unveiling Sexuality Discourses in

Uganda.” In Africa after Gender?, ed. Catherine M. Cole, Takyiwaa Manuh,
and Stephan F. Miescher, 17–29. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
———. 2009. “A Human Rights Impact Assessment of the Ugandan Anti-
Homosexuality Bill 2009.” Equal Rights Review, no. 4: 49–57.
y

Sex(t)ing Revolution, Femen-izing the Public Square:

Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, Nude Protest, and Transnational
Feminist Body Politics

Karina Eileraas

Remembering is never a quiet act of introspection or retrospection. It

is a painful re-membering, a putting together of the dismembered past
to make sense of the trauma of the present.
—Homi K. Bhabha ð1987, 123Þ

For politics to take place, the body must appear. . . . Freedom does not
come from me or from you; it can and does happen as a relation between us,
or indeed among us.
—Judith Butler ð2011Þ

O ur bodies inhabit the borderlands of the natural and the constructed,

the marvelous and the mundane. Neither biological givens nor passive
sites of inscription, they represent stunning political interventions, liv-
ing canvases, and endlessly fascinating achievements in time and space ðsee
Grosz 1994; Foucault 1995; Weiss 1999Þ. When bodies hit the streets en
masse to oppose the status quo, their power can appear either infinitesimal
or so spectacular as to arrest onlookers in their tracks. By suspending au-
diences between past and future, demonstrating bodies become emblems
of what is and what might be: “laboratories for alternative futures” ðRose
1999, 279Þ.

Many thanks to Judith Butler and Kim Miller for formative dialogue and inspiration
during my affiliations with the University of California, Berkeley, and Wheaton College in
2010–12. Thanks also to Pardis Mahdavi; organizers and panelists at the Journal of Mid-
dle East Women’s Studies conference at Yale University in spring 2013; Frances Hasso,
Zakia Salime, Banu Gökarıksel, and all of the participants at the Gendered Geographies work-
shop at Duke University in winter 2013; and my students at the University of California,
Berkeley; the University of California, Los Angeles; and Pomona College.

[Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2014, vol. 40, no. 1]
© 2014 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0097-9740/2014/4001-0007$10.00

This content downloaded from

195.49.216.244 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 15:01:10 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 S I G N S Autumn 2014 y 41

Activists today occupy a boundless realm that inaugurates new bodily

imaginaries as well as novel forms of belonging in physical and online
space. Yet in cyberspace and on the street, gendered bodies signify differ-
ently. Their mutable meanings confirm the tense negotiations that attend
any dreaming of the body politic. If, as Ernest Renan ð1882Þ has theorized,
following Friedrich Nietzsche, nations are forged through collective forget-
ting, amnesia also haunts the imagined community of transnational femi-
nist praxis.

The geopolitics of vulnerability: Bodies in improper places

The body in varied states of dress and undress has a long history as an
agent of global protest ðDabashi 2012Þ. To apprehend this history re-
quires sustained engagement with the symbolic geopolitics of embodi-
ment. Crucial sites of resistance, bodies represent humanity in its rawest
form. Our bodies are precarious; prone to bruises, breaks, and scars; and
reliant on others. Simultaneously public and private, the body bleeds and
is penetrated by external forces. Conduits between inside and out, bodily
fluids “imply mortality, vulnerability, agency. The skin and the flesh ex-
pose us to the gaze of others, but also to touch, and to violence. . . .
Although we struggle for rights over our own bodies, the very bodies
for which we struggle are not quite ever only our own. The body has its
invariably public dimension. Constituted as a social phenomenon in the
public sphere, my body is and is not mine” ðButler 2004, 26Þ.
Because they disrupt sacrosanct dichotomies of public/private and
visible/hidden, naked bodies constitute a uniquely explosive site of pro-
test. As Hamid Dabashi ð2012Þ writes, “Dressing is the ceremonial ritual
to present the body in public. Posing a body beneath or beyond its ha-
bitual habitat is disruptive in varied cultures. The deliberate stripping of
clothing a culture has called ‘decent’ is an act of staged formal destruction
that disrupts the normality of socializing norms for a deliberate pause. It
is the staging of the body for a momentary reflection.” Bodies on the
street “redeploy ½public space in order to contest and negate the existing
forms of political legitimacy” ðButler 2011Þ. Bodily protest raises the
question of how diverse lives are valued and whose experiences are officially
named, celebrated, or repressed within collective memory. When protestors
lie down before tanks in Tiananmen Square; light themselves afire like
Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor credited with igniting the
Arab Spring; go on hunger strikes; fashion themselves into human missives
or missiles; occupy Wall Street or Tahrir Square; disrobe in the name of
animal rights, as do activists with People for the Ethical Treatment of Ani-

