Literary masculinities in contemporary Egyptian dystopian fiction

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Literary masculinities in contemporary Egyptian

dystopian fiction

Local, regional and global masculinities as social criticism in

Utopia and The Queue

Elisa Andrea Viteri Márquez

Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies MA thesis 45 credits

Master on Middle Eastern Language and Cultures (180 ECTS) Spring 2020

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Literary masculinities in contemporary Egyptian

dystopian fiction

Local, regional and global masculinities as social criticism in

Utopia and The Queue

Elisa Andrea Viteri Márquez

Abstract

In the aftermath the 25th_{January Revolution of 2011, two Egyptian dystopian novels stand out as}

particularly relevant: Utopia (2008) by Ahmed Khaled Towfik, and The Queue (2013), by Basma Abdel Aziz. Due to the absence of studies that pay attention to how gender relations are portrayed in Arabic dystopian novels, this study focuses on the literary representation of men and masculinities in

Utopia and The Queue. This thesis uses narratology and content analysis in order to show that, although

patterns of local masculinities are different in both novels, regional and global models of masculinity clearly point out men as controlling, violent and hypersexual, which is supported by multiple institutions, such as the state, media, and the religious establishment. The inclusion of relevant ethnological studies of masculinities in Egypt confirms that the social criticism of the novels include gender relations, and refers to the time in which the novels were written. This study points out the need for recognizing Arabic dystopian fiction as a valuable instrument that carries meaningful and intricate social criticism, as well as the need for the inclusion of gender as a category of literary analysis.

Keywords

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Acknowledgements

I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Tania Al Saadi, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies at Stockholm University. Her constant guidance, direction and support are an inseparable part of this thesis, and her encouragement made this work all more enjoyable. I would also like to thank Elena Chiti, Associate Professor at the Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and Turkish Studies at Stockholm University for her feedback on the project, which helped me liking the pieces together. I would also like to thank all members of the latter Department who, through their courses and support, contributed to the present thesis, either directly or indirectly.

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On transcription and translation

This thesis uses the Arabic original of both novels as primary sources, Yūtūbya (Towfik, 2010) and

al-Ṭābūr (Abdel Aziz, 2013).1_{All examples quoted in this study offer a transcription into Modern Standard}

Arabic (MSA) following this Department’s formal rules for transcription (Wardini, 2013). As some passages of the novels come in Egyptian dialect, the transcription will reflect this usage and be marked as such in a footnote. A table with the MSA transcription system as applied in this thesis is given below, with some specificities of the Egyptian dialect needed for the purposes of this thesis.

Consonants ء ‘ ض Ḍ / ḍ ب B / b ط Ṭ / ṭ ت T / t ظ Ẓ / ẓ ث Ṯ / ṯ ع Ꜥ ج J / j (transcribed as ‘g’ in Egyptian dialect) غ Ġ / ġ ح Ḥ / ḥ ف F / f خ Ḫ / ḫ ق Q / q د D / d ك K / k ذ Ḏ / ḏ ل L / l ر R / r م M / m ز Z / z ن N / n س S / s ه H / h ش Š / š و W / w ص Ṣ / ṣ ي Y / y Vowels ﹷ A / a ى / ا Ā / ā ﹻ I / i ي Ī / ī ﹹ U / u و Ū / ū Diphthongs يَٮ -ay وَٮ -aw Tanwīn

ٌ -un / ﴽ -an ٌ -in

The definite article (لأ) will not be assimilated for those words starting with ḥurūf šamṣiyya and will appear always transcribed as ‘al-’. Likewise, the article will not be assimilated to preceding prepositions (such as

li- or bi-), or connectors (such as fa- or wa-). The tā’ marbūṭa will be generally transcribed as ‘a’; in the

cases where it appears as construct state in iḍāfa, the tā’ marbūṭa will be transcribed as ‘-at’, which also applied for words that end with ( ةا). As both novels are written in MSA without explicit vocalization, verbal and declensional endings will be generally omitted; however, if these endings are explicitly vocalized in the original, they will appear as such in the transcription. The letter hamza will be omitted at the beginning

1_{However, in the body of this study, the novels will be referred to in their English title, Utopia (Towfik, 2010) and}

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of the word, but otherwise rendered in transcription as (‘). In some cases, particularly for references to real places, the standardized version of the name will be provided, not the transcription (such as the Cairene neighbourhood Shubra). The same can be said about the name of the authors and the novels, which will be quoted in this thesis as they appear in the English translations of both novels for coherence.

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1. Introduction

Dystopian and science-fiction novels have become increasingly popular in the Arabic literary scene. This is reflected by the number of readers, some of the novels’ prompt translations into English, and the official recognition of their literary value with the most prestigious literary prizes for Arabic literature. Among these works, two novels stand out as particularly relevant for the aftermath of the Egyptian 25th_{January Revolution of 2011: Utopia (2008) by Ahmed Khaled Towfik, considered as}

the foundational novel for Arabic dystopian fiction and in the top ten best-sellers in Egypt for years; and The Queue (2013), by Basma Abdel Aziz, winner of the English PEN Translation Award in 2016. Apart from their literary value, these novels have been consider as representative of the dystopic tones that daily life has acquired in Egypt after the revolution, as well as prophetic in identifying the coming of the Revolution and its bleak aftermath (Alter, 2016; Murphy, 2017).

More generally, dystopian fiction has been characterized by its criticism of existing social or political structures through depicting fictional societies that offer the readers a glimpse into other possible worlds where some of the social paradigms can be put to the test (Booker, 1994b). Among the few academic studies on Arabic dystopian fiction, scholars have focused on how these works criticise certain social, economic and political structures (Campbell, 2015, Madoeuf & Pagès-El Karoui, 2016, Resheq & Majdoubeh, 2019). However, gender relations, sexuality, explicit references to ‘manhood’, or men’s top position in exerting social control have been generally disregarded.

Although Arabic dystopian fiction has not been approached from a gender perspective until now, such an approach is not new in Arabic literature. Although this endeavour has focused mainly on the place women occupy in the narrative, either as authors or as characters (Berg, 2017: 23), several studies on literary masculinities in the last decades have aimed to examine men’s place in gender relations, how men and women construct masculinities, as well as the main factors that influence the conception and enactment of masculinities in certain contexts (Ghoussoub and Sinclair-Webb, 2000; Aghacy, 2009; Massad, 2009; al-Jurf, 2014; Berg, 2017: 23). Moreover, Egypt has also been the focus of valuable ethnographic works that aim to offer a nuanced description of masculinities in the Middle East, as a reaction to the “strong tendency toward depicting Arab, Muslim, and Middle Eastern men (often lumped together and assumed to be the same) as terrorists, suicide bombers, and oppressors of women” (Ghannam, 2013: 5).

