Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt.

• Author: STEWART, DEVIN J.
• Position: Review

Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt. BY WALTER ARMBRUST. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1996. Pp. xi + 275. $54.95.

Drawing on diverse popular media, this book presents two crucial narratives of twentieth-century Egyptian culture: the emergence since the turn of the century of a modernist ideology idealizing the creation of the middle class, and the foundering and embattlement of this modernism since the l970s. According to the particular modernist vision largely adopted by Egypt's government, intellectuals, and cultural institutions over the past century, Egyptian society will inevitably be able to march forward along the path of progress while benefiting from the advantages of Western technology, but without losing national cultural authenticity. The theoretical continuity between the present and the classical past does not acknowledge the vernacular or folkloric past; the "folk" have no place in this picture. Progress is seen to involve both throwing off the shackles of ignorance and backwardness associated with the lower classes and giving up the indolence, weak moral fiber, and lack of authenticity of the old landlord class with its ties to the monarchy. Modern, Western-style education provides the key vehicle for this transformation; it, more than anything else, forms the new, successful, active middle class, who are thoroughly civilized, familiar with modern Western learning, technology, and ways, yet have not lost their connections with and attachments to native tradition. Armbrust admirably explains both the Egyptian modernist vision and the ideology behind it, presenting and analyzing some of its most salient manifestations in popular culture.

Modernist ideology of this type has been heavily promoted in Egyptian media for many decades--already between the two World Wars and more so after the 1952 revolution. It is still the dominant paradigm in the state-sponsored press, radio, and television. Yet adherence to its major tenets, especially the idea of progress through education, is now beleaguered by skepticism. In the face of massive evidence that the educational system has ceased to function in the hoped-for manner as a means of social mobility, average Egyptians find a belief in the modernist vision and the easy formula of middle-class success through education increasingly difficult to sustain. Nasser's promises of free education and a guaranteed government job for every university graduate have proven impossible to...