Archaeology of de-democratization: Mobilizing the pharaonic past in post-2013 counterrevolutionary Egypt

Social sciences scholarship on the relationship between narrative production and power relations has extended to include analyses of urban space, archaeology, and national cultural events. This dissertation critically examines the Pharaonic historical narrative employed by the post-2013 Egyptian state in its governmental projects and events, focusing on the Tahrir Square urban development (2020) and the Pharaohs' Golden Parade (2021). Despite their strategic and deliberate connection, these two events have often been studied in isolation. While critical studies on Tahrir Square primarily emphasize the erasure of its revolutionary narrative and symbolism, little attention has been given to its newly imposed narrative and symbolism in relation to the broader socio-political power structure after 2013. Similarly, the parade spectacle has largely been analyzed as a tourism-boosting strategy internationally and a cultural pride-fostering initiative nationally. Using critical discourse analysis and a synthesized theoretical framework drawn from three power theorists—C. Wright Mills, Michael Mann, and Pierre Bourdieu—this dissertation examines these state projects as relational, connecting them to Irfan Ahmad's concept of de-democratization, as their wider objective. Critical discourse analysis is used to analyze the official discourses and narratives of these two events drawn from pro-government news, governmental websites, and governmental social media feeds. By synthesizing Mills' conceptualization of military power elite strategies, Mann's notions of authoritarian structure and infrastructural power, and Bourdieu's concept of symbolic power, I argue that the post-2013 military regime mobilizes the Pharaonic past through archaeology to marginalize and suppress the revolutionary past. Through the material and symbolic replacement of the revolution-based historical narrative with a Pharaonic-based historical narrative, as manifested in the Tahrir Square urban development project and the Pharaohs' Golden Parade mega-event, the regime is actively engaging in de-democratizing the historical narrative both materially and symbolically, to shape the past as well as the future.