This content downloaded from

195.49.216.244 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 15:01:10 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
42 y Symposium: Gendered Bodies in the Protest Sphere

mals; or inhabit a tree to challenge multinational logging corporations à la

Julia “Butterfly” Hill, they pose a metaphysical question: What is my body—
my life—worth to you? Nude protest has a special capacity to reconfigure
the body politic by framing vulnerability as a basis for exchange and stag-
ing intimate zones of disruption and disidentification.1
This article will examine the activism of Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, or the
“nude Egyptian blogger,” to reflect on the pause that naked bodies insert
into civic life and to evaluate nudity as means of protest in Egyptian as
well as transnational feminist politics. By “making visible what had no busi-
ness being seen” ðRancière 1989, 674Þ, Elmahdy’s nude body reconfigures
the body politic and reimagines the theater of the political. Her activism
incorporates two distinct phases. Elmahdy initially launched her nude body
into the blogosphere to mark the Arab revolutions as a highly sexualized
topography. By elevating gender and sexuality to the forefront of local and
global geopolitical conversations, Elmahdy brought sex to Tahrir Square,
or underscored its primacy there. Her more recent alliance with the global
feminist organization Femen reveals points of tension with her virtual re-
visioning of the body politic, given that she took her protest to the streets
with an organization that arguably has an Islamophobic, neocolonial fem-
inist agenda. Yet both phases of Elmahdy’s activism enlist her body where
least expected in order to challenge the patriarchal cartography of Tahrir
Square and the gendering of national space more broadly, as well as to
“re-member” ðBhabha 1987, 123Þ the global feminist public square.
Elmahdy’s nude protest offers a compelling invitation to map out sites
of sexual and political provocation that challenge dualisms of secular/reli-
gious, erotic/sacred, flesh/spirit.2 This article will ask whether we might
imagine her naked body, as it appeared online and in collaboration with
Femen, as reinforcing or contesting understandings of femininity, sexu-
ality, and the female nude that travel between East and West. Elmahdy’s
naked body raises key questions about whether nudity might be read as
a mode of complicity or resistance by feminist audiences. It also demon-
strates how the presumed divide between secular-liberal and Islamic fem-
inisms contributes to reductive analyses of women’s experiences in the
Middle East and North Africa ðMENAÞ.3
If, as Claude Guillon ð2008Þ suggests, the most pressing question of our
time is whether the human body has a future, it is equally vital to imagine what
1
Here I am drawing on the theorization of performative spaces of disjuncture and dis-
identification in Butler and Athanasiou ð2013Þ.
2
See, e.g., Kraidy ð2012Þ; see also Barlas ð2005Þ, Nouraie-Simone ð2005Þ, Lazreg ð2011Þ,
Morozov ð2011Þ, Al-Ali ð2012Þ, and Mejias ð2012Þ.
3
For more on the “constraining power of categories,” see Lazreg ð1988, 95Þ.

