Out of place. Class aspirations and mobilities among contemporary Egyptian fiction writers

0563310 - OÚ 2023 eng A - Abstract
Šabasevičiūtė, Giedrė
Out of place. Class aspirations and mobilities among contemporary Egyptian fiction writers.
[Convegno SeSaMO Napoli 2022 /15./. Naples, 22.06.2022-24.06.2022]
Method of presentation: Přednáška
Event organizer: Società per gli Studi del Medio Oriente (SeSaMo)
URL events: http://www.sesamoitalia.it/xv-convegno-sesamo-napoli-2022/ 
Institutional support: RVO:68378009
Keywords : Egypt * social class * literature
OECD category: Sociology

Since the mid-2000s, as a result of the expansion of private publishing industry, the generalization of the access to the Internet, the multiplication of literary prizes, and the decline of traditional gatekeepers of literature, such as literary magazines and criticism, literary careers became more accessible to the large pans of the Egyptian population. Since literary worlds are commonly associated with the elite culture, for writers coming from families with little inherited cultural capital, pursuing literary careers might produce a feeling of being out of place. Departing from a long-term ethnography conducted in Cairo’s literary clubs, which consisted of biographical interviews and participant observation in literary events, this contribution aims to untangle the material and affective dimensions of class identities as they are expressed by writers through their emic categories. Considering literary fiction as a subjective claim of a class position, it presents literary texts and biographical interviews as two complementary genres of fictional self-narration. Departing from the study of subjective experiences of tension between different social worlds, it aims by this means to contribute to the reflection about class from an ethnographic perspective.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0335871