Abstract
This paper is concerned with the “ṣawt al-mar’ah thawrah” protest slogan and its iteration during the 2011-3 Egyptian revolutionary era. I am interested in the slogan’s negotiation between voice and virtue amid an overarching political context of heightened popular mobilization surrounding questions of gender equality, power, and national religiosity. Reflecting on this and a number of related chants included in a short video of a 2012 woman-led protest (Yqeennews2), I discuss their representation of feminist voice during Egypt’s 2011-3 uprising and the associations of this voice with concepts of virtue (or lack thereof) in the Egyptian public sphere. Central to any analysis of Egyptian protest slogans is a recognition of their poetic roots and intertextual dimensions. To do so, I use Elliott Colla’s work on Egyptian movement poetry and Adriana Cavarero’s understanding of vocal expression.
Moreover, discussing Egyptian feminist protest slogans in the western academy necessarily entails a process of translation of both language and politics. I focus on how the voice relayed through these feminist protest chants may be translated effectively into English so that the translation captures the complexity of its attributes and articulations, maintains its marked political commitment, and continues to hold revolutionary weight and relevance for English-speaking audiences. To this end, I am guided by Sarah Hawas’ approach to translating revolution, defined by its commitment to a politics of difference relayed in terms that resonate with discursive concerns on the global stage.
This paper finds that the protest slogans in question entail a dislodging of voice from questions of virtue and display a complex, layered understanding of voice itself. I argue that the power of women’s voice in this poetic/protest moment goes beyond its capacity to carry speech and encompasses elements of performance, physicality, and organization. Finally, in terms of the video recording, I highlight how its editorial structure and videographic techniques reveal an intimate understanding of voice and how it can be expressed through the filming, editing, and posting of such a pivotal protest/poetic moment.
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