Politics of Culture and Cosmopolitan Nostalgia during Islamists’ Rule in Egypt

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.