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institutional practices that influence gender relations, this study aims at approaching gender relations by focusing on the position of masculine subject in the fictional societies of Utopia and The Queue. Following previous studies on Western literature that have shown how men and masculinities occupy an unquestioned hegemonic place in dystopian fictional societies (Patai, 1982), this study focuses on the literary representation of men and the embodiment of socially constructed notions of masculinity, far away from the assimilation of male experience as a universal experience. Approaching Egyptian dystopian fiction from a gender perspective can offer us an insight into how these narratives interact with the prevailing gender structures depicted in relevant ethnographical works. At the same time, this thesis recognizes gender as a site for social criticism in dystopia, at the same level with other much more explored systems, such as the economic and political systems. This study also intends to contribute to the growing field of studies of masculinities in Egypt, as well as offering a starting point for literary feminist criticism of science fiction and dystopian fiction, which has had a limited scope for literary works written in Arabic.

1.1. Outline of the thesis

After introducing the subject of research in Chapter 1, both Utopia (Towfik, 2010) and The Queue (2013) will be briefly presented in Chapter 2, together with some details about the novels and their authors. Chapter 3 will present the research question and the aims of this study, followed by the limitations and delimitations of this study in Chapter 4. After this preliminary information, Chapter 5 presents a comprehensive review of previous research, with the aim of situating the study of literary masculinities in Arabic dystopian fiction somewhere in between works of literary criticism from a gender perspective, and research on masculinities in Egypt from a social science perspective. This choice is motivated by the lack of previous works on the subject of this thesis, which needs to find its space within the relevant related disciplines.

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2. Corpus

As dystopian works written in Arabic remain mostly understudied, and almost untouched in terms of gender, I chose two of the most quoted novels in academic and media articles dealing with dystopian literature in Arabic, namely Towfik’s Utopia (2008) and Abdelaziz’s The Queue (2013) (Alter, 2016; Leber, 2017; Murphy, 2017). Both authors are Egyptian, live in Egypt, and write in Arabic. Both novels are set in fictional societies that point at a hypothetical future for Egypt. In Utopia, Egypt in 2023 has been divided between the rich living in gated communities while outside the poor fight for survival. In The

Queue, the aftermath of a failed uprising against the ruling class brings an even more absolutist power, the

Gate, a windowless building where citizens need to acquire permits and certificates to satisfy even their most essential needs. Both novels are translated into English, which allows non-Arabic speakers reading this thesis to go back to the novels and follow the arguments. Having been translated into English also illustrates their reach and acceptance, not only among Arab readers, but internationally.

An interesting aspect of these novels is their timing, especially in terms of how popular revolutions are positioned inside and outside the narrative. These novels are separated by a five-year gap (2008-2013), with the real-world 25th_{January Revolution precisely in the middle (2011). Utopia (2008) ends with a}

popular uprising against the rich ruling elite, while The Queue (2013) begins with mass demonstrations against the Gate’s oppressive control over citizens. By focusing on two works, one written during the lead-up to the Revolution of 2011, and the other written in its aftermath, this study is able to cover a wide spectrum of experiences around popular movements. As these revolutions, both in real and fictional worlds, aim to shake up existing structures in society, the present selection offers a glimpse on the position of gender relations during dissenting movements against the ruling elites, which in turn strive to maintain their tight control during these periods.

Although widely acclaimed dystopian works have been written in other Arabic speaking countries, Egypt has been widely recognized as the centre of Arab cultural production in the last century. Moreover, Egypt is considered the centre of production of Arabic science fiction (SF), both for amusing and canonization purposes (Snir, 2000: 281). Since dystopian fiction is generally considered to be new in the Arabic literary panorama, SF works have been considered as its predecessors. Again, Arabic SF appeared in Egypt and became most popular there. Consequently, most of the research, both in European languages (accessible to me) and Arabic, treat Egyptian works of fiction. On the studies of masculinity, Egypt also stands out as one of the most studied countries. Again, the availability of secondary sources pointed at Egypt as a good starting point for the study of gender relations and masculinities in Arabic dystopian fiction.

Ahmed Khaled Towfik2_{(1962 - 2018) was trained as a physician at Tanta University’s Faculty of}

Medicine. He was a prolific writer, with more than 200 titles, including original works of fantasy, horror

2_{Although his name is transcribed Aḥmad Ḫālid Tawfīq in MSA, I have preferred the transcription chosen for his}

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and science fiction, and translations from world literature. With these works, most notably his SF short stories Fantāziyā, as well as two other series of thriller/fantasy short novels, Mā Warā’ al-ṬabīꜤa and

Sāfārī, Towfik acquired moderate fame (Khayrutdinov, 2014: 191).

However, it was only after Utopia, first published in 2008 by Dar Merit, that Towfik was considered a ‘real’ novelist. Since its publication, Utopia has been a bestseller in Egypt (Jacquemond, 2013: 152), yet the novel has also attracted a lot of criticism, as can be seen in the literature review. Utopia was translated into English in 2011 and published by the Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing.3

Towfik was also an acclaimed literary critic that dedicated a significant part of his life to claiming a place for SF in Arabic literature (Barbaro, 2013: 27). In conclusion, Utopia, which Towfik categorized as a “post-apocalyptic dystopia” (Morgan, 2012), represents the culmination of his life-time career.

Basma Abdel Aziz4_{(b. 1976) holds a MS in neuropsychiatry and has spent many years working in}

El-Nadeem Centre for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence in Cairo. This centre “offers direct psychological and medical aid to victims of police harassment in the streets and victims of torture in prison, particularly to women or others whose harassment or torture displays a gendered or sexualized dimension” (Amar, 2011a: 310). According her brief biography in The Queue’s original version, she worked in a psychiatric hospital in Cairo for some years, and then came to be the president of General Secretariat of Mental Health in Egypt. She is the author of two collections of short stories, a psychological study on the effect of torture called Mā warā’ taꜤḏīb (‘What hides behind torture’), and another title called Iġrā’

al-sulṭa al-muṭlaqa (‘The temptation of absolute power’). She has also participated in graphic exhibitions as

a visual artist. Her previous books have awarded her several prizes in Egypt.

Abdel Aziz is an author committed to the political cause, and in many of her articles and interviews she speaks vocally about the relationship between her novel The Queue and the 25th_{January Revolution. She}

is considered to be a young author, especially when compared to Towfik. Although both writers have very different backgrounds, there are also commonalities. For example, both Towfik and Abdel Aziz are doctors by profession. The age gap, their experience as novelists, and their interest in literary criticism separate them. Nevertheless, the fictional societies depicted in the selected novels seem to converge in present-day Egypt, which allows for a combined reading of both novels as relevant examples of contemporary Egyptian dystopian fiction.

3_{The edition of the Arabic original used in this thesis is the 2010’s edition of the novel, also published by the}

Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation.

4_{Again, I chose the transcription offered in her translated book of The Queue (Abdel Aziz 2016) instead of MSA}

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3. Purpose of the study and research questions

This study focuses in the literary representation of men and the embodiment of socially constructed notions of masculinity, in a context of dystopian fiction and social criticism. First of all, this study touches on a theme widely neglected, as focus has primarily been on the emotions, feelings or bodily matters of women, in which men remain associated to culture and public life, somehow “diss-embodied” (Ghannam, 2013: 4).

