Abstract:

In 2021, President el-Sisi’s military-backed regime launched a so-called New Republic (al-gumhuriyya al-gadida). Promoted aggressively in government statements and propaganda as well as in the government-aligned media, the New Republic is ostensibly a broad national project encompassing a series of interlinked components: social and cultural renaissance, a national dialogue (hiwar watani) between the regime and the opposition, and inclusive economic growth. Thus far, it has been associated most strongly with massive infrastructure investments in the Egyptian deserts, e.g., the construction of a New Administrative Capital 45 kilometers east of Central Cairo. Yet, the label also designates new security measures, reformed social protection schemes, large scale housing projects, and new forms of cultural production.

In this workshop, we want to open a conversation about the different configurations of power that define President el-Sisi’s contemporary regime. 15 years after the January 2011 Revolution and 13 years after the 2013 Military Coup, we insist that it is time to unmoor Egyptian political developments from the (post/counter-)revolutionary timeline and to adopt new analytical frameworks. As an emic concept, the “New Republic” provides one such frame. What specific modality of governmentality does this designation invoke? If one assumes a structural rupture between Sisi’s regime and its predecessors, what constitutes this rupture? And how does this transformation materialize in practice, across different sectors and social spheres?

The workshop will gather nine researchers from different social-scientific disciplines, who have conducted recent ethnographic or document-based research on the New Republic’s different constitutive components: security, infrastructure, urban planning, subsidies, memory culture, cultural production, judiciary systems, etc.  Together, the papers presented will initiate a cohesive discussion about a new era of Egyptian politics that is long overdue.

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PROGRAM

9.00-9.15
Tea and coffee, meet and greet

9.15-9.20
Valentina Sandu-Dediu (Rector of New Europe College)
Welcome

9.20-9.30
Carl Rommel (New Europe College) and Marie Vannetzel (CNRS/Aix-Marseille University)
Introductory Remarks

9.30-10.10
Yahia Shawkat (TU Berlin/ Built Environment Observatory)
All the Dominion Belongs to God: Property Informalization and (Re)Formalization in the New Republic 

10.10-10.50
Jeanne Gorin (Paris 8 University)
A New Capital for a New Republic: Restructuring of Urban Production Networks

10.50-11.10
Coffee Break

11.10-11.50
Carl Rommel (New Europe College)
Tales of Governance in a World of Project: Aspirations, Agency, and Responsibility in President el-Sisi’s New Republic 

11.50-12.30
Florian Bonnefoi (Paris Cité University/CEDEJ Khartoum)
A New Republic Where People Stay: Megaprojects and Migration in the Nile Delta

12.30-13.10
Giedrė Šabasevičiūtė (Czech Academy of Sciences/CEFRES)
Moving Culture to the Desert: How Egypt’s New Republic Is Reshaping Its Literary Scene?

13.10-14.10
Lunch break

14.10-14.50
Sixtine Deroure (Avignon University)
Dying for the Nation’s Stability: Martyr-making in Egypt’s New Republic

14.50-15.30
Youssef El Chazli (Paris 8 University)
The Green and the Dry: Climate Politics and Never-Ending Development in Egypt’s New Republic

15.30-15.50
Coffee Break

15.50-16.30
Waleed K. Salem (Simon Fraser University [Online])
The Autocrat, the Judiciary and the Conundrum of Control — Observations from Egypt

16.30-17.10
Marie Vannetzel (CNRS/Aix-Marseille University)
Reprogramming Subsidies: Imperilment and the New “fictions” of Social Justice 

17.10-17.50
Concluding discussion

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This workshop is supported by UEFISCDI – The Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding of the Ministry of Research and Education of Romania (PN-IV-P8-8.1-PRE-HE-ORG-2023-0055).