Beth Baron's Egypt As A Wom Nationalism

Summary

In a broad sense, Beth Baron's Egypt as a Woman: Nationalism, Gender and Politics redresses the exclusion of Egyptian women's role in the collective memory of the nationalist and anti-colonial politics of the 19th and 20th centuries. In attending to this project, Baron explores the various imaginings of the Egyptian nation as a woman, juxtaposed against women's participation in, and exclusion from public spaces. Through visual imagery and print media- photographs, cartoons, painting, statuary, journals, and magazines- Baron presents Egypt as an "imagined community" in which the image of women needing of protection was essential in the process of creating the nation. And while this vision of woman as the holders of familial and national

By engaging in a close reading of poems, journal articles, cartoons, photographs, statuary and other media, Baron also shows how these gendered symbols became commonly understood amongst the Egyptian population. Commonly recognized women were main subjects in media portrayal. Baron shows how these women meticulously controlled their images in media to comport with their symbolic roles as well as to promote their political agendas. She further shows how media also utilized images- photographs and cartoons- to censure female activists who deviated from the established familial roles of women in the public space. Baron utilizes visual sources in order to illustrate the representation of women and their roles in the Egyptian public space. Baron shows how these representations were constructed by male nationalists in order to create a familial sense of nationalism, by the press to reinforce this gendered nationalism and censure women who break from their public roles, and by the women activists themselves who exerted control over their public

In this regard she succeeded. Through her presentation of a gendered and familial national identity, Baron shows the place of women in Egyptian national politics and the ways in which they appropriated nationalist symbolism to promote their political agendas. Baron also succeeds in expounding upon the notion of Egypt as an “imagined community” through her analysis of the visual art and print media of the 19th and 20th Century. Baron shows how the media constructed and reinforced the idea of a gendered and familial nationalism through the depiction of Egypt as a woman. Furthermore while Baron makes it clear that women were able to adopt these symbols in order to make a place for themselves within Egyptian politics, she still presents the limitations this vision of women placed on female activists. This is clear in her discussion of Safiyya’s return to Egypt at the end of her husband’s exile. Baron points out that while in Europe Safiyya did not veil. However upon the urging of other Wafdist members she wore the veil before disembarking in Egypt. When questioned why she made this decision she responds “‘I have more than one husband.’” (150) This anecdote exemplifies the limitations placed on public women by gendered conceptions of Egyptian nationalism. Safiyya, as the “Mother of Egyptians” was obliged to behave in a fashion that aligned