On Wednesday 3 May, from 18:00 to 20:00, Prof. Amal Treacher Kabesh will give a public talk at the University of Malta Msida Campus on the current state of Egypt, 'Struggling to Overcome Colonisation'. This is one of a series of four lectures by Prof. Treacher Kabesh as a guest lecturer of the Department of Maltese in the Faculty of Arts.
This lecture is open to all staff, students and the general public and will be held in Room 116 Old Humanities Building (OH116) next to the main library.
'The uprisings in 1919, 1952 and 2011,' writes Amal Treacher Kabesh, 'are all marked by the attempt to free Egyptian society from the control of the state (whether British control as in 1919 and 1952) or the police state as in 2011. 25th January 2011 was not the beginning of protests as the police state under Mubarak’s rule had become increasingly powerful and progressively more unpopular with the Egyptian people.
It also has to be mentioned that most people were appalled at the dynastic manoeuvres that would have instituted Gamal Mubarak as the next President. Mubarak centralised the power structures and concentrated power to an unprecedented extent. The eruption of political protest on the 25th January 2011 focused on legal and political grievances, police brutality, emergency laws, the lack of free elections and free speech. Alongside these political grievances there was much fury at the level of financial corruption, the rising rates of unemployment especially for men under the age of 30 and the cost of living.'
Amal Treacher Kabesh is Associate Professor in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham. Her research and teaching engagements concentrate on the relationship between Egypt and the UK, citizenship, gender and subjectivity. Her books include Egyptian Revolutions. Conflict, Repetition and Identification (Rowman & Littlefield 2017) and Postcolonial Masculinities: Emotions, Histories and Ethics (2013).
Dr Kirsten Campbell from Goldsmiths, University of London, describes Treacher Kabesh’s Egyptian Revolutions as a “powerful book” that “offers a distinctively new perspective on recent socio-political events in Egypt". It "draws together postcolonial and feminist theory to provide a unique and important account of the psychic life of politics.” She argues that “It will be crucial reading for anyone interested in contemporary gender and postcolonial studies, as well as those hoping for a better understanding of the hopes, fears, angers, and loves animating Egyptian political life.”
For Prof. Ilan Pappé (University of Exeter), Egyptian Revolutions is a “sensitive and powerful analysis" that "does not leave one stone unturned in its effort to understand how narratives, memories and the harsh reality of life lead to resistance and its failure.”
More information about this public lecture is available on the Facebook page of Dipartiment tal-Malti, L-Università ta’ Malta and the corresponding event page.