This content downloaded from

195.49.216.244 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 15:01:10 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 S I G N S Autumn 2014 y 43

lies ahead for feminist body politics. The creative and political deployment of
Elmahdy’s body in cyberspace and on the streets activates new bodily imag-
inaries, or symbolic spaces in which to reimagine vulnerability as a basis for
solidarity and tool for social change. The bodily imaginary set in motion by
Elmahdy simultaneously provides common ground for, troubles, and rewires
the nascent and contested space of transnational feminist body politics. By
sexðtÞing revolution—or deploying nude imagery to evoke the convergence
of sexual, digital, and revolutionary politics in Egypt—and positioning her
body as a living tableau, Elmahdy challenges conventional paradigms of
artistic, social, and political engagement. She enacts productive spaces of
disturbance that suggest more promising forms of transnational feminist
solidarity a venir, still to come.

Sex(t)ing the revolution: A Rebel’s Diary

On October 23, 2011, Elmahdy sparked a sexual and political revolu-
tion by launching her naked body into cyberspace. By uploading a series
of nude photos to her blog, A Rebel’s Diary, she staged a virtual coup
within the contemporary Egyptian sociopolitical climate, in which female
modesty, hijab, and sex segregation are common modes of visibility in
public space. The most popular image, a full-frontal nude self-portrait,
features Elmahdy in black patterned stockings and red flats with a red
flower arranged playfully in her hair ðsee fig. 1Þ. Elmahdy’s self-portrait
recalls Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s straightforward portrayals of prosti-
tutes and courtesans. Her image conveys an insouciance that can be read as
bold, sexy, erotic, shameless, vulgar, or seductive, depending on the audi-
ence. Elmahdy’s direct stare communicates the most daring aspect of her
protest: to own her naked body and sexuality with pride and deliberate
provocation.
When Elmahdy posted her photos online, she published a manifesto-
like narrative alongside them that evoked art history in defense of free ex-
pression: “Put on trial the artists’ models who posed nude for art schools
until the early 70s, hide the art books and destroy the nude statues of
antiquity, then undress and stand before a mirror and burn your bodies
that you despise to forever rid yourselves of your sexual hangups before
you direct your humiliation and chauvinism and dare to try to deny me
my freedom of expression” ðElmahdy 2011Þ.
How might one read Elmahdy’s effort to revamp the female nude—
a loaded signifier with a complex history as a target of the voyeuristic,
heteronormative gaze in diverse national and cultural contexts and genres
ranging from classical painting to comic books, porn, and popular culture—

This content downloaded from

195.49.216.244 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 15:01:10 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
44 y Symposium: Gendered Bodies in the Protest Sphere

Figure 1 Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, Self Portrait (2011). Color version available online.

in cyberspace? What are the promises and perils of resurrecting the naked
female body as vehicle of protest? From certain critical perspectives, one
might maintain that Elmahdy equates nudity with “liberation” ðMernissi
2001Þ, reinforces pernicious Western classical aesthetic views of man as
subject-surveyor and woman as object-surveyed ðBerger 1990; Mulvey
2009Þ, and mirrors philosophical conceptions of the value of the femi-
nine as purely sexual, decorative, and ornamental ðRousseau 1979; Kant
2004Þ. However, fans celebrate Elmahdy’s protest as a feminist effort to
reclaim her body from the grips of the heterosexual male gaze and its con-
comitant sense of entitlement, fantasy, projection, fetishistic objectification,
and voyeuristic titillation.
In mood and composition, Elmahdy’s self-portrait starkly contrasts
with Orientalist portraits of odalisques that depict nude women reclin-
ing in the hidden domestic interior of the harem ðfig. 2Þ. The odalisque re-

This content downloaded from

195.49.216.244 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 15:01:10 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 S I G N S Autumn 2014 y 45

Figure 2 Henri Matisse, Odalisque a la culotte rouge (1921). Color version available online.

clines passively, staring into the distance while presumably waiting for a
man to enter her space. The most striking features of the odalisque are her
languor and passivity, which make it impossible to imagine her as a subject
of history in her own right. She is reduced to passive object, waiting for
space to be filled and history to be shaped by others.
Conversely, Elmahdy stands upright in her self-portrait, with one leg
resting casually on a stool. She faces the camera head-on, directly con-
fronting the camera lens with her potent gaze. Defying traditional ex-
pectations of female modesty, Elmahdy boldly opens her legs to expose
her genitals to the viewer. Elmahdy’s choice to adorn her naked body with
stockings, a red flower, and red flats instantly sexualizes the image. Her
portrait is iconic: arresting in its simplicity and insistent in its determina-
tion to put sexuality in conversation with revolution.
Elmahdy wrests the female nude from the realm of aesthetic conven-
tion, investing it with sexual and political agency. Although one may claim
that her body is objectified or exploited by the camera, she seems to stare
back at it with a defiant look that bell hooks has described in another
context as “oppositional” ð1992Þ. Framed by a gaze that might be con-
strued as voyeuristic, Elmahdy stages a virtual confrontation that seems
to affirm her body’s right to occupy space, to fuse the private zone of the
boudoir with the revolutionary public square, and to transform the pho-

This content downloaded from

195.49.216.244 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 15:01:10 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
46 y Symposium: Gendered Bodies in the Protest Sphere

tographic field into a space of possibility wherein she writes herself into
history as political and sexual subject.
Elmahdy tactically deploys the female nude to suggest its disruptive,
even militant potentials. By enlisting visual culture and social media in sex-
ual and revolutionary praxis, she troubles the borders of conventional or-
ganizing. She also locates the material body within the body politic, as the
creative and political agent most empowered to transform structural in-
equality. Positioning her body as canvas and herself as an advocate for free
speech in cyberspace, Elmahdy performatively expands the public square.
Her digital activism is especially promising because it orchestrates a virtual
community for those living in exile and diaspora.
When Elmahdy posted nude photos online in 2011, she opened a
floodgate for women worldwide. Feminist activists from Egypt and all cor-
ners of the globe continually view her blog to express solidarity. If one
visits A Rebel’s Diary today, its evolving weave of text and imagery at-
tests to a nascent transnational feminist body politic. Empowered by com-
munications technology and social media savvy, this virtual community is
inspiring in its dedication to complex struggles for social justice and per-
sonal transformation. Especially striking is one post that merges Elmahdy’s
photo with that of the female protestor who was infamously assaulted
and stripped to reveal her blue bra in Tahrir Square. By fusing these two
potent images, the blogger recognizes sexuality and revolution as inextri-
cably bound, often with tragic implications.
Feminist aspirations have historically been construed as antithetical
to Egyptian national identity, except when tethered to colonial, Islamo-
phobic “modernizing” agendas.4 Likewise, women’s bodies have consti-
tuted a battlefield—symbols of national, cultural, and religious tradition
and purity standing in opposition to colonial encroachment and moder-
nization. Elmahdy wrests her body from this symbolic terrain to recon-
figure it as a malleable geopolitical signifier. Like many young feminist
activists in the MENA, she uses social media to reclaim bodily agency and
create a safe space, or digital umma ðBarlas 2005Þ, through which to
challenge gender inequality and sexual marginalization. In the virtual
sphere, these new warrior-activists, or “netizens,” “forge an ‘other space’—
akin to Foucault’s ‘heterotopias’—where they can engage in discussions
about sexuality and the female body, jointly redefine notions of honor and

4
As was the case with the discourse against the veil advanced by Lord Cromer in the United
Kingdom and later championed by Qasim Amin in The Liberation of Women ([1899] 2000), tra-
ditionally regarded as marking the beginning of feminism in Arab culture. See Ahmed (1992).

