Elshirazy, Mohamed; (2022) The Reproduction of Political Agency for Activists in post 2014 Egypt: an account of ignorance as a necessity for politics in traumatic contexts. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

In this thesis I examine the process of maintaining political engagement among Egyptian activists who were affected by the political traumas that accompanied the military’s return to power after the 2013 popular uprising. As the political field in Egypt dramatically changed, some political activists were able to reproduce their political agency, while others were not able to maintain their political engagement and have forsaken political activism. This thesis examines why some activists were able to reproduce their political agency while others were not able to do so in response to the dramatic changes in the Egyptian political context. I derive from Zizek’s psychosocial reading of the Lacanian big Other a particular analytical tool, I called it ignorance analysis. Ignorance analysis allows me to examine how participants may come to not-know particular aspects of what they already knew from their traumatic encounters. Hence, this thesis investigates two intertwined aspects of subjectivity in traumatic contexts: one how the subject comes to not-know what it already knew in a traumatic encounter, i.e., the production of ignorance; and two, how that re-production of ignorance affects the subject’s re-production of agency in traumatic contexts. For this investigation I interviewed 3 male and 3 female activists. Each activist was interviewed at least three times. The interviews involved autobiographical narratives that were enhanced with elements of free association interviewing techniques. Comparing and contrasting the different dynamics of re-production of ignorance that appeared in the discursive formulations produced within the interviews, the thesis identifies the discursive conditions that facilitated or hindered the re-production of political agency for those Egyptian activists in the politically traumatic context of Egypt. The analysis shows how some subjects in traumatic contexts become politically active by not-knowing particular aspects of what they already knew in their encounter with politically traumatic context.

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