Women’s Third Prison: Adaptation and the Gendered Image-Nation of Egyptian Women (in) Cinema

This paper deals with the scopic enactment and negotiation of the scalar dynamics of gendered nationalism and their implication for women’s third prison in the Egyptian post-independent setting. The paper particularly tackles the questions of the gender politics of nationalism and their scopic drive underpinning the cinematic adaptation of the gender story of the nation from text to screen along two historical contexts—the period of developmental and global modernity. Adopting a multicultural feminist approach, the paper examines three cinematic adaptations of two novels and a play. These are Idris’ (1962) (AlʿAyb: Disgrace), al Zayat’s (1960) l-Babal-Maftouh(Open Door) and alAsaal’s(1982 ) Segnal-Nisa(Women’s Prison). The paper approaches the adaptations –Idris andKhalifa’s (1967)العيب(AlʿAyb: Disgrace),Youssef Issa and Latifa alZayat’s(1963) al-Babal-Maftouh, Abu Zikri and Naoum’s (2014) SegnalNisa—through both McClintock’s framework on the gender politics of nationalism (1997),Hucheon’s notion of “the context of creation … and reception”(Hutcheon2006,  15) and Mulvey’s take on the visual pleasure of narrative cinema. The paper capitalizes on the medially induced turn in Translation Studies (Littau 2011) with its attention to context and media as parameters and venues for constructing the self-image of national cultural identity. The paper endeavors to address the following questions:

1- How is the national story of gender difference narrated and adapted within the scopic regimeof developmental and global modernity?
2- How are nationalist violent technologies meted out through cinematic adaptation of the developmental and global modern?

3- How arethe scopic enactment of the scalar dynamics of gendered nationalism naturalized through the visual pleasure of national cinema andthe implication for women’s third prison in women’s cinema and the cultural dynamics of the global modern?