"The very, very local is the very, very universal"

~ Nawal el Saadawi

When we met in early 2021, we did not know that less than a year later, we were going to create a space we both had once needed and have always imagined. Two feminists from two different backgrounds were manifesting a joyful classroom where we can meet other souls, excited by the possibilities of debate, critical reflection, and engagement with urgent feminist issues at the intersection of the local and the global. We work at the Cairo Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CILAS). As an autonomous scholarly collective, CILAS operates under a pedagogy of attunement and discovery, using discussion-based learning, bilingualism and indigenous knowledges to train students. This year is the first time CILAS offers a one-year programme dedicated to women's studies, and we are its co-creators.

Our programme is a first in the Egyptian/North African context and comes at a time of heated national debates around women’s autonomy in light of the country’s very own #MeToo movement. As a youth and female-led programme, we are particularly wrestling with the ways in which the classroom becomes a site of resistance where we counter-map patriarchy and neo-colonialism. We ask: how can we dream ourselves into existence in the feminist, just, and joyful spaces we would like to inhabit? What does it mean to create syllabi inspired by Black diasporic women in the light of the Egyptian/North African context? One semester in, we sat together to reflect and discuss what brought us together, how we read and discuss feminisms within the context of Egypt, and what lies ahead. 

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Amuna: How did you first encounter feminism?

Mariam: As a young girl growing up in Cairo, I used to take the subway every morning to my school. The trip was short yet daunting. My petite body met all sorts of unwelcome comments and touches on a daily basis. When I was told this was a common misfortune of growing up in a female body, I felt furious. My anger and pain lead me to long hours searching the internet, looking for answers. I still remember the day my broken English read the word feminism for the first time. That magical word was used by women who were fighting for my right to protect my body; it taught me that my daily routine was anything but normal and planted the seed for a long journey of exploring feminisms.

When I decided to do my major in gender studies at Georgetown University, no one was surprised. I had been the annoying feminist at every family gathering, and I never shut up about the abuses women face in my community in Egypt and where I was living at the time in Qatar. Ironically, I did not enjoy my studies. Every time I went to class, we would talk about female genital mutilation (FGM), sexual assault, so-called honour killings, gang rapes, and domestic violence. As a feminist who had been reading and living through many of the abuses I was learning about in class, I felt constantly stressed. It took me a while to understand why I could not handle this mode of teaching: I was triggered, and the classroom was not trauma-sensitive in any way. The neoliberal feminism I was learning trapped me in a victim role that I wholeheartedly rejected. 

How different were your experiences with feminism at university? 

Amuna: At the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (SOAS), where I was educated, my world views were cultivated by the scholarship of Black and brown feminists. They gave me lenses to see our heteropatriarchal, neo-colonial world for the first time; their writings seemed to offer a fairly straightforward way to liberation. Yes, Audre Lorde warned us that “It is a particular academic arrogance to assume any discussion of feminist theory without examining our many differences, and without a significant input from poor women, Black and Third World women, and lesbians” — but how could I really appreciate the truth of this statement when everything was written from and for my geographical positionality? After graduating from university, I moved to Egypt. There, I befriended feminists whose politics had been raised by these very same thinkers. We bonded over shared values and dreams, a beautiful reassurance that progressive visions can be universal and that Black feminist toolkits are, in fact, liberatory for everyone.

Mariam: What struck you as different when you moved here?

Amuna: Not feeling safe about one’s own life in the SWANA region (Southwest Asian and North Africa region) is very different to being underprivileged in the Europe that I grew up in. Women’s rights and liberation have a different urgency in countries that do not even formally ensure the safety of women and [ethnic] minorities. Living in Egypt as a European Black woman has meant re-negotiating my identity daily and at every corner I turn in Cairo, moving from privileged European ‘expat’ neighbourhoods into all-Black immigrant areas, (mis)fitting both. Studying and teaching at CILAS, I have been on a journey to apply the Black feminist thought that I still believe is for everyone to a context that it was not written in and for.

When I enrolled in your course on Pleasure Activism, I was awed by adrienne maree brown’s words and excited to explore the politics of feeling good with a like-minded group of people of colour. A few weeks into the course, a fellow student sent an email saying: “I have been feeling angry, sad, and threatened. I tried to read next week's readings, but all I can think about is how I can be reading about desire when I can't feel safe about my own life.” 

Mariam: Yes, I remember this email!

Amuna: How did you unlearn the feminism you were taught? How did you end up teaching about pleasure in Cairo?

Mariam: After graduation, I graduated with depression and an overall sense of despair that made me want to stay away from anything related to feminism. When I came across the book Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown, I started to reconsider the way I think of my own activism. I had new questions: how can I have a sustainable relationship with feminism if my activism is fed by pain? How do I become satisfiable while still being aware of the systems of oppression around me? What would my world look like if I start taking my own pleasure more seriously if I treat it as a fundamental right and not a luxury?

This is why when I had the chance to teach a course on feminist studies in Cairo, my soul gravitated towards designing the course I wish I had taken at university. To teach a course on pleasure felt hopeful and necessary, especially in a place where my body remembered so much pain. Designing the course, I wanted it to be a journey where participants come together and help each other in assembling a toolbox of ideas, poems, images, and tactics that orient us all together towards healing and towards life. The classroom became our feminist territory where we practice the accountable, just, and joyful futures we envision. I think this is something we continue to experiment with in our programme now. 

Amuna: Definitely. Our students often ask: How can we move up the ladder of activism when the places we inhabit do not guarantee us our basic right of living? How much can one person fight for? What does the ladder of activism look like, I wonder. Egyptian realities give way to a world of activism and trauma that a European of my generation has no way of knowing; it shines through our conversations and continues to inform our imaginations for change. Creating this programme, we asked ourselves: considering the recent history of this country, how do we carve out spaces where we continue cultivating progressive thought? brown proposes “a culture where the common experience of trauma leads to the normalization of healing”. 

“I do wonder sometimes: is it delusional to seek joy when our bodies are constantly scrutinised and threatened?”

Mariam: I do not think there is an easy answer to this. Some days feel particularly heavy. I get harassed on my way to the institute to teach about pleasure, and I do wonder sometimes: is it delusional to seek joy when our bodies are constantly scrutinised and threatened? On a bad day, I feel defeated, but this is exactly why this work is necessary. We cannot fragment, nor separate our thoughts from our feelings, nor our fears from our activism. I do not think we can afford more ugliness, and I deeply believe that our feminist movements cannot be sustainable if we deny or neglect our deepest desires. I do not think we need to leave the personal for the sake of the political. They are intertwined and interconnected. Feminism, for me now, is a daily practice. In the classroom, it means making space for others, learning together, and as you taught me: calling in rather than calling each other out. When we learn how things are built, we demystify them, and this allows us to imagine and to build something different.

Amuna: I agree with you. I believe the need for healing is universal; such is the need to hear your own voice and feel its value. The experience of being silenced unites us, and thus, a classroom that invites you to speak your mind’s taboos becomes a site of resistance. Desire, sex, and intimacy are political; they hold and give power and, more importantly, life. In our classes, we read African diasporic women and fall in love with their words for the ways we can and the ways we cannot relate. When we discuss their work in Cairo, we practice holding space for and learning from oppositions and ambiguity. Like adrienne writes, we are crafting our relationships in action and simply in rhetoric. And surely there can be no better place to learn about revolutionary relationships than Egypt? 

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About the Programme and How to Apply

The CILAS Women’s Studies Programme is a one-year programme that is offered online and offline. The first semester (September - December 2021) laid the foundations through three tracks that contextualised feminist movement building in Egypt and globally; the historical, anthropological/sociological, literary/philosophical. The second semester (February - April 2022) offers specialised thematic courses and work labs for participants to expand their knowledge and develop their own practice in line with their personal and professional interests. The courses and labs on offer are the following: Who Taught you to Feel Happy?; Reading Feminism/Writing To Live; Intimate Archives on Feminist Movements & Emotions; Feminist Phenomenology; and Muddying Waters: Race, Class and Gender. The thematic courses are open to the public and can be taken individually at the cost of 2000 EGP/125 USD per course. For registration, please check this link for courses and this link for labs.

Amuna Wagner is a writer, filmmaker and Editor-In-Chief of Kandaka, a website that imagines feminist futures at the intersection of art, pleasure, and activism. She has published articles and poetry on Amaka Studio, Egyptian Streets, Skin Deep, Meeting of Minds, shado mag, Rosa Mag and sweet-thang zine.

Mariam Diefallah is a feminist writer and doula from Egypt. She is a strong advocate for better sexual and reproductive health and rights and is a passionate believer in pleasure as a form of activism. Her work has been published in Jadaliyya, Jeem, Asymptote, and Egypt Migrations.