Based on analysis of scholarly and primary sources that include July 2011 and January and February 2014 fieldwork in Cairo, this article examines civil as a word with multiple synchronic meanings and shifts in valence in Egypt between January 2011 and July 2013. I argue that civil stood as a rhetorical placeholder in a time with few secure ideological positions, little agreement about the content of the good society, and wide recognition of the enormity of obstacles to transformation. The article draws on Jacques Rancière's understandings of “politics” and “police” to examine sensibilities and relations of transgression and control that work on and through bodies, intimacies, and meanings of the civil. Among the essential lessons of the 2011 Arab revolutions is that ideological differences and material inequalities do not easily melt, even in emergent, pluralistic, and nondoctrinaire revolutionary politics, because it is difficult to erase positional and embodied differences in the scenes where politics are made.
This article was made possible by the Egyptians who generously made time for me, despite their extremely busy lives, between 2011 and 2014. Those I can name include Shahinaz Abdel Salam, Dina Abouelsoud, Siham Ali, Doaa Abdel Ayaal, Morice George Ayman, Maissan Hassan, Mozn Hassan, Fatma Naout, Rasha Sadek, Sara Nagib Sedrak, and Azza Suliman. I am very grateful to them. I am thankful as well to Dr. Dalia Abdelhadi, who motivated me to write the first iteration of this paper for a presentation at Lund University in May 2012 and hosted my visit. Thank you to Lila Abu-Lughod, who encouraged me to develop it for a May 2014 workshop at the Columbia Global Center in Amman. Diala Alqadi, my energetic, bright, and conscientious undergraduate research assistant at Duke University, deserves thanks for excellent work. Atef Said, as always, was generous in listening to my ideas and connecting me with activists. He also turned out to be an insightful and very quotable double-blind peer reviewer! Zeinab Abulmagd is an unstinting friend and intellectual ally. Miral al-Tahawi offers analysis, friendship, and poetry in worrying times. I am grateful for the incisive comments and suggestions of all three CSSAAME reviewers. Fieldwork in 2011 was made possible by research funds from Duke University and fieldwork in 2014 was funded by a 2013 Duke Arts and Sciences Council Committee Faculty Research Grant. All English translations of interviews are my own.
