Shame a Litmus Test to the Revolutionary Affects: the Female Protestor and the Reconfiguration of Gender Normativity

Tahrir Square was the critical event that prompted a new generation of Egyptian feminist and human rights activists to join citizens in the streets to claim a new social and gender contract. While female protestors were an essential part of the revolution, their bodies powerfully triggered the economy of shame to ostracize some activists and to underpin, as Williams explains structures of feeling that sidelined the need to address rape in the square. This paper argues that the female protestor is a focus of political violence whose experiences illuminate the matrix that sustains and normalizes sexual violence in a society. This allows us to connect female body politics with broader socio-economic and political conflicts and with processes of state reconfiguration in marginal/liminal spaces.