Secondly, this thesis aims to position men and masculinities within the wider gender relations of the fictional societies, which involves investigating how culture and institutions (including the state and its security forces) support or challenge the dominant position of men in the gender hierarchy of these fictional societies.

Thirdly, this study intends to contextualize key elements of social criticism in Utopia and The Queue by relating to relevant ethnological studies of masculinity in Egypt. Finally, Due to the scarce research on Arabic dystopian fiction, the present study also points at the need of formulating a theoretical framework for this genre in Arabic literature.

The research question is: Where are men and masculinities positioned in the wider gender relations presented as social criticism in the fictional societies of two contemporary Egyptian dystopian works, The

Queue and Utopia?

The following questions would then help guiding the analysis:

- What are the main factors that determine men’s positionality in the gender hierarchy of the fictional societies?

- What are the main institutions that influence men’s position in the fictional societies?

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4. Limitations and delimitations

As will be explained in the next chapter, Arabic dystopian fiction remains understudied. Therefore, this thesis lacks of a comprehensive theoretical framework on the subject of study, which is compensated by an overview of other related literary genres that have received more scholarly attention, such as SF. As the study of literary masculinities has taken very different approaches, this thesis’ choice of theory aims to make the utmost out of these rich literary works, as seen fit by the author. Nonetheless, although my choices are not unequivocal or exclusive, every step along the way is profusely explained and follows recognized and established theories on the field of masculinities and gender studies in general.

Due to this thesis’ focus on novels written in Egypt some years before and after the 25th_{January Revolution}

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5. Previous Research

The analysis of masculinities for Arabic dystopian fiction is until now unexplored. Therefore, this section aims to position the present analysis among relevant and related fields of research. First of all, due to its proximity with dystopian literature (as shown in 6.2. of this thesis), relevant gender analysis of Arabic utopian literature and SF will be presented. Secondly, we will look at how the field of studies of masculinities in Arabic fiction have explored men’s position in literature, and how these works relate to the present thesis. Thirdly, due to the lack of a theoretical framework for Arabic dystopian fiction, we will approach the few academic works that focus on dystopia in Arabic in order to explore what are the meanings associated to it. Last but not least, a review of relevant articles about The Queue and Utopia will be provided, allowing the reader to look for different approaches and readings of both novels.

Another gap identified in the study of masculinities or wider gender relations in dystopian fiction written in English, is that academia mostly focuses on the place women occupy in these novels, or solely on the utopian and dystopian production by female authors.5_{That being said, some valuable examples of critical}

feminist readings of Western Utopian fiction can be found.

The most relevant for this work is Patai (1982), who points out that one of the foundational novels of contemporary dystopian fiction, Orwell’s 1984, contains a strong masculine voice that is unable to question the generalization of “male behaviour” as “human behaviour.”(Patai, 1982: 686) Although critical towards many social, political and economic conventions, the masculine values relating to power in Orwell’s time, such as dominance and control, were naturalized even by this otherwise very critical author. This article is very relevant in showing how the masculine is naturalized in describing social processes in dystopian literature and literary criticism, as well as for its thematic proximity to some of the elements present in

Utopia and The Queue.6

5.1. Gender approaches to Arabic Utopian, Dystopian and SF

As explained above, this section contains a few examples of how masculinities have been studied in one classical Arabic utopian work, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, and in some contemporary Arabic SF novels with dystopian elements. It is worth mentioning that a general interest in SF has been noticed in some academic sources in Arabic, which offer very detailed analyses of how characters are constructed in Arabic SF (al-Shārūnī, 2000; ꜤAsāqila, 2011). Unfortunately, none of these works take gender as a category of analysis, which severely limits their applicability in this thesis.

5_{For example, Snodgrass (1995) dedicates a long entry to “Women in Utopia”, in which she looks at how women}

are represented in the most representative Western utopian and dystopian texts. She concludes that women, until the 1980s, only had stereotypical roles, and then acquired a more active role but still with incomplete characterization. However, it does not contain any reference to any of the major utopias in Arabic.

6_{Overarching social control and domination are shared in both novels. In fact, Orwell is mentioned in Utopia}

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Malti-Douglas (1996), in a chapter called “Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān as a Male Utopia” analyses the most famous work by Ibn Ṭufayl (1105–1185 CE) from a gender perspective.7_{She focuses on the elimination of the}

‘problem’ of sexuality, by removing female characters and eventually isolating the male protagonists, Ḥayy and Absāl, in an isolated island. Sexuality and motherhood are presented in negative terms, also made apparent by the use of metaphors and word choice. The elimination of women and sexuality in this utopian work contrast with the presence of a dominant type of men’s sexuality in Utopia and The Queue. Finally, Malti-Douglas refers to the brother-sister relationship as very powerful in Arab culture, which is also echoed in Utopia.

Campbell (2018) makes a compelling attempt at offering a literary theory for Arabic SF that could be comparable to the multiple works on Western SF available nowadays.8_{In his analysis of foundational SF}

novels, he pays attention to gender in relation to the “double estrangement function”9_{that he sees}

characteristic of Arabic SF, and treats themes like post-colonialism and patriarchy. In the following paragraphs, some of Campbell’s observations about four classical Arabic SF works with dystopian elements will be discussed, with a focus on gender.

Firstly, his analysis of Muṣṭafā Maḥmūd’s al-‘Ankabūt [‘The Spider’ 1965] and Rajul Taḥta al-Ṣifr [‘Man Below Zero’ 1966], shows how the main characters’ perfect worlds are still based on the subjugation of women (Campbell, 2018: 158), or patriarchy in gender relations where “exploitive patriarchy still exists even after the collapse and reconstitution of human society into a global socialist utopia” (Campbell, 2018: 171). This is relevant because Campbell considers these two novels as the first works that can be called both Arabic and SF: “a hybrid text, with a hybrid sensibility, that estranges and critiques its own society from within while at the same time maintaining critical distance from the colonizer it emulates in terms of genre and, from certain perspectives, with which it appears to identify” (Campbell, 2018: 183).10

Secondly, Campbell’s analysis of Ṣabri Mūsā’s al-Sayyid min Ḥaql al-Sabāniḫ [‘The gentleman of the Spinach field’ 1987] points out the importance of gender, sexuality and reproduction in its recreation of a benevolent futuristic society. In this novel, the rulers intend to liberate women with the use of artificial wombs, and their upbringing far away from their biological parents. At the same time, several references point out to marriage as an institution that does not allow progress (Campbell, 2018: 209).

Finally, the most extensive analysis on gender relations is the chapter called “Male Gaze as Colonial Gaze”,

7_{As mentioned in the introduction of the book, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān is, together with the Quran and Thousand and One}

Nights, the most published and translated book of classic Arabic literature (Conrad, 1996: 3).

8_{Other academics have opened the path for the study of Arabic SF, most notably Barbaro (2013) and Snir (2000).}

However, it would be Campbell the one who uses gender as a category of analysis, thus making his work more relevant for this thesis.

9_{Although explaining Campbell’s theoretical framework for Arabic SF is outside the scope of this thesis, we can}

briefly mention that for him Arabic SF contains two levels of critique, and therefore the double estrangement. According to him, Arabic SF has “a level of political or social critique and another level where it examines the slow speed or lack of scientific/technological development or social/moral change within contemporary societies.” (Campbell, 2018: 114)

10_{Here Campbell refers to the debate about the origin of SF as a distinct genre in Arabic literature, which would come}

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on Aḥmad ꜤAbd al-Salām al-Baqqālī’s al-Ṭūfān al-Azraq [‘The Blue Flood’ 1976] (Campbell, 2018: 219). This chapter presents a complex analysis of the behaviour of the novel’s male protagonist, ꜤAlī, in relation to women in a context of postcolonialism. Although Campbell does not use masculinity theory directly, ‘Alī’s masculinity is indirectly defined by his behaviour towards his female assistant. In Campbell’s view, the whole novel refers to the contradiction that Arab male intellectuals display towards women, as public defenders of women’s rights, and keepers of tradition in private (Campbell, 2018: 238).

5.2. Masculinities in Arabic fiction

The analysis of masculinities in Arabic fiction counts with several works that draw from gender theory in order to structure their arguments. Due to the contents of Utopia and The Queue, only works about heterosexual men are considered for the purpose of this thesis, which excludes some very valuable contributions to the field of masculinity studies.11_{For example, Aghacy’s (2009) work on Middle Eastern}

masculinities in literature after 1967 presents a complex theoretical framework that recognizes the importance of relating masculinities and femininities to wider gender relations, as well as the need to unnaturalize masculinity in order recognize its internal ambivalences and contradictions (Aghacy, 2009: 2). Although she does not include Egypt (she focuses instead on Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, and Iraq),12_{some of the themes and stances that she takes do contribute to the present thesis, such as her chapter}

on how the state’s oppressive practices influence masculinities, which is also one of the objectives of this thesis.

Another comprehensive study of literary masculinities based on masculinity studies is Berg (2017), who focuses on the way female Syrian authors have formulated masculinities in their work in the last half of the twentieth century. Berg’s use of Connell’s ‘hegemonic masculinity’, together with her attention to narratological elements and content analysis, makes this study very relevant for this study. As this is a PhD thesis, Berg relies on a large number of secondary sources, which although relevant to the study of literary masculinities in the Middle East, go beyond the scope of the present thesis,and have therefore not been included in this study.

Arab academia has also contributed to the study of the representation of masculine characters in Arabic literature. A good example of this is al-Jurf (2014), who presents a multi-sided analysis on the characterization of men in Syrian literature, paying attention to their economic and political position, their

11_{Such as Massad (2009). In Massad’s work on homosexuality in the Middle East, he dedicates two chapters to}

analyse sexuality in the Arabic novel. Although his reflections about men’s sexuality are very vivid and persuasive, his work is aimed at homosexual sex and other ‘perversions’. However, some of the reflections on how the novel questions certain processes in society have been taken from Massad’s work. Some other works that deal with male homosexuality are summarized in Berg (2017: 36).

12_{Aghacy (2009) focus on the effect of the multiple armed conflicts that plagued these countries from 1967 onwards}

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psychological characterization, as well as time, place and language. Her results show that there is a difference between how female and male authors position men in their novels, with male authors relying mostly on male characters that try to hold on to the ”traditional meanings of maleness” (al-Jurf, 2014: 361). Al-Jurf’s study shares many categories of analysis with the present thesis, despite the differences between both theoretical frameworks.

The second example is Nājī’s (2006) Ṣūrat al-rajul fī al-qaṣaṣ al-nisāՙā, (“The image of men in female

authors’ short stories”), a valuable multidisciplinary project that historizes female authors’ portrayal of

men in Egyptian short stories over the twentieth century. She strives to situate these images of men in their historical and cultural place, and recognizes that men and women interchange their roles as dominating/subsidized depending on various factors, such as the colonial experience, class and other social components, linking oppression with state practices as well (Nājī, 2006: 90).13_{Nājī relates to how social}

relations are embedded in power relations, where the ‘dominating/traditional man’ possesses the people under them, especially women. However, she does not link her work to any theory of masculinities, nor does she pay attention to the hierarchical relationships among the different kinds of men represented.14

Other articles reviewed focus only on the position of women towards certain types of men, which in turn tells us something about the masculinities portrayed in those texts. For example, Cooke’s (1994) “Naguib Mahfouz, Men, and the Egyptian Underworld” looks more at the role of women (especially prostitutes) in building masculinities than those masculinities and men themselves. In turn, Bahoora (2015) analyses the role of the prostitute in three pieces of Iraqi literature included in the renewal movement for the modernization of the country in the 1940s and 1950s. Although these texts do no analyse masculinities per se, they will help in situating men in relation to the character of the female prostitute in Utopia.

Other compilations deal with different issues and case studies, sometimes mixing ethnographic work with the analysis of fiction. Ghoussoub and Sinclair-Webb (2000) explores institutions and practices associated with masculinities in specific contexts, analysing the construction of identities and narratives of masculinities in the modern Middle East. Another relevant study is Joseph’s (1999) ethnographical volume on the self-construction of identities within Arab families, which contains two chapters on the analysis of masculinities in the work of three prominent Egyptian novelists, mostly around the relationship between fathers and sons. For the purposes of this thesis, Joseph’s chapter on brother-sister relation will be of importance in analysing the family institution in Utopia.

13_{Nājī identifies several patterns of male representation: “al-rajul al-sayyid” (‘the master’), representing the}

dominating/traditional man (mostly incarnating father and husband characters), “al-rajul al-maqhūr” (‘the dominated man’), rajul al-miṯāl/al-ḥulm” (‘the ideal man / the dream’), rajul al-mājin” (‘the libertine man’), and

“al-rajul al-ḥabīb/al-jasad” (‘the loving man / the body’). Although not exactly, her categorization reminds to the

hierarchical relations of Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity (Connell 2005: 76-80).

14_{Despite the introduction of power relations, the focus of the study remains on how women writers express their}

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5.3. Literary theory on Arabic dystopian fiction

The interest for dystopian fiction written in Arabic is fairly new for both Western and Arab academia. As a result, very little material could be found on the matter, and a historicized theoretical framework is still missing. The only material about Arabic dystopian fiction as a recognizable genre is a brief article in al-Jadid magazine where Bakker (2018a) compares the relatively old Western tradition with the new phenomenon that dystopia seems to be for the Arabic literary scene. She selects four works for analysis (one of them is The Queue) and concludes that thematically these are best categorized as works that focus on total surveillance and domination by totalitarian regimes. Together with her BA thesis (Bakker, 2018b), Bakker is one of the few to recognize dystopian fiction as a separate genre in Arabic literature in need of further research.

As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, research on Arabic SF has shown that dystopian themes are integral parts of foundational Arabic SF novels (Campbell, 2018; Barbaro, 2013; al-Shārūnī, 2000; Snir, 2000). Therefore, this thesis draws from ꜤAsāqila’s (2011) study about the construction of characters in three foundational novels of Arabic SF for the analysis of proper names. As will be shown in 8.1.4. of this thesis, proper names will prove definitory for characterisation in Utopia and The Queue, reflecting certain trends in the novels’ gender relations.

The terms ‘utopia’ and ‘dystopia’ have also been used in the analysis of the psychological dimension of the migration process in two short stories, one by Lebanese writer Ḥanān al-Šayḫ, and another by Egyptian writer Bahā’ Ṭāhir (Al Saadi, 2011). In her article, Al Saadi shows that migration creates a sense of utopia and dystopia, where the homeland and the foreign country are idealized and vilified in an endless circle, influenced by powerful feelings, such as nostalgia. In this way, utopia and dystopia are also used as personal perceptions of different realities, going beyond its general theorization as a literary genre. On the previous line, Chiti (2016) explains how real life is perceived as dystopia in present-day Egypt, which is reflected in the wide availability and popularity of this genre. Chiti conceptualizes ‘dystopia’ as a time disruption, where another possible (and better) future failed to come, leaving a sense of incredulity (or perceived fictionality) towards real life. Moreover, she pays attention to how fictional and non-fictional cultural productions in Egypt contribute to make the current reality legible, which situates the corpus of the thesis in a privileged position due to dystopian fiction’s clear link to social criticism.

5.4. Academia on Towfik’s Utopia and Abdelaziz’s The Queue

There are a significant number of articles that analyse Ahmed Khaled Towfik’s Utopia, both within the broader context of Arabic SF, and specifically in the context of the Egyptian Revolution of 25th_January.

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below, which provide complementary readings of both novels, as well as valid points for the present work that will be integrated in the body of the analysis.

The most comprehensive analysis of Utopia is Campbell’s (2015), which contains many references to other SF or dystopian books connected to this work. He concludes that “Utopia [is] less as the tale of two psychologically realistic characters and more as the tale of the class” (Campbell, 2015: 541). This point is relevant for the present analysis, especially in terms of how men’s sexuality is depicted, which will refer to generalizations on what ‘real manhood’ is section 8.2. of this thesis. However, Campbell’s main reading of the novel as an allegory does not line up the conclusions of this thesis, which tries to distance itself from allegories and rather focus on what the characters actually say and do. Moreover, his argument that Jābir, one of the main male characters, represents the Egyptian intellectual class that has historically failed to support the majority of the Egyptians in attaining social change (Campbell, 2015: 549), will clash with the conclusions of these thesis, as well as with the study presented below.

In analysing Utopia, Resheq and Majdoubeh (2019) use Baccolini and Moylan’s framework of “critical dystopia”, which is a sub-genre of dystopia where the “subjects’ ability to fight for changes is another focus of the narrative, not only the oppressing practices of the authorities” (Resheq and Majdoubeh, 2019: 177). In turn, they consider Jābir as a self-willed outsider within an oppressive system, stressing that dystopia offers spaces for change, far away from the ending marked by the oppression of the individual. Greenberg (2019) tries to position Towfik’s work post-2011 in the wider panorama of Arabic SF and touches on few elements of Utopia that are related to the analysis of masculinities, such as how Arabic SF is conceived as “disembodied poetics” (Greenberg, 2019: 175), and the role of the body in these narratives. Besides, he reflects on how the growth of Arabic SF is part of “the kind of critical dystopic reflections on late capitalism that have been endemic to world literature for over a century”, and how most science fiction works take place in invariable dystopian futures, far away from the realism of the 1950s (Greenberg, 2019: 170).

Morgan (2017) presents a relevant analysis of Utopia that draws a direct link between Towfik’s novel and one of the most representative dystopian novels of all time, Huxley’s Brave New World (1932). The analysis of the pharmacological aspects of the novel shows how medicalized solutions are given to the bleakness of people’s lives, both rich and poor, in the use of “philogistine” (a newly invented drug), “libidafro” (the drug that guarantees perennial sexual prowess to men), combined with all other pre-existing drugs. His insight of the use of drugs in the construction of masculinities will be of use when talking about bodies and sexuality in the present thesis.

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Pagès-El Karoui, 2016: 364). Another valuable element is the analysis of space, for example in the sharp binary between the gated community and the rest (Madoeuf & Pagès-El Karoui, 2016: 365).15

In his short article, Khayrutdinov defines the novel as post-modernist due to its use of the unreliable narrator (Khayrutdinov, 2014: 191), and recognizes how the novel is “influenced by the respective European tradition while being socially relevant to the problems of today’s Egypt as well” (Khayrutdinov, 2014: 190). Last but not least, Rooney (2013) uses Utopia to suggest that the 25th_{January Revolution is a}

movement against neoliberalism and the gated community, and can be read together with the August riots in the UK the same year. Although her arguments are a bit far from the scope of this thesis, it is a good example of the international projection of dystopia, and how wider economic systems can conflate in seemingly distant events.

The Queue and Utopia are mentioned together in Murphy (2017) as mature works of dystopian fiction in

connection to the Arab Spring. Although this article is merely informative, it points at the defamiliarizing function that “Biroil” has in Utopia, “in relation to the novel’s otherwise almost mimetic use of realism, as ‘the low income inequality of contemporary Egypt is only exaggerated, not invented” (Murphy, 2017). Significantly fewer academic articles have been written on The Queue. The most relevant is Milich’s (2019), with a thorough analysis that covers much of the references to social criticism present in the novel, and highlights multiple details that point at the relation between The Queue and present day Egypt. His narratological analysis of the novel shares many points in common with this thesis regarding the general atmosphere of control and surveillance of the novel. However, his focus remains on trauma and psychological tools of dehumanization, complementing the present analysis outside the focus on gender and masculinities.

The second academic article on The Queue is Moore (2018), which makes a complicated theorisation of time in Abdel Aziz’s The Queue and Hamilton’s The City Always Wins. She reaches a similar conclusion as Chiti, where “Egyptian dystopian fiction might more accurately be defined as dyschronotopic: the future collapses backward into a nightmarish present reality, rather than functioning as a cautionary horizon” (Moore 2018: 195).

Unlike academics, journalists have written various articles about The Queue, but they mostly discuss superficial aspects of the work. For example, in an interview, Abdel Aziz (2016b) speaks about how she came up with the idea, and how that connects the novel to Egypt at the time in which the book was written. In another panel, Abdel Aziz reflected on the lack of individual heroes against an anonymous all-powerful authority in her novel (Leber, 2017).

15_{The proliferation of these compounds, and the fact that one of them was called ‘Utopia’, were one of the inspirations}

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6. Theoretical framework

6.1. Literary masculinities and the hegemony of men

6.1.1. Literary masculinities

This study focuses in the literary representation of men and their embodiment of socially constructed notions of masculinity, in a context of dystopian fiction and social criticism. Hence, the present thesis will adopt masculinity studies as its main theoretical framework, due to its versatility and its theoretical stances. This approach does not single men and masculinities out of the wider gender relations, but sheds light upon otherwise unexplored terrains, contrary to the tendencies described in Chapter 5 of focusing gendered analysis solely on women.

The study of men and masculinities has its origins in feminist studies, and despite its humble beginnings, it has seen a rapid growth since the mid-1980s to becoming more institutionalised today (Robinson, 2015: 58). Masculinity studies have developed side by side with feminist, women, and queer studies, and has come to understand masculinity and femininity as plural, historical and located in space (Robinson, 2015: 59). From the 1990s, masculinity is seen as a social construction, fluid and open to change, where men’s behaviour and practices cannot be described as “natural” or “problematic”, “but as social constructions that need to be explored, analysed and indeed in certain aspects, such as the use of violence, changed” (Morgan, 1992: vii, as quoted in Robinson, 2015: 63).

Among the multiple theories and theorists of masculinities, the present thesis will take on Connell’s own revision of his foundational book, Masculinities (Connell, 2005), complemented by Hearn’s re-thinking of Connell’s ‘hegemonic masculinity’ into the ‘hegemony of men’, which allows for a more flexible framework to analyse key social processes and relations that build and reproduce men’s hegemonic control in a particular society (Hearn, 2004). As will be discussed in 6.2., several literary studies suggest that the societies depicted in dystopian novels do reflect a criticism of the society at the time and place the novel was written (Booker, 1994a; 1994b). Therefore, as masculinities refer to a specific time and place, relevant ethnographical works carried out in Egypt will be used in order to verify that gender relations are included within the social criticism of Utopia and The Queue.

6.1.2. Gender relations and masculinities

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structure of society. From her point of view, masculinity is not a coherent object that can be systematically studied to produce generalizing science, but an aspect of broader gender relations.

The previous argument coincides with Butler’s performative theory, where “gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceed [sic]; rather, it is an identity constituted in time –an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts” (Butler, 1998: 519, emphasis in the original). Therefore, there is no ‘sex’ or ‘gender’ to be expressed or replicated through gender performances, no script to be followed that corresponds to an ‘essential’ or ‘natural’ way of gender performance, which is key to de-naturalize men’s position in society.16

As masculinity and femininity are inherently relational concepts, they only have meaning in relation to each other, “as a social demarcation and a cultural opposition” (Connell, 2005: 43). In her study of low-income masculinities in Cairo, which will be presented in 6.1.6., Ghannam affirms that “[a]cquiring a masculine identity is not simply an individual endeavour but is deeply connected to the recognition granted by others” (Ghannam, 2013: 3) Therefore, this thesis will look at masculinity as a collective project built on the interaction between multiple actors, both individual and institutional.

Masculinity studies have also adopted “intersectionality”, a main component of contemporary feminist studies. This term was coined by the American legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 in an attempt to develop a black feminist critique to the tendency of treating gender and race as two different categories of analysis in previous scholarship. In her work, she explains how different forms of social inequality (categories of race, ethnicity, nation, gender, skin colour, and class) interact and overlap in the embodied experiences of black women through the intersection metaphor, thus allowing for their experiences to emerge from the shadows (Richardson, 2015: 13). However, not all categories have received the same attention in the studies of masculinities. For example, Hearn (2004) points at other possibilities in the study of men and masculinities, such as age, vitality and transnationality. Therefore, this analysis would look into which categories intersect in the construction of masculinities with an attention to detail, beyond the classical attention to class, race and gender.

6.1.3. Masculinities, power and hierarchy

The most influential concept in masculinity studies (and also the most criticized) has been ‘hegemonic masculinity’ as a model to explain how heterosexual men are placed at the top of the hierarchy and benefit most from patriarchy by hegemony (Robinson, 2015: 65). In their last revision of the model, Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) came with a re-formulation of hegemonic masculinity that offers valid tools for this

16_{‘Sex’ refers to the “physical attributes associated with biological reproduction”, while “gender” as a social}

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thesis, such as the idea of multiple masculinities, the concept of hegemony itself, and the interplay between local, regional and global masculinities, as we will see below. Firstly, as masculinities are multiple, they do relate to each other in hierarchical terms. Secondly, using Gramci’s theory of hegemony serves to de-naturalize the “domination of ‘commonsense’”, highlighting “the importance of consent, even if that is provisional, contingent, and backed by force” (Hearn, 2011: 92). Thirdly, the hierarchisation of masculinities at a global level allows us to de-naturalize men’s place in culture, the state and international relations, as will be discussed below.

However, I would agree with Hearn’s claim that, for the purposes of this study, it would be more precise to examine men’s identities, discourses, and individual and collective practices, instead of the term “masculinities”, which can sometimes be used to describe very different processes (Hearn, 2011: 91). Hearn thus prefers to talk about “the hegemony of men”, which “addresses the double complexity that men are both a social category formed by intersectional gender systems and collective/individual, often dominant, agents” (Hearn, 2011: 92).

For this purpose, the focus of the analysis will be on what elements “set the agenda” in the differentiation between men, women and children, as well as “which men and which men’s practices – in the media, the state, religion, and so on – are most powerful in setting those agendas of those systems of differentiations” (Hearn, 2004: 60). Therefore, the present thesis will operate at the level of the individual and his/her embodied experience, as well as that of certain institutions that have a key role in creating or reproducing certain gender relations, as well as gender differentiation (Connell, 1987:120).

6.1.4. Global, regional and local masculinities

The historical and contextual nature of the study of men’s practices and representations of masculinities has been stressed multiple scholars. Research has brough about many examples from different times and geographies that depict how masculinities are always located in time and space, and are always subject to change (Connell, 2005; Robinson, 2015). Although offering a history of masculinities is beyond the scope of this thesis, it is important to consider some of the thoughts emanating from Connell’s historization of masculinities. In the first place, the Western concept of masculinity as a way of “doing gender” in a culturally specific way is only few hundred years old, “built on the conception of individuality that developed in early-modern Europe with the growth of colonial empires and capitalist economic relations” (Connell, 2005: 68). As the studies of masculinities proliferated, definitions of masculinity have taken the Western cultural standpoint for granted, which is extremely relevant for studies of masculinity in other parts of the world, or historically retrospective (Connell, 2005: 68).

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encounter of gender orders in the colonized world” (Connell, 2005: 185). Connell sees North American/European masculinity as hegemonic (Connell, 2005: 200). Consequently, the construction of regional and local masculinities in the Arabic speaking countries is mediated by the colonizing experience, the entrance into modernity and the unequal relations between countries in the global market.17_Although

a post-colonial reading of the novels is beyond the scope of this thesis, the relationships between local, regional and global masculinities as defined below will serve to place the social criticism of the novels in a wider framework.

The concept of hegemonic global, regional and local masculinities was re-formulated by Connell and Messerschmidt, in an attempt to focus on the pressure that global institutions exert on regional and local gender orders (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005: 849). According to this framework, local patterns of masculinity refer to what can be observed in face-to-face and immediate interaction; regional masculinities refer to the level of culture and the nation-state; and global masculinity is about what can be observed in world politics, and transnational business and media. Without entering in a post-colonial analysis, no study of gender relations can disregard the implications of the colonial experience, reflected in the hierarchy that positions certain ways of being men at the top, and others at the bottom.

For example, in her study about Islamist and Muslim masculinities, Gerami agrees with Connell’s argument in that the model of global hegemonic masculinity present in global media in the Middle East is “invariably white, Christian, heterosexual, and dominant” (Gerami, 2005: 450). According to her, this picture reaches the Arab world through the Internet or satellite channels in the shape of Western politicians, military leaders, or simply film heroes.18_{Gerami dates the pre-eminence of Western masculinity as}

hegemonic back to the colonial expansion, following Connell’s explanation above. According to Gerami, the omnipresence of national figures, such as Gamal Abdel Nasser for Egypt, accompanied the construction of national masculinities, as “[w]ith the ideal of nationhood and a centralized state came the ideal of one national leader subsuming regional or ethnic masculinities” (Gerami, 2005: 451). However, according to her study, these national masculinities would still remain secondary to global masculinity.

Although this thesis does not work with hegemonic masculinity per se, it is necessary to adopt an analytical framework that considers how local, regional, and global masculinities (also applicable to femininities) are interconnected (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005: 850), influencing local systems of gender differentiation that contribute to the hegemony of men in a certain place at a certain time. Therefore, for the sake of coherence, this thesis will focus on the elements that enable the hegemony of some men, also at a regional and a global level, still following Hearn’s framework of the hegemony of men explained above, but with

17_{For detailed analysis of role of colonialism in the construction of the gender order in Egypt with a focus on}

masculinity, see Jacob (2011).

18_{Gerami engages with Islamist and Muslim masculinities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), which in}

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attention to relevant studies of regional and global hegemonic masculinity in the Middle East.

6.1.5. Masculinities in the Egyptian context

Egypt is the country with the largest amount of ethnographic research in the region (Deeb and Winegar, 2012: 539), and this includes studies on masculinities; however, some of these studies portray men as essentially patriarchal, and violent, as well as economically and sexually frustrated, with little attention to wider forces and institutions that have an influence in men’s performance of masculinity (Amar, 2011b). That being said, Amar (2011b) points to the risks of the problematization of Middle Eastern masculinities, which has been used by intelligence services and the security sector in order to justify foreign intervention in the region, military or other. At the same time, he gives some theoretical and methodological suggestions that would allow for a more nuanced, contextualized and historicized study of masculinities in the Middle East. Although this study does not follow literally any of Amar’s suggested paths for intervention, it does share the aim of giving a contextualized and historized account of how masculinities are represented in dystopian fiction, far away from the discourses of ‘men in crisis’ criticized in his work.

Due to the large number of articles and books that look at gender and masculinities in this country, only the works with a direct connection with this thesis have been selected. Accordingly, the first and most relevant study is Ghannam (2013), an ethnological study of men living in al-Zāwiya al-Ḥamra, a low-income area in northern Cairo.19_{Ghannam’s insights into the lives of men and women in this}

neighbourhood describe how class and gender constructions affect embodied performances of masculinity. Theoretically, Ghannam’s work builds on Connell’s and Hearn’s stances explained in the previous sections, which makes this study an extremely relevant example of how these theories have been applied in ethnological work in present-day Egypt.

Thematically, Ghannam discusses certain aspects of men’s performance of masculinities that will appear in the present thesis. First of all, there is a focus on the body, and how it affects gender performance as men age, grow up, go through sickness or die. As men have historically been equated with mind, reason and culture, this approach also serves to open up more space to question patriarchy (Ghannam, 2013: 171). At the same time, it unmasks how “patriarchal structures, market forces, and medical systems intersect to regulate and discipline the male body to produce an economically productive and politically obedient subject for low-income Cairene men” (Ghannam, 2013: 134). Moreover, she also points to the importance of employment in the construction of masculinity (Ghannam, 2013: 3) and hints at the importance of government institutions, intelligence surveillance and police violence in the construction of masculinity.20

Secondly, Ghannam offers local concepts and terminology on masculinity that resonate in both Utopia and

19_{Shubra, the neighbourhood of Cairo where most of Utopia takes place, borders with al-Zāwiya al-Ḥamra both West}

and North.

20_{However, she does not elaborate on impact that police control and surveillance has in gender relations. Therefore,}

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The Queue. For example, she mentions ‘manhood’ as “al-rugūla” 21 _{in Egyptian dialect, as measured by}

men’s attitudes or “mawāqif”, which means that being a “real man” is reflected in his ability “to respond to the shifting social expectations, new possibilities, and emerging challenges as well as to embody the proper norms in the appropriate context” (Ghannam, 2013: 85). In addition, she also associates “al-rugūla” with existing social categories in Egypt, such as al-baltāgī, ‘the thug’, and gadaꜤ, ‘a proper man’, which also influences the social construction of masculinities in the fictional societies of Utopia.

Thirdly, Ghannam recognizes the contradictions and negotiations that men follow in order to pursue the illusive coherence of gaining social recognition as a “real man” (Ghannam, 2013: 7). This shows that being a man is far from a following a static or predetermined notion of masculinity, and that men adapt, modify or even contradict themselves in trying to be recognized as proper men. Moreover, Ghannam uses an intersectional approach with a focus on gender, class and race. She suggests that gender and class do have a great impact on the construction of masculinity, whereas race (in this case referring to the colour of the skin, which in Egypt indicates one’s place of origin) seems to play a less relevant role.

Last but not least, Ghannam also focuses on the role of women in the making of men, despite a tendency in masculinity studies of representing women as irrelevant, as objects in need of sexual or social control, or as an oppositional category against which define manhood (Ghannam, 2013: 87). According to her, women play many important roles in the making of men, by conforming to social norms in order to contribute to their male relatives’ standing; by offering emotional and material support; or by giving direct instruction on how becoming and being a man (Ghannam, 2013: 28). Hence, the role of women in the making of masculinities will be an element of the present analysis, as an intrinsic part of the wider gender relations that are criticized in these dystopian novels.

