University Press of Florida An Incurable Past: Nasser's Egypt Then and Now

Review "Belli offers something new to the scholarship on modern Egypt. Along with several others who have, against all odds, tried to make sense of the Nasser era, she pushes at the edges of what it is possible for us to know by emphasizing the instability of historical knowledge itself."--American Historical Review"Demonstrates how Egyptians experience, remember, and revive their past."--Choice Product Description Mid-century Egypt seems to shift its shape in light of ordinary peoples’ memories. In <em>An Incurable Past</em>, Mériam Belli examines collective memory, oral histories, and everyday communications to reveal not just the history of mid-twentieth-century Egypt but also the ways in which ordinary people experience and remember the past. Using official archives, government publications, press reportage, fiction, textbooks, cinema, art, and public rituals, Belli constructs a ground-breaking theoretical framework of “historical utterances” which provokes questions about the relationship between remembrance and reality. Belli argues that such personal testimonies and public representations allow us a deeper understanding of Egypt’s many sociocultural layers in the 1950s and 1960s. She spotlights three topics of vernacular expression in modern Egypt: education, the anti-colonial Limby Festival, and the 1968 apparition of the Virgin Mary at a Coptic Orthodox Church in Cairo. Linked by the mid-century shift from communal life to an industrial and individuated society, these expressions also disclose the contradictory influence of ideologically homogenising state policies.<br><br>Examining history not as it was but as it is remembered, this book contextualises the classist and deeply disappointing post-Nasserist period that has inspired today’s Egyptian revolutionaries. From the Back Cover "Spanning virtually the entire twentieth century and as timely as the outbreak of the 2011 'January Revolution, ' this work has much to say about where Egypt has been, who Egyptians are and, ultimately, where they may take their country."--Joel Gordon, author of Nasser: Hero of the Arab Nation "A truly extraordinary accomplishment that is thought provoking, creative, and inspiring. Belli is the first in Middle Eastern studies to examine the cultural history of twentieth- century Egypt through the interactions between education and remembrance. Her revised theoretical approach is applicable not only to Middle Eastern societies and cultures, but to others worldwide."--Israel Gershoni, Tel Aviv University "An interesting history of memory that is diverse, dynamic, and disparate. Makes an outstanding contribution to our understandings of Egyptian national identity and memory."--Nancy L. Stockdale, University of North Texas Examining history not as it was recorded, but as it is remembered, An Incurable Past contextualizes the classist and deeply disappointing post-Nasserist period that has inspired today's Egyptian revolutionaries. Public performances, songs, stories, oral histories, and everyday speech reveal not just the history of mid-twentieth-century Egypt, but also the ways in which ordinary people experience and remember the past. Constructing a ground-breaking theoretical framework, Mériam Belli demonstrates the fragility of the "collectivity" and the urgent need to replace the current method for studying collective memory with a new approach she defines as "historical utterances." Contextual and relational, these links between intimate and public historical narratives are an integral part of a society's dialogue about its past, present, and future. Three major vernacular expressions constitute the historical utterances that illuminate the Nasserite experience and its present. The first is universal schooling and education. The second is anti-colonial struggle, as exemplified by Port Said's effigy burning festival. The third is the public's responses to the "miraculous millenarian" appari