Performing on the Nile: Young Women Embodying Ecofeminist Decolonial Care

ABSTRACT

This article furthers the ecofeminist perspective that the treatment of nature and women is inextricably linked, to envision alternative methods for care. It demonstrates how applied performance and site-specific devising support young women (ages 13–19) to activate decolonial ecofeminist care. The study focuses on the process of creating and performing original pieces along the Nile and the Philae Temple complex in Aswan, Egypt, during the Performing Decolonial Egyptian Feminism Program in the summer of 2021. Through performance and creative embodiment, young women may have the space, time, and resources to practice authoring and embodying ecofeminist praxis that is necessary for climate justice.

KEYWORDS:

• Decolonial ecology
• ecofeminism
• performance
• water
• care
• devising

It was a hot summer morning, on Tuesday June 19, 2021, in Aswan, Egypt. Energies were soaring as 19 young women participants from the “Performing Decolonial Egyptian Feminism” program and I gathered onto a boat on the Nile to head to The Philae Temple and the Temple of Isis. Soaking in the sun and relaxing into the boat’s benches, we took a few deep breaths in and out together, allowing our breathing to fall into rhythm with the ebb and flow of the river that cradled our boat. “What are five things you see?” I asked them. Then, with their eyes closed, I asked them to reflect on one question at a time about their embodied experiences beyond sight: “What are four things you hear?” “Three things you feel?” “Two things you smell?” And finally, “One thing you taste?” After a few minutes of silent reflection, I asked them to inhale and exhale deeply once again, slowly open their eyes, and share how they were sensing their lives in comparison to that of their ancestors and the future generations. Among other observations, they unanimously agreed that this was one of the first times they had consciously and intentionally thought about their relationship with the Nile, even as young women born and raised in Aswan, Egypt.

How often do you think about the water your city is built on? Did our ancestors care about water differently? Can performance methods provide new ways to care about water? These were some of the questions that lead our practice on that day.

In this article, I want to reflect on the Performing Decolonial Egyptian Feminism Program that I designed and facilitated with 50 young women¹ (aged 13–19) free of charge, in Aswan, Egypt, in June 2021. The 16-session performance ethnography program focused on how performance may support young Egyptian women author and embody a decolonial feminist identity (Fahmy, 2023). Using applied performance methods (applied theatre, site-specific devising, visual arts, song, oral histories), the program provided young women an accessible, dynamic opportunity to engage with and shape decolonial and feminist theories. In that research, using performance studies analysis, I identified how reconstruction, reclamation, and disruption are essential components for a decolonial ecofeminist performance praxis.

Here, I present one-way young women may use performance to enact decolonial ecofeminist care of water.

I share how devising site-specific performances at the Philae Temple Complex and on the boat ride to get there can be seen as acts of decolonial ecofeminism that connects to the care of water bodies as part of and exceeding our bodies. As “water is between bodies, but of bodies, before us and beyond us, yet also very presently this body, too” (Neimanis, 2012, p. 96), when young women devise and perform on the water, they entangle their own embodied sensibilities with that of the water and can see themselves as part of the same being.

Devised theatre is a collaborative process of creating and performing new work, rooted in participants’ authorship and experiences. Site-specific devising is a process of creating performance at a specific location, allowing participants to consciously examine their relationships to the social, cultural, and historical context of the space (Birch & Tompkins, 2012, p. 5). Devising and performing at heritage sites, centers the artifacts as “a living, exploratory laboratory” (Wang, 2014, p. 44) wherein participants may explore, re-define, and reconstruct their relationships with their “forgotten histories” (2014, p. 44). Specifically devising on the Nile enroute to Philae, we partake in “watery embodiment,” from which new possibilities emerge and are in constant transformation (Neimanis, 2012, p. 102).

In doing so, we activate decolonial ecofeminist praxis; where young women engage in a form of environmental care that goes beyond preserving natural resources. The devising process offers space for them to creatively center their embodied knowledge and practice their agency to re-negotiate their relationships with the environment. This particular performance is designed to embody an ecofeminist approach to environmental issues, emphasizing care for water bodies and their cultural, historical, and ecological importance in a decolonial, gendered context.

Decolonial ecofeminism and performance literature

Women remain under-represented on the transboundary, intergovernmental levels of water diplomacy, as recent research on the Nile has demonstrated (Sehring et al., 2023, p. 1). They have often been described as victims of climate change and that they have gender-specific climate insights, however, their relationship “is complex and nuanced”(Albertyn et al., 2023, p. 1). From