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Sex(t)ing Revolution, Femen-izing the Public Square: Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, Nude Protest, and Transnational Feminist Body Politics

This article will examine the activism of Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, or the “nude Egyptian blogger,” to reflect on the pause that naked bodies insert into civic life and to evaluate nudity as means of protest in Egyptian as well as transnational feminist politics. By “making visible what had no business being seen,” to quote Jacques Rancière, Elmahdy’s nude body reconfigures the body politic and reimagines the theater of the political. Her activism incorporates two distinct phases. Elmahdy initially launched her nude body into the blogosphere to mark the Arab revolutions as a highly sexualized topography. By elevating gender and sexuality to the forefront of local and global geopolitical conversations, Elmahdy brought sex to Tahrir Square, or underscored its primacy there. Her more recent alliance with the global feminist organization Femen reveals points of tension with her virtual revisioning of the body politic, given her affiliation with an arguably Islamophobic, neocolonial feminist agenda on the streets. Yet both phases of Elmahdy’s activism enlist her body where least expected in order to challenge the patriarchal cartography of Tahrir Square and the gendering of national space more broadly, as well as to re-member the global feminist public square.