Surfaces of Longing. Cosmopolitan Aspiration andFrustration in Egypt

SAMULI SCHIELKEZentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, Germany

Abstractciso_1066 29..37

One of the most ambiguous outcomes of globalization has been the emergence of alarge class of people who subscribe to global trends in religion, consumerism, nation-alism, sports and popular culture, without having access to the mobility nor thesymbolic capital that are associated with cosmopolitanism. This sense of aspiration isfar from ephemeral. It is material, it has shape, surface, and form. This photo essayattempts to connect this sensual presence of images, and materials with the sense oflonging and discontent involved in looking out to the world from the vantage point ofunderprivileged social milieus in Egypt. [Cosmopolitanism, Migration, Aspiration,material culture, Egypt].

Cosmopolitanism has become the keyword of a line of researchthat focuses on the way people of all social and cultural back-grounds, not only the elites of Western nations who have

historically been most recognized as cosmopolitan, live and posit them-selves in the world in ways that cross borders, involve complex posi-tionalities and experiences, and require a mastery of different registers,languages and forms of interaction (Pollock et al. 2002; Marsden 2007,2008). Also in regard to Egypt, labor migration, social (im)mobility, andclass-specific styles of consumption and sociability been studied underthe theme of cosmopolitanism in the past decade (Ghannam 2002;Singerman and Amar 2006; de Koning 2009; Elsayed 2010). However,this sense of being versed in the world is often a category of imaginationas much as it is a form of experience. It is about aspiring to the world,a sense of there being a wider array of paths, possibilities, styles and aims“out there”, about the aspiration to make global modernity one’s ownwithout becoming fully connected, included, or homogenized in thesense evoked by globalization (Rouch 1958, Larkin 1997; Piot 1999;Behrend 2002; Weiss 2009; Gable 2010).

For young Egyptians living in the provincial, marginal spaces ofinformal neighborhoods, villages and small towns (that is, the vastmajority of the country’s population), that wide world of great possibili-ties is at once all-present and ever elusive. It is there in the houses built,and careers made with migrant money, in youth fashion, in consumerculture, in global politics and in the dreams of a better life that can matchthe standards of the wider world. Since 2011, these possibilities are also

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City & Society, Vol. 24, Issue 1, pp. 29–37, ISSN 0893-0465, eISSN 1548-744X. © 2012 by the AmericanAnthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-744X.2012.01066.x.

present in the shape of revolutionary political action that has turned thedreams of better life into immediate political demands, and while doing soalso shifted the position of Egypt in the imaginary geography of the worldto temporarily occupy the center stage of history. These references to theworld contain a cosmopolitan moment of positing oneself as a part of theworld, across and beyond national and regional boundaries. But it is areference to the world that in many instances comes along with a sense ofabjection (Ferguson 2007), an experience of distance and exclusion thatturns the presence of the world in poor and provincial locations into ahighly ambivalent experience that reflects both growing ambitions and asense of one’s own environment being worthless and hopeless (Grawforthcoming). The social practice of imagination (Appadurai 1996) isambiguous, providing at once for moments of hope and moments oftremendous pressure and disappointment. The question of cosmopolitan-ism is not about a world without borders, but a world full of borders,inhabited by people who try to overcome them. To study cosmopolitanismas a state of aspiration is therefore to study class, and economic andpolitical inequality (see Elsayed 2010).

This sense of aspiration is far from ephemeral. It is material, it hasshape, surface, and form, or, as Egyptians would put it, a “flavor” (ta’m).It is an immediate sensual presence of images, sounds, materials andmovements that refer to the standards and possibilities of a First World in

Figure 1. In the village of Nazlat al-Rayyis, a densely populated rural settlement closely connected by tiesof work and education to the city of Alexandria (one hour away by bus), young men spend much of theirtime waiting for something to happen sitting in cafes, barber shops, walking in the alleys and the fields. Ina barber shop, men gather to discuss the news of the day, to tell jokes, and to discuss business schemes,work opportunities and plans of migration. Fashionable haircuts and shaves are named after famousactors. One wall is covered by a landscape wallpaper showing a touristic site in the Far East, lush andgreen and exotic. While waiting, young men smoke cigarettes, drink tea, exchange greetings, andcirculate gossip. Photo by author, 2007.

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the middle of a material world that is marked by low-quality goods, lackof order, poor finish of surfaces, and filth, contrasted by flashy advertise-ments and media imageries. The global class difference between thefantastic world of possibilities—be it Europe, America and the Gulf orthe upper class milieus in Egypt—and the everyday world of limitedmeans is marked by the difference in the material qualities of surfaces,dress, vehicles, media, pavement, fashion brands, or sports.

This is something that is often easier to point out than to explain. Inthis essay, I have chosen photography to be the carrier of the narrativebecause it is a medium of communication that is inherently linked withsurfaces. If language is a way to account for depth (to narrate histories,motivations, consequences), photography’s strength lies in the lack ofsuch depth. All about the visible surface of a moment in the past,pointing at something but lacking an explicit code (Barthes 1980), thephotographic image is a weak medium when it comes to telling a story,dependent as it is on the existence of a narrative, a memory, a knowncontext. It is a strong medium, however, when it comes to conveying thematerial and visual quality of things and moments. Because the photo-graph is restricted to the surface of the visible, it is a privileged mediumto study surfaces and their “flavours” (Pinney 2003).

The sensory presence of a wider world characterizes the experience ofpeople in much of the postcolonial world, or the “Third World” to followEgyptian political and economic parlance. This world (a First World)may not necessarily be located in the United States, Europe, the ArabGulf States, or the Far East (although it often is). It is equally identifiedwith the lives of wealthy Egyptians who unlike their less fortunate com-patriots enjoy the privilege of material comfort, social mobility, andtravel. The cosmopolitan aspiration of people in provincial Egyptincludes both the global and the national, just as it includes both admi-ration and anger. If the general mood of these images, mostly takenbetween 2007 and 2010, is a subdued one of longing and waiting, thespring of 2011 brought up a different quality of being related to the widerworld, one marked by a combination of anger and fantastic expectations.This moment marked the opening of a different combination of longingsand materialities which I can only hint at in the framework of this essayby pointing out at the necessity of symbolic destruction, notably so of thepresident’s image, as a way to clear space for dreams to come.

The surfaces of longing shown in this essay are not always evidentlycosmopolitan. Some of them show rather the opposite: spiritual ratherthan worldly concerns, vantage points with limited horizons, moments ofanger and destruction, and lots of grey-brown cement walls. This is aconscious choice, for it is my conviction that a photo essay that wouldonly show the surfaces and spaces of worldly longing for wider horizonswould not do justice to the overall sensibility of which that longing is apart: a social world of limited means, of modest but urgent claims, a sociallife saturated by religion and the expectation of the afterworld along withsex and fame, a political experience where anger and destruction may bethe more constructive path towards a better future.

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Figure 2. On a wall in centralAlexandria, a Photoshop-generatedparadise with a suburban villa issold as a poster for the price of 2Egyptian pounds (less than 40 UScents) along with posters displayingQur’anic verses and smilingchildren. Paradise-like landscapesinscribed with Islamic beliefs aboutthe afterlife, with waterfalls andlush green have long been popularas interior decoration, and thisposter develops the genre bycombining it with one of the mostpowerful signs of aspiration: awealthy villa surrounded by a greenlawn as it can be marvelled inglobal media and as it can only beafforded by the rich who arebuilding new gated cities of villasalong the ring road of Cairo and theNorth Coast on the shores of theMediterranean (see Kuppinger2004). Photo bu author, 2010.

Figure 3. View from the balcony ofa two-bedroom apartment thathouses a teacher’s family with twochildren in eastern Alexandria.With the extremely high populationdensity in Egypt, the reality of evenrelatively comfortable housing ismuch more crowded than in theparadise image of a villa surroundedby a garden and facing the sea.Paying the rent is a monthlystruggle. This a characteristicvantage point of a cosmopolitanimagination that is intensely awareof its material limitations. Photo byauthor, 2008.

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Figure 4. “Why don’t you pray?”asks a sign on a wall in a lowermiddle class neighborhood in Cairo.The streets, shops, homes, andpublic transportation of Egypt arecovered by signs like this, warningabout hell and calling the believersto pray and to repent their sins,women to cover themselves andmen to teach their family the tenetsof Islam. They constitute a dailypresence of the Islamic revival, theworldwide turn to strict scripturalistreligion that has transformed Egyptin the past decades. It carries apromise of happiness and good lifefor every believer, and power andpride for the global community ofMuslims. But this presence is notexclusive. It coexists and competeswith other compelling promises andpursuits. Photo by author, 2008.

Figure 5. “Che” is called sobecause of his admiration for theCuban revolution. Also for thosewith less pronounced politicalviews, Che Guevara has becomethe icon of rebellious youthfulness.“Che” has a dream: to migrate tothe United States. Shortly after thispicture was taken he got a contractto work in an Arab Gulf state andsaw his chance to get out of the“prison” of Egypt as he puts it.After working under extremely badconditions for two years, hereturned to his native village in2010, just on time to participate inthe January 25 Revolution. Butonly few months later, he wascompelled to sign a a new workcontract, again in one of the Gulfstates. Photo by author, 2007.

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Figure 6. In a society that at othertimes shows itself as staunchly piousand prudent, contemporary popmusic has at the same timedeveloped an explicitly sexualappeal, very much aided by thevideo clip. While commercial Arabpop maintains a sound that isdistinctively different from Westernpop music, the aesthetics of wealth,style, and sex appeal it embodiesrefer to a world of class and famethat is explicitly cosmopolitan ina rather secular way. Photo byauthor, 2008.

Figure 7. Association footballenjoys great popularity in Egypt,and while Egypt can boast asuccesful national team and anumber of famous clubs, mostmen—and many women—alsoidentify with European teams whichthey often support with greatenthusiasm (for example,Tottenham worn by the man in themiddle). They have a share in thedesire for the fashion and fame ofinternational sports. But their senseof belonging to a world communityof fans is troubled by their acuteawareness of their provincialposition. Theirs are counterfeitAbibas [sic] training suits,international matches watched inthe café, and local amateurtournaments. Photo by author,2007.

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Figure 8. The private car is theultimate object of material aspirationin Egypt. Still few can afford one,but the number of those who canis increasing in part also due toattractive installment plans offeredby car dealers. To own a car, myEgyptian friends assert, means tohave a sense of freedom and privacyin an increasingly crowded andstressful world. This is one of thethings Egyptian migrants to Europeand the Gulf are often after: asense of living in comfort, with aneducated wife from a good family,a spacious apartment, a privatecar, a comfortable life shaped afterconsumerist ideals of globalcurrency. But the word “love”(notably in English) on the cushionreminds us that the global spread ofconsumer goods is also accompaniedby the rapid spread of romantic loveas a modernist model of desire andmarriage. Yet while love is extremelypresent in the media, literature, aswell as in the form of such everydayobjects, couples who actually wishto marry for love routinely faceprohibitively high material demands,and the path to marriage oftenrequires a long (and oftentimesfutile) detour of migrant work.Photo by author, 2008.

Figure 9. For those who cannotafford a car, the toktok importedfrom India has become a popularform of transportation, cheaper thanthe taxi and more private than thebus. The driver of a toktok in aprovincial town has decorated hisvehicle with German flags. (Othertoktoks of the town carry Spanish,Italian and French flags, as well asthe flag of Manchester United,along with religious and romanticphrases.) He wears the jersey ofthe Dutch football team which hereceived as a present from a Dutchtourist when he was working in thebeach resort of Hurghada. He hopesto marry her and move abroad.While waiting, he works as a driverto make ends meet.The touristresorts of Egypt are in many ways aworld in-between, a site of internalmigration and modernity for youngEgyptians, a site of authenticity andexotism for tourists—and the site ofa variety of romantic and sexualencounters (Jacobs 2010). But theincome the tourist resorts generate isvery precarious, and workers areoften compelled to return anytime.Photo by author, 2007.

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Figure 10. This advertisement board displaying the former president Hosni Mubarak in centralAlexandria was destroyed by protesters on January 25, 2011 (for a video of the event, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0ZDYuWhJgk). For a short moment, Egypt stood in the limelight ofhistory, providing inspiration for other parts of the world, temporarily inverting the cosmopolitandistinction between those who can and those who dream. This moment, fantastic and transient yetunforgettable to those who were a part of it, did not change the underlying economical inequalities,but it did mark an angry departure from the subdued mood of the preceding years, a shift to a newconfigurations of desires, anxieties, materialities, and frustrations, different ways to look out to theworld. Photo by author, 2011.

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