Mohammed Ezzeldin is a PhD student in the department of history in the City University of New York (The Graduate Center).  He is teaching undergraduate courses on modern Egypt in City College of New York and working currently on the genealogies of revolution in Egypt by tracing the transformation of violence and temporality in decades preceded the revolution. His MA thesis discussed the history and memory of banditry in early twentieth century’s Egypt, it focused on the story of Adham al-Sahrqawi, one of the most famous folk heroes in the modern history of Egypt, who was murdered by the police in the aftermaths of 1919 revolt.

Mohammed Ezzeldin’s project:

Violence, Neoliberalism and the Production of Slums in Cairo

My research project approaches the complicated dynamics of the revolution by investigating how Cairo’s slums engaged with the protests and insurgencies, and how they contributed to the initial downfall of police state in 2011.

Such angle, I argue, is highly illustrative for different concerns. On the one hand, studying slums’ role in the revolution casts a critical light on the demographic intricacies of the “people” who marched for the “downfall of the regime.” The encounters between protesters and police troops were not confined to middle class young women and men activists or political activists; on the contrary the major bulk of “people” included a heterogeneous spectrum of protestors, subaltern residents, outcasts, ex-convicts, and even thugs. On the other hand, it reveals the relation between slums, violence and neoliberal governmentality that permeated social, economic and political atmosphere in Egypt in the years that preceded the outbreak of the revolution.

Barbara Bishay

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