This content downloaded from

195.49.216.244 on Sun, 05 Mar 2Thu, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 S I G N S Autumn 2014 y 47

shame, and collectively imagine Egypt free of gender inequality and sexual
violence” ðGalán 2013Þ.
As Cynthia Enloe ð2000Þ notes, the message “not now, later” ð62Þ of-
ten has echoes within nationalist revolutionary movements, which ask
women to put feminist aspirations aside in favor of issues deemed more
pressing to the body politic. Elmahdy’s refusal to postpone addressing
gender and sexuality within revolutionary Egypt’s milieu of sexual harass-
ment, gang rape, forced virginity testing, and public shaming of presum-
ably loose women occupying Tahrir Square alongside men sent an ex-
plosive message. Her nude photos broke a long-standing silence within
collective memory by forcing the public to acknowledge sex and gender
as critical components of revolution. In this sense, her message resonates
with feminist visual activism throughout the region, including a billboard
campaign that has become a cornerstone of women’s protests in the Arab
revolutions, especially in Tunisia and Lebanon. This campaign begins with
the phrase “I am with the Arab women’s uprising because . . .” and asks
supporters to finish the sentence. Elmahdy’s audacious cybercampaign ech-
oes one woman’s assertion: “I am with the Arab women’s uprising because
I am a revolution, not a shameful intimate part” ðquoted in Weirich 2013Þ.

Re-membering the transnational feminist public square:

On the streets with Femen
The female nude is a complex, contradictory, and historically fraught sig-
nifier. While I have argued that Elmahdy’s naked body circulates online
with significant feminist potential and transnational appeal, I am less con-
vinced of the emancipatory possibilities of her nude protest on the streets
with the global feminist organization Femen. Her alliance with Femen
raises troubling questions about the potential for the cooptation of the fe-
male nude as cultural symbol.
Femen has become a lightning rod in the debate over how to craft
global feminist solidarity and a litmus test for the claim that nudity por-
tends liberation. Famous for its “noticeably erotic rallies” ðGreenhouse
2013Þ, Femen was formed in Ukraine in 2008 as a reading group con-
cerned with the local disconnect between socialist and feminist politics.
The group initially protested by branding itself with all-pink outfits but
soon found that they attracted more media attention by appearing topless
in public. Although critics contend that the organization overwhelmingly
enlists thin, white, attractive, model-like volunteers, Femen leaders blame
the press for devoting disproportionate visibility to members who match
those criteria of idealized femininity. Now dubbed “topless warriors” in

This content downloaded from

195.49.216.244 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 15:01:10 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
48 y Symposium: Gendered Bodies in the Protest Sphere

the press and headquartered in Paris, Femen activists use their naked bodies
as sites of protest, appearing topless on the streets with provocative slogans
scrawled on their flesh. Savvy readers of mainstream media and “masters
of the media game” ðReinbold 2013Þ, Femen activists are well versed in
guerrilla performance tactics. Through its signature brand of topless the-
atrics, Femen uses antireligious rhetoric to advance Western humanist ideals
of liberation and freedom. Its founders brand the group as a proponent of
“new feminism” that celebrates sexual difference and deploys breasts as sexy
yet militant symbols of femininity ðReinbold 2013Þ. Until recently, Femen
was presumed to have been organized and led by women. However, a 2013
documentary by Australian filmmaker Kitty Green outs political scientist
Victor Svyatski as the “male mastermind” or ideologue ðSvyatski 2013Þ be-
hind the organization, raising questions about the possible cooptation of
Femen’s goals and methods as well as its sources of funding ðUkraine Is Not a
Brothel 2013Þ. Although details of Svyatski’s involvement are still sketchy
and skeptics suspect that Green’s documentary may be yet another public-
ity stunt, critics maintain that the revelation destroys the organization’s fem-
inist credibility and forces a complete reexamination of Femen’s politics.
In December 2012, Elmahdy joined forces with Femen outside the
Egyptian embassy in Stockholm to protest Egypt’s draft constitution.
Her Swedish protest marks a shift from the use of her body as artistic
canvas to its deployment as megaphone ðDunn 2012Þ. It also represents
the movement of Elmahdy’s nude protest away from the virtual world of
cyberspace to the material space of the streets. Critics contend that El-
mahdy’s work with Femen aligns her with movements to consolidate
Western hegemony.
To protest in Cairo, still in the throes of revolution, is a vastly different
endeavor than organizing on the far-removed streets of Stockholm ðDunn
2012Þ. Launching one’s naked body into the former realm seems espe-
cially risky, whereas the latter does not. The political stakes shift somewhat
in light of the relatively lower risks involved in cyberactivism ðsometimes
derided as “armchair activism” or “slactivism”Þ versus having a bodily
presence on the streets. Yet Elmahdy’s cyberactivism has garnered the
most rape and death threats. She fears that she will be jailed if she returns
to Egypt, and family members remain in Egypt are harassed on a daily ba-
sis. Mahmoud Afifi, spokesperson for Egypt’s liberal April 6 Youth Move-
ment, condemned Elmahdy’s nude cyberprotest as obscene ðAjbaili 2012Þ.
Her protest with Femen has also proved controversial among liberals in
Egypt, many of whom predicted that her actions would provoke a con-
servative backlash ensuring the victory of Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt’s constitutional referendum.

