Getting to the Party on Time: Revolution, Gender, and Sexuality as Global Historical Problematics

How does a scholar write about revolution? I was left with this question after reading three recent books relating to the Arab revolutions and uprisings that began in late 2010 and, by some accounts, continue into the present. These works are similar in being inquiries into the gendered and sexualized conditions of and for revolutionary politics. Superficial likenesses aside—all focus on gender in Egypt—Marwan M. Kraidy’s Naked Blogger of Cairo, Maria Frederika Malmström’s Politics of Female Circumcision in Egypt, and Mariz Tadros’s Resistance, Revolt, and Gender Justice in Egypt are works from different fields: media studies, anthropology, and development studies, respectively. Kraidy and Tadros draw on literature across disciplinary boundaries but speak most forcefully from their primary disciplines. I approach these works from the perspective of a historian of Egypt and the Indian Ocean world interested...