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Cosmopolitan Gaze, Egyptian Caricatures: The role of foreign local artists in the making of Egypt's satirical repertoire during the 'Cosmopolitan Era' (1882-1936)
Abstract by Dr. Keren Zdafee On Session 114  (Scenarios of Cosmopolitanism)

On Friday, November 18 at 5:45 pm

2016 Annual Meeting

Abstract
Caricatures produced for Egyptian audiences during the first four decades of the twentieth century tell a great deal about how their artists, most of whom were foreigners, immigrants, and members of longstanding minority communities in Egypt, perceived themselves as foreign locals. By the 1930s the caricature that entered the Egyptian public sphere as a print medium, established its inseparability from the development of Egyptian modern print culture. Discussing mainly the British occupation, the impotence of Egyptian politicians throughout the national struggle, and the implications of the East-West encounter on Egyptian society, these images were traditionally labeled in postcolonial research as "Egyptian nationalist iconography". Analyzing Egyptian caricatures from late nineteenth century through the first four decades of the twentieth, I seek to reveal a somewhat different perspective. Cosmopolitan entrepreneurs, who were part of the thriving cosmopolitan society based in Cairo and Alexandria, initiated the processes of cultural transfer whereby the caricature was imported, adapted, and assimilated into the consolidating Egyptian press. These foreigners, immigrants, and minority residents had arrived in Egypt during an extended period of immigration that attracted Ottoman subjects and foreigners seeking economic opportunity, thus helping to transform Cairo into a hub of cultural activity. Although many of them neither integrated into Egyptian Arab society, nor sought Egyptian nationality, they settled in Egypt's major urban centers and turned them into cosmopolitan sites wherein "native" and "foreign" were intertwined. These cosmopolitan subjects were deeply involved in the cultural enterprise of the Egyptian nahḍa, and with regard to the satirical genre their involvement was highly prominent: the first two illustrated satirical journals to be distributed in Egypt were ventures published in Paris and Vienna by Egyptian cosmopolitan immigrants; followed afterwards by local ventures, which served as platforms for the work of artists from Europe and the United States. The images they designed emerged from their cosmopolitan experience and identity, and although they reflected identification with the place (Egypt) and the collective (the Egyptians), in my opinion they cannot be labeled as simply 'Eastern' or 'Egyptian' (nor 'Western'). By analyzing images from the prominent satirical periodical of what can be termed "Egypt's cosmopolitan era", I seek to demonstrate how these images, although produced in Egyptian vernacular for consumption first and foremost by an Egyptian audience, resist the "native/foreign", "us/them", binaries to create an in-between visual sphere.
Discipline
Art/Art History
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries