Affective Fragments in Sisi’s Egypt - Maria Frederika Malmström
This sophisticated book presents new theoretical and analytical light on the momentous events in the Arab world that began in 2011 and, more importantly, life and politics in the Arab world in the aftermath of these events. Focusing on the qualities of the sensory world, Maria Frederika Malmström explores the dramatic differences after the Revolution in Egypt and their implications on society—the lack of sound in the floating landscape of Cairo after the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, the role of material things in the sit-ins of 2013, the military evocation of masculinities (and destruction of alternative ones), how people experience pain, rage, disgust, euphoria, and passion in the body. While focused primarily on the changes unfolding in Egypt, it is a study of how materiality and affect provide new possibilities for exploring societies in transition. A book of rare honesty and vulnerability, The Streets Are Talking to Me is a brilliant, unconventional, and self-conscious ethnography of the space where affect, material life, violence, political crisis, and masculinities meet one another.
Maria Frederika Malmström is Associate Professor in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies Lund University. Her first book, The Politics of Female Circumcision in Egypt,approached gender, sexuality, and the construction of identity in relation to global politics.