This content downloaded from

195.49.216.244 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 15:01:10 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 S I G N S Autumn 2014 y 49

On April 4, 2013, Femen ignited worldwide controversy by staging

International Topless Jihad Day ðITJDÞ. Femen’s putative leader, Inna
Schevchenko, described the event as a day of protest that targeted mosques
and Tunisian embassies throughout Europe to oppose Islamism and sha-
ria. In response, a group of Muslim women organized an online Mus-
limah Pride Day, which aimed, in the words of one organizer, “to show
the world that we oppose Femen and their use of Muslim women to re-
inforce Western imperialism” ðin Al Jazeera 2013Þ. Using Twitter and
Facebook, several Muslim women posted “selfies” taken while wearing
the hijab and holding signs directed to Femen reading, for example, “Nu-
dity does not liberate me—and I do not need ‘saving’. You do not rep-
resent me!” ðAl Jazeera 2013Þ. The uproar provoked by ITJD recalls how
acts of solidarity authored by naked female bodies in the West can be read
as tools of colonial, racist, and Islamophobic feminism. Ultimately, such
campaigns promote alienation rather than a united front.
Elmahdy’s alliance with the fiercely secular rhetoric of Femen seems
to erase the revisioning of religious identity associated with contempo-
rary Islamic feminist or post-Islamic movements that call into question the
binary Islamist/secularist divide by which the Western media tend to inter-
pret Elmahdy’s protest.5 This stance ignores an entire spectrum of Islamic
feminist praxis gaining momentum throughout the MENA region that seeks
to balance religious, feminist, and queer positionalities. By allying with Fe-
men, an organization that explicitly rejects the hijab as a monolithic symbol
of oppression, Elmahdy seems to short-circuit the complexities of her po-
litical message, including her earlier political campaign to encourage Egyp-
tian men to wear the hijab in solidarity with women. Her liaison with Femen
compels audiences to reflect on the dangers of colonial feminism and West-
ern feminist rescue efforts ðsee Ahmed 1982; Abu-Lughod 2002Þ.

Conclusion
The circulation of Elmahdy’s body in cyberspace and on the streets raises
fascinating questions about the evolving contours of the transnational
feminist public square, especially the digital umma ðBarlas 2005Þ, or Is-
lamic global cyberpublic, fast taking shape via social media and online
networking tools. As they circulate in material and virtual space, naked
female bodies mark vital sites of friction, empowerment, and occupation
that rewire the body politic and reimagine the interface between sex,

5
For a useful introduction to the origins and practices of Islamic feminism, see Badran ð1999Þ.

This content downloaded from

195.49.216.244 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 15:01:10 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
50 y Symposium: Gendered Bodies in the Protest Sphere

revolution, and liberation. At the same time, these bodies explore possi-
ble horizons of nude protest in struggles to re-member revolution and
community from feminist and queer perspectives. At stake in these explo-
rations is the ability not only to forge counternarratives of the contem-
porary Arab revolutions but to multiply future possibilities of transnational
feminist praxis. In this sense the revamped but contentious female nude
at the heart of Elmahdy’s online and street protests does more than create
safe space for women protestors. It invites us to re-vision the body politic
and force of solidarity in relation to myriad feminist sites of disloyalty,
fracture, and disidentification, in a time and space still to come.
Department of Anthropology
Pomona College

References
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2002. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropo-
logical Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others.” American Anthro-
pologist 104ð3Þ:783–90.
Ahmed, Leila. 1982. “Western Ethnocentrism and Perceptions of the Harem.”
Feminist Studies 8ð3Þ:521–34.
———. 1992. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Ajbaili, Mustapha. 2012. “Egypt Activist Who Protested Nude Says She Wants
to Make Change, Differently.” Al Arabiya News, December 21. http://english
.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/12/21/256345.html.
Al-Ali, Nadje. 2012. “Gendering the Arab Spring.” Middle East Journal of Cul-
ture and Communication 5ð1Þ:26–31.
Al Jazeera. 2013. “Muslim Women Decry Topless Gender Protests.” Al Jazeera,
April 5. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/04/201345118382
70701.html.
Amin, Qasim. (1899) 2000. The Liberation of Women: The New Woman. Cairo:
American University in Cairo Press.
Badran, Margot. 1999. “Toward Islamic Feminisms: A Look at the Middle East.”
In Hermeneutics and Honor: Negotiating Female “Public” Space in Islamic/
ate Societies, ed. Asma Afsaruddin, 159–88. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press.
Barlas, Asma. 2005. “Globalizing Equality: Muslim Women, Theology, and Fem-
inism.” In On Shifting Ground: Muslim Women in the Global Era, ed. Fereshteh
Nouraie-Simone, 91–110. New York: Feminist Press.
Berger, John. 1990. Ways of Seeing. New York: Penguin.
Bhabha, Homi K. 1987. “Remembering Fanon.” New Formations, no. 1: 118–24.
Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New
York: Verso.

This content downloaded from

195.49.216.244 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 15:01:10 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 S I G N S Autumn 2014 y 51

———. 2011. “Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street.” Transversal
ðOctoberÞ. http://eipcp.net/transversal/1011/butler/en.
Butler, Judith, and Athena Athanasiou. 2013. Dispossession: The Performative in
the Political. Cambridge: Polity.
Dabashi, Hamid. 2012. “La Vita Nuda: Baring Bodies, Bearing Witness.” Al
Jazeera, January 23. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01
/201212111238688792.html.
Dunn, Michael Collins. 2012. “Aliaa Elmahdy Revisited: ‘The First Time as
Tragedy, the Second as Farce’?” Middle East Institute Editor’s Blog, Decem-
ber 27. http://mideasti.blogspot.com/2012/12/aliaa-elmahdy-revisited-first
-time-as.html.
Elmahdy, Aliaa Magda. 2011. “Nude Art.” A Rebel’s Diary, October 23. http://
arebelsdiary.blogspot.com/2011/10/nude-art _ 2515.html.
Enloe, Cynthia. 2000. Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of
International Politics. Rev. ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan
Sheridan. New York: Vintage.
Galán, Susana. 2013. “The ðGenderedÞ Revolution Continues: From ‘Bread,
Freedom, and Human Dignity’ to ‘No to Sexual Harassment’ in Post-Mubarak
Egypt.” Paper presented at the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 2013
Distinguished Lecture and Research Workshop, Yale University, April 19.
Greenhouse, Emily. 2013. “How to Provoke National Unrest with a Facebook
Photo.” New Yorker Elements blog, April 8. http://www.newyorker.com/online
/blogs/elements/2013/04/amina-tyler-topless-photos-tunisia-activism.html.
Grosz, Elizabeth. 1994. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Blooming-
ton: Indiana University Press.
Guillon, Claude. 2008. Je chants le corps critique: Les usages politiques du corps
½I sing the body critical: Political uses of the body. Paris: H & O Editions.
hooks, bell. 1992. “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.” In Black
Looks: Race and Representation, 115–31. Boston: South End.
Kant, Immanuel. 2004. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the
Sublime. Trans. John T. Goldthwait. 2nd rev. ed. Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press.
Kraidy, Marwan M. 2012. “The Revolutionary Body Politic: Preliminary Thoughts
on a Neglected Medium in the Arab Uprisings.” Middle East Journal of Culture
and Communication 5ð1Þ:66–74.
Lazreg, Marnia. 1988. “Feminism and Difference: The Perils of Writing as a
Woman on Women in Algeria.” Feminist Studies 14ð1Þ:81–107.
———. 2011. “What Do We Call Them? The Arab People’s Movements and
the Language of the Media.” Muftah, March 4. http://muftah.org/what-do
-we-call-them-the-arab-peoples-movements-the-language-of-the-media-by
-marnia-lazreg/.
Mejias, Ulises A. 2012. “Liberation Technology and the Arab Spring: From
Utopia to Atopia and Beyond.” Fibreculture Journal, no. 20. http://twenty

This content downloaded from

195.49.216.244 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 15:01:10 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
52 y Symposium: Gendered Bodies in the Protest Sphere

.fibreculturejournal.org/2012/06/20/fcj-147-liberation-technology-and
-the-arab-spring-from-utopia-to-atopia-and-beyond/.
Mernissi, Fatema. 2001. “Size 6: The Western Women’s Harem.” In Schehera-
zade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems, 208–20. New York: Wash-
ington Square.
Morozov, Evgeny. 2011. The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom.
New York: Public Affairs.
Mulvey, Laura. 2009. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In Visual and
Other Pleasures, 2nd ed., 14 –27. New York: Macmillan.
Nouraie-Simone, Fereshteh. 2005. “Wings of Freedom: Iranian Women, Iden-
tity, and Cyberspace.” In On Shifting Ground: Muslim Women in the Global
Era, ed. Fereshteh Nouraie-Simone, 61–79. New York: Feminist Press.
Rancière, Jacques. 1989. The Nights of Labor: The Workers’ Dream in Nineteenth-
Century France. Trans. John Drury. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Reinbold, Fabian. 2013. “Male Mastermind: Was the Femen Scandal a Publicity
Stunt?” Spiegel Online, September 6. http://www.spiegel.de/international
/zeitgeist/topless-protests-femen-mastermind-scandal-could-be-publicity-stunt
-a-920882.html.
Renan, Ernest. 1882. “What Is a Nation?” Lecture at the Sorbonne, Paris. http://
www.nationalismproject.org/what/renan.htm.
Rose, Nikolas. 1999. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1979. Emile; Or, On Education. Trans. Allan Bloom. New
York: Basic.
Svyatski, Victor. 2013. “Femen’s Male Mastermind: ‘I Am No Tyrant.’” Inter-
view by André Eichhofer and Matthias Schepp. Spiegel Online, September 26.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-femen-mastermind
-victor-svyatski-on-fleeing-ukraine-a-924524.html.
Ukraine Is Not a Brothel: The Femen Story. 2013. Directed by Kitty Green. Tel
Aviv: Cinephil.
Weirich, Sarah. 2013. “From the Sacred to the State: Memory, Women’s Hu-
man Rights, and the Tunisian Revolution.” Paper presented at the Journal of
Middle East Women’s Studies 2013 Distinguished Lecture and Research Work-
shop, Yale University, April 19.
Weiss, Gail. 1999. Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality. London: Rout-
ledge.
y

This content downloaded from

195.49.216.244 on Sun, 05 Mar 2023 15:01:10 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms