Skip to content Skip to navigation
University of Warwick
  • Study
  • |
  • Research
  • |
  • Business
  • |
  • Alumni
  • |
  • News
  • |
  • About

University of Warwick
Publications service & WRAP

Highlight your research

  • WRAP
    • Home
    • Search WRAP
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse WRAP by Year
    • Browse WRAP by Subject
    • Browse WRAP by Department
    • Browse WRAP by Funder
    • Browse Theses by Department
  • Publications Service
    • Home
    • Search Publications Service
    • Browse by Warwick Author
    • Browse Publications service by Year
    • Browse Publications service by Subject
    • Browse Publications service by Department
    • Browse Publications service by Funder
  • Help & Advice
University of Warwick

The Library

  • Login
  • Admin

Spaces of power: Politics, subjectivity and materiality in post-independence Cairo

Tools
- Tools
+ Tools

Nassar, Aya (2018) Spaces of power: Politics, subjectivity and materiality in post-independence Cairo. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

[img]
Preview
PDF
WRAP_Theses_Nassar_2018.pdf - Submitted Version - Requires a PDF viewer.

Download (4Mb) | Preview
Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b3431690~S15

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

How does the city become implicated in the political ordering of the postcolonial state? This thesis explores the relationship between spatial and political ordering in postindependence Egypt through a study of Cairo’s urban planning and architecture. It challenges a prevalent conception of the city as a passive, concrete space with a linear history. Instead, it argues that city space should be taken seriously as a site of the political. This requires reflection on its materiality, poetics, and indeterminacies, as well as an explicitly subjective mode of writing about city space and selfhood. Looking at Egyptian postcolonial politics through the prism of city space challenges us to think about sovereignty as a process of ordering that works through a series of incomplete attempts to fix, repair, and modernise city space and its subjects.

The thesis builds on material geography, narrative politics and postcolonial studies. Methodologically, it utilises incomplete archives and memoires of Egyptian architects and engineers, unrealised masterplans and the materiality of the city itself: concrete, soil, water, fire and dust. It investigates changes in Cairo after national independence and until Sadat’s assassination (1952-1981). It begins by focusing on the capital city’s spatial significance for postcolonial politics, then analyses articulations of postcolonial subjectivity that are intertwined with space. This is further developed through analysis of attempts at constructing national symbolic order, as well as the deployment of a politics of circulation to fix (dis)order in the city.

The thesis has broad implications by demonstrating a subjective academic mode of writing about the politics of space that is guided by space’s materiality. It spatialises power and subjectivity in order to de-stabilise prevailing concrete and linear constructions of sovereignty. Further, it represents an original examination of the spatial politics of Cairo following independence, which contributes to knowledge about cities in the Middle East, and their place in a wider politics of the postcolonial state.

Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor
J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
J Political Science > JQ Political institutions (Asia, Africa, Australia, Pacific Area, etc.)
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): Cairo (Egypt) -- Politics and government, Postcolonialism -- Cairo (Egypt), City planning -- Cairo (Egypt)
Official Date: September 2018
Dates:
DateEvent
September 2018UNSPECIFIED
Institution: University of Warwick
Theses Department: Department of Politics and International Studies
Thesis Type: PhD
Publication Status: Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: Pratt, Nicola Christine ; Brassett, James
Sponsors: University of Warwick. Chancellor's International Scholarship ; Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies Ltd ; British International Studies Association
Format of File: pdf
Extent: 271 leaves : illustrations, maps
Language: eng

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics

twitter

Email us: wrap@warwick.ac.uk
Contact Details
About Us