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Masculine love and sensuous reason: the affective and spatial politics of Egyptian Ultras football fans
Abstract
© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This article
uses a feminist spatial approach attentive to masculine affect and difference to analyze
the language, cultural production, and practices of the two largest Ultras football
fan groups in Egypt–White Knights (affiliated with Zamalek Sporting Club) and Ahlawy
(affiliated with Al-Ahly Sporting Club)–both established in 2007. Egyptian Ultras
cultivate embodied passion, joy, love and anger. By excluding girls and women, the
Ultras reflect the sexism that permeates Egyptian social and political life. However,
sexism does not appear to be the most important reason for Ultras homosociality and
misogyny is not particularly relevant to their practices and cultural oeuvre. The
Ultras do not encourage sexual attacks on girls and women, let alone boys and men,
and explicitly discourage sectarianism and racism. Ultras groups in Egypt, I contend,
offer a masculine alternative to a government that represents itself as a militarist
‘factory of men’. As they battle state efforts to control space and reinforce the
dominant order, their practices challenge rationality/affect and mind/body binaries,
as well as divisions between street/stadium and corporate/commons. Informed by fieldwork
in Egypt, the article uses semiotic and discursive methods to analyze hundreds of
Ultras’ images, songs, chants, Facebook pages, and live performances on multiple sites,
as well as scholarly sources in Arabic and English and a book-length Arabic account
about the Ultras in Egypt by the founder of the Ultras White Knights.
Type
Journal articleSubject
Social SciencesGeography
Women's Studies
Egyptian Ultras fans
homosociality
love
masculinity
transnational Ultras fans
MEN
GEOGRAPHY
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/19513Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1080/0966369X.2018.1531830Publication Info
Hasso, FS (2018). Masculine love and sensuous reason: the affective and spatial politics of Egyptian
Ultras football fans. Gender, Place and Culture, 25(10). pp. 1423-1447. 10.1080/0966369X.2018.1531830. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/19513.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Frances S. Hasso
Professor of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies
I am a Professor in the Program in Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at Duke
University with secondary appointments in the Department of History and Department
of Sociology. I taught in and directed the International Comparative Studies Program
at Duke from 2010-2015 and was a member of the Oberlin College faculty from 2000-2010.
I am Editor Emerita (2015-2018) of the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies

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