In addition to Ghannam (2013), other articles depict aspects of today’s Egypt that can shed light on the construction of masculinities in the novels. For instance, Abdelmoez (2018) explores the narratives of English speaking Egyptian professionals and audiences about manhood and masculinities. On one side, this study illustrates how respondents link manhood to “compulsory heterosexuality”, men as providers and protectors of the family, as well as the sole possessors of power (Abdelmoez, 2018: 221). On the other side, manhood was related to the military, as the provider and protector of the nation, and specifically to Gamal Abdel Nasser as an example of the “ideal man” (Abdelmoez, 2018: 200). Abdelmoez’s results are useful in establishing the first connections between men, the state and the military in Chapter 8.3., as well as in inquiring if the values attached to manhood in his study hold true for Utopia and The Queue.

In a more complex ethnological study, Abdallah 2014 presents a very relevant account on how the

21_{The word in MSA “al-rujūla” is normally translated as “manhood, manliness, masculinity, virility” (Werh, 1980:}

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economic situation, together with experiences of police and state control, left many men feeling ‘emasculated’ and uncertain about their position in society. In this context, the Islamist political parties were seen as a possibility to recuperate traditional patriarchal masculinity, and translated in the effective vote of many disenchanted men to these Islamist parties. The effects of poverty on men’s self-perception of masculinity will be relevant in the analysis of both novels, as they present this phenomenon in direct and indirect ways.

In another article, Abdallah (2015) presents a study about male tourist workers in Dahab, a tourist city in the Egyptian Sinai, where low-income young men try their luck economically, emotionally and sexually. Abdallah discusses how the neo-liberalist policies of the Egyptian government make it difficult for men to provide for their families, something generally considered as one of the requisites of manhood. The interlink between men’s sexual experiences, their economic situation, and the surveillance of the state, also appears in both novels’ fictional societies, which is key to understand the novels’ social criticism. Another relevant article by Treacher (2007), “Postcolonial subjectivity: Masculinity, shame, and memory”, looks at how certain feelings and emotions overlap in the colonized-colonizer relation for the case of Egypt and the failure of the Revolution of 1952. She explores colonized men’s “shame” to trace how the dream for a better future died soon after the revolution failed to build a different Egypt. Treacher’s article engages with Chiti (2016), already reviewed in Chapter 5, in examining how two dreams for social change died, the Revolution of 1952 and the 25th_{January Revolution of 2011. In both cases, an unexpected future that}

can be characterized as dystopia came, where the revolutionary dreams of social justice and/or political inclusion were crashed by military regimes.

6.2. Dystopian fiction and social criticism

As explained in Chapter 5, Arabic dystopian fiction is still in need of a comprehensive study and a body of critical theory, as has been recently formulated for Arabic SF.22_{For the purposes of this thesis, a short}

theoretical framework of dystopian fiction will be offered, together with a short genealogy of dystopian fiction in Arabic literature. Concretely, we will be looking at how dystopian fiction has been linked with social criticism according to Booker’s studies on twentieth-century European (Eastern and Western), Russian, and American dystopian novels (Booker, 1994a; 1994b). This wide theoretical framework allows for a preliminary characterisation of Utopia and The Queue as dystopian fiction. At the same time, the analysis of the masculinities can find its place as an intrinsic component of the social criticism contained in the novels, according to Booker’s theory.

22_{Campbell argues that while “Western SF has a robust and extensive body of critical theory [...] Arabic SF (ASF),}

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6.2.1. Defining dystopian fiction

There are various definitions of the word ‘dystopia’ available in multiple sources. Apart from subtle differences, there is consensus among these definitions that dystopia is commonly used as antonym of ‘eutopia’ (also known as “utopia”), and that it “denotes that class of hypothetical societies containing images of worlds worse than our own” (Clute & Nicholls, 1993: 360). Generally, dystopias are almost always set in the future, and aim to point at the way the world is going (Clute & Nicholls, 1993: 360).23

However, there are some disagreements about the boundaries of this genre, and whether it touches or overlaps SF and political satire. For example, Stableford states that “[a]lthough many societies described in satire are implicitly dystopian, the term [dystopian] is usually reserved for earnest images of a future where the forces of technological determinism have made civilization hellish” (Stableford, 2004: 99). On the other side, some authors do not see the use of technology as a prerequisite for including dystopian political satires fully into the genre. Instead, the term ‘dystopian’ comes to include all works that explore alternatives to current societies, as well as the potential abuses that supposedly utopian alternatives can bring if they are fulfilled (Booker, 1994a: 3). Booker’s emphasis on the social criticism function of dystopian fiction is based on his detailed analysis a large number of dystopian foundational works from the twentieth century. In his books, Booker links dystopian fiction to the philosophical, economic, social and political contexts in which they were written, showing that dystopian fiction functions mainly as a criticism of the time in which they were written. Hence, for the purposes of this thesis, we will work with Booker’s definition of dystopian fiction as those literary works that warn “against the potential negatives consequences of arrant utopianism”, while engaging in social criticism by “defamiliarization” (Booker, 1994a: 3).24

These two elements are key to categorise Utopia and The Queue as dystopian fiction. First of all, Utopia, both in name and content, refer to the utopian tradition with a warning of what could happen if the perfect and beautiful walled compounds of rich people in Egypt become independent from all the imperfect and ugly poverty that surrounds them. This novel also uses defamiliarization, as it focuses its “critiques of society on imaginatively distant settings”, offering a fresh look on social or political problems that might otherwise be naturalized or taken for granted (Booker, 1994a: 3). It is obvious that The Queue also uses defamiliarization with the creation of a fictional all-powerful governing body, the Gate, in order to reflect on other aspects of society, such as surveillance and government control.

23_{This argument is shared by some Arab critics of SF, who see SF as mainly dealing with prediction of the future}

and guidance, and consider that SF addresses the future, rather than estranges the present (Campbell, 2018: 103).

24_{This term has its origin in the Russian formalism, who saw ‘defamiliarization’ as the main technique that separated}

Literary masculinities in contemporary Egyptian dystopian fiction

Literary masculinities in contemporary Egyptian

dystopian fiction

Local, regional and global masculinities as social criticism in

Utopia and The Queue

Elisa Andrea Viteri Márquez

Literary masculinities in contemporary Egyptian

dystopian fiction

Local, regional and global masculinities as social criticism in

Utopia and The Queue

Elisa Andrea Viteri Márquez

Abstract

Acknowledgements

Contents

On transcription and translation

1. Introduction

1.1. Outline of the thesis

2. Corpus

3. Purpose of the study and research questions

4. Limitations and delimitations

5. Previous Research

5.1. Gender approaches to Arabic Utopian, Dystopian and SF

5.2. Masculinities in Arabic fiction

5.3. Literary theory on Arabic dystopian fiction

5.4. Academia on Towfik’s Utopia and Abdelaziz’s The Queue

6. Theoretical framework

6.1. Literary masculinities and the hegemony of men

6.1.1. Literary masculinities

6.1.2. Gender relations and masculinities

6.1.3. Masculinities, power and hierarchy

6.1.4. Global, regional and local masculinities

6.1.5. Masculinities in the Egyptian context

6.2. Dystopian fiction and social criticism

6.2.1. Defining dystopian fiction