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Narrating the Revolution: On the Egyptian Information Administration, 1954-1967
Abstract
In Nasser’s Blessed Movement, Joel Gordon has noted how narratives of the 1952 Egyptian revolution have constantly been subject to revision since the July 23rd coup itself. These revisions are not just a product of successive generations of historians or historically minded intellectuals trying to re-evaluate the revolution’s consequences, but also a product of the sources on which scholars have based their accounts. Writers who also witnessed the events have privileged personal conversations and documents (e.g. Qissat Thawrat 23 Yuliu, Ahmad Hamrush, 1977). Professional historians have relied on local and foreign archives (e.g. Nasser’s Blessed Movement, Joel Gordon, 1992), publications by intellectuals (e.g. Egypt’s Incomplete Revolution, Rami Ginat, 1997), accounts printed in the popular press (e.g. Revolutionary Womanhood, Laura Bier, 2011), and speeches by the revolutionary leadership (e.g. Nida’ al-Sha‘b, Sharif Younis, 2012). These sources emphasize the role of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, his ministers, and prominent intellectuals in narrating the revolution, but they miss the range of state institutions that have re-narrated the revolution in their own ways from 1952 onwards. This paper examines one such institution: the Information Administration (maslahat al-isti‘lamat) at the Ministry of National Guidance, itself created in 1952 to consolidate old-regime cultural institutions under a single umbrella. Shortly after its inception in 1954, the Administration grew into a central node in the regime’s efforts to gather and publish information on the revolution’s achievements for a domestic and international audience. The Administration’s core mission was to disseminate propaganda (di‘aya), both in the sense of promoting a positive image of the regime domestically and countering negative press abroad. Despite its crucial role in producing Nasser-era propaganda, the Information Administration has remained virtually unexamined in existing scholarship. This paper offers a brief institutional history of the Administration between 1954 and 1967 (when it grew into the still-standing State Information Service). The paper further analyses some key publications produced by the Administration – in particular, a book series on the revolution’s achievements published almost yearly, in multiple languages, between 1955 and 1966. This series narrates the revolution’s success as a joint effort among state institutions, thereby creating an institution-centric narrative of the revolution to contrast with Nasser-centric ones. In sum, the analysis highlights the importance of marrying institutional and textual analysis to understand the intellectual production of state-cultural administrations in Egypt.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries