'Intersectionality' has now become a major feature of feminist scholarly work, despite continued debates surrounding its precise definition. Since the term was coined and the field established in the late 1980s, countless articles, volumes and conferences have grown out of it, heralding a new phase in feminist and gender studies. Over the past few years, however, the growing number of critiques leveled against intersectionality warrants us as feminists to pause and reflect on the trajectory the concept has taken and on the ways in which it has traveled through time and space. Conceptualizing intersectionality as a traveling theory allows for these multiple critiques to be contextualized and addressed. It is argued that the context of the neoliberal academy plays a major role in the ways in which intersectionality has lost much of its critical potential in some of its usages today. It is further suggested that Marxist feminism(s) offers an important means of grounding intersectionality critically and expanding intersectionality's ability to engage with feminism transnationally.
This article looks at how Fanon's work on the postcolonial state can be used to interpret political changes in the postcolonial world, particularly his call to "stretch Marxism". In this article I use his notion of a dependent "native bourgeoisie" created through colonialism to look at the Egyptian capitalist class under British colonial rule, the Nasser era and the Sadat era. I argue that the Nasserist ruling class did not resemble the dependent "native bourgeoisie" Fanon spoke of as emerging right after the end of colonial rule, and that it was the Egyptian bourgeoisie under British colonial rule and the ruling class formed by Sadat that more closely fulfilled this role. Moreover, I argue that Fanon's call to understand capitalist development in postcolonial contexts as tied to colonialism provides a useful lens through which to revisit the evolution of the Egyptian postcolonial state.
This article revisits the Nasserist project through the lens of haunting. It explores the afterlives of Nasserism, in particular in relation to Egypt's move towards a free market economy from the 1970s onwards. To do this, the Nasserist project is explored in order to excavate some of the promises that were made, and trace the legacies these created. I argue that these promises-although only partially fulfilled-continued to act as powerful political memories that limited Egyptian politics in the decades that followed. Thinking of Nasserism as a form of haunting allows for a deeper understanding of how different political projects seep into one another, problematizing the notion of a linear teleological or providential trajectory consisting of distinct eras. In distinction to work that has mobilised the concept of haunting (originally theorized by Jacques Derrida) in order to elaborate on the historical manifestation of damaging or violent legacies in the present, I argue that Nasserist forms of haunting should be read as a productive and destructive normative force in the present. This paper puts forward examples of both, particularly in relation to questions of social justice, socialism, and anti-imperialism.
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback, as well as Dubravka Zarkov, Rekia Jibrin, Vanessa Eileen-Thomson, and Karim Malak, who helped me think through many of these ideas.
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