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Stories Take a Life of their Own: Exploring the MeToo Movement in Egypt
This thesis explores the unfolding of Egypt’s MeToo movement through the stories that emerged in the wake of the 2020 Ahmed Bassam Zaki case. Rather than framing this moment as a rupture or a crisis, it seeks to situate it within a longer genealogy of feminist resistance, digital activism, and every...
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AUC Knowledge Fountain
2026
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| _version_ | 1867613425506451456 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Salama, Menatallah |
| author_browse | Salama, Menatallah |
| author_facet | Salama, Menatallah |
| author_sort | Salama, Menatallah |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | This thesis explores the unfolding of Egypt’s MeToo movement through the stories that emerged in the wake of the 2020 Ahmed Bassam Zaki case. Rather than framing this moment as a rupture or a crisis, it seeks to situate it within a longer genealogy of feminist resistance, digital activism, and everyday acts of speaking out and silencing. At the heart of this work is the question: what does it mean for a story to take a life of its own? Stories here are not fixed entities but rather living actants—capable of forming solidarities, generating intensities, and unsettling hegemonic narratives. Drawing on feminist ethnography, digital archives, interviews, and discourse analysis, the thesis foregrounds the politics of storytelling: whose stories are heard, which voices are amplified, and what happens when testimony becomes spectacle. It considers not only what is spoken, but what is withheld; not only what is archived, but what is erased or kept at the margins. From anonymous Instagram pages to grassroots feminist blogs, from courtroom rehearsals to photography and comics, these stories surface and slip, reappearing across different platforms, forms, and bodies. Central to this inquiry is an engagement with the idea of eventfulness—how certain moments become “the story” while others fall through the cracks. In attending to the affective, embodied, and temporal dimensions of storytelling, this research resists the urge to provide closure. Instead, it follows the story-in-motion, asking what it can teach us about violence, memory, movements, and the fragile, powerful work of narration itself. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:fount.aucegypt.edu:etds-3616 |
| institution | American University in Cairo (Egypt) |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:35:56.457Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from AUC Knowledge Fountain — bepress |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| publishDateRange | 2026 |
| publishDateSort | 2026 |
| publisher | AUC Knowledge Fountain |
| publisherStr | AUC Knowledge Fountain |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | AUC Knowledge Fountain — bepress |
| spelling | oai:fount.aucegypt.edu:etds-3616 Stories Take a Life of their Own: Exploring the MeToo Movement in Egypt Salama, Menatallah This thesis explores the unfolding of Egypt’s MeToo movement through the stories that emerged in the wake of the 2020 Ahmed Bassam Zaki case. Rather than framing this moment as a rupture or a crisis, it seeks to situate it within a longer genealogy of feminist resistance, digital activism, and everyday acts of speaking out and silencing. At the heart of this work is the question: what does it mean for a story to take a life of its own? Stories here are not fixed entities but rather living actants—capable of forming solidarities, generating intensities, and unsettling hegemonic narratives. Drawing on feminist ethnography, digital archives, interviews, and discourse analysis, the thesis foregrounds the politics of storytelling: whose stories are heard, which voices are amplified, and what happens when testimony becomes spectacle. It considers not only what is spoken, but what is withheld; not only what is archived, but what is erased or kept at the margins. From anonymous Instagram pages to grassroots feminist blogs, from courtroom rehearsals to photography and comics, these stories surface and slip, reappearing across different platforms, forms, and bodies. Central to this inquiry is an engagement with the idea of eventfulness—how certain moments become “the story” while others fall through the cracks. In attending to the affective, embodied, and temporal dimensions of storytelling, this research resists the urge to provide closure. Instead, it follows the story-in-motion, asking what it can teach us about violence, memory, movements, and the fragile, powerful work of narration itself. 2026-02-15T08:00:00Z thesis application/pdf https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/2564 https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3616/viewcontent/menatallah_osama_salama_thesis.pdf Theses and Dissertations AUC Knowledge Fountain stories #MeToo sexual harassment violence movements eventfulness crisis |
| spellingShingle | stories #MeToo sexual harassment violence movements eventfulness crisis Salama, Menatallah Stories Take a Life of their Own: Exploring the MeToo Movement in Egypt |
| title | Stories Take a Life of their Own: Exploring the MeToo Movement in Egypt |
| title_full | Stories Take a Life of their Own: Exploring the MeToo Movement in Egypt |
| title_fullStr | Stories Take a Life of their Own: Exploring the MeToo Movement in Egypt |
| title_full_unstemmed | Stories Take a Life of their Own: Exploring the MeToo Movement in Egypt |
| title_short | Stories Take a Life of their Own: Exploring the MeToo Movement in Egypt |
| title_sort | stories take a life of their own exploring the metoo movement in egypt |
| topic | stories #MeToo sexual harassment violence movements eventfulness crisis |
| url | https://fount.aucegypt.edu/etds/2564 https://fount.aucegypt.edu/context/etds/article/3616/viewcontent/menatallah_osama_salama_thesis.pdf |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT salamamenatallah storiestakealifeoftheirownexploringthemetoomovementinegypt |