Dalia Gebrial
dgebrial@live.com
1110074
URSS Abstract
Given the practical setbacks that stopped me from pursuing the original aim of
this project, which was to conduct a series of interviews with female textile
workers who had led a series of important labour strikes in the 2011 Egyptian
revolution, the focus of this report was shifted to questions of representation.
Through the analysis of local and international media coverage, this report
demonstrates how the participation of this class of women in the revolution has
been systematically either effaced or, where acknowledged, discredited as acts of
political agency. From this point, the report explores the epistemological and
methodological concerns of a feminist researcher looking to provide a somewhat
“authentic” narrative to exist within a field of representation that is already
politically charged, and in which these women, for structural reasons, have little
access to representation. This is all done with the ultimate concern of
conceptualizing a transnational feminist solidarity in mind. In light of this, the
report asserts that the feminist researcher’s primary concern should be, rather
than the pursuit of “authenticity”, the maintenance of a critical distance from
her/his work; the researcher must maintain a self-awareness of the her/his self as
a subject position rather than neutral provider of information.