| |
| author |
Marwa Elessawy
| | title |
Containing the Contradictions of the Egyptian Uprising Through the New Administrative Capital: A Postcolonial Critique of the Egyptian Armed Forces' Transformation
| | abstract |
Despite the political and economic demands made by protesters during the 2011 Egyptian
uprising, authoritarianism and austerity have only augmented since. This thesis explains the
Egyptian uprising's unfinished political and economic missions by tracing the transformation of
the political and economic role of the Egyptian Armed Forces (EAF) domestically and
internationally, particularly its involvement in megaprojects. It shows how neoliberalism and
Arab–Israeli conflict normalization fundamentally reshaped the role of the EAF from a
decolonizing, military-driven developmentalist force to a for-profit, domestically-focused, and
self-preserving body. They also radically altered earlier megaprojects from an assertion of a
self-determined national sovereignty—conducive to supplanting patterns of colonial economic
domination—to an assertion of a securocratic, megamilitarist, and parapopulist (Amar)
sovereignty imperative for sustaining the highly unstable regime and international financial
interests. Drawing from scholarly and gray literature, this thesis conducts a case study of the
New Administrative Capital megaproject and applies a postcolonial critique to reveal the current
contradictions of sovereignty. The New Administrative Capital signifies the waning sovereignty
of the military regime, alongside processes of de-democratization, force, investment, and
dispossession. Neocolonial economic patterns of domination have disenfranchised people in
postcolonial states, and resultantly the regime's sovereignty is constantly being contested by the
people. This thesis synthesizes critiques of neoliberalism and postcolonial critiques to highlight
the inextricable link between political and economic justice and show the significance of
recalling the New International Economic Order, particularly its notion that political sovereignty
cannot be realized without a restructuring of the global economic order.
| | school |
The College of Liberal Arts, Drew University
| | degree |
B.A. (2022)
|
| advisor |
Jinnee Lokaneeta
|
| full text | MElessawy.pdf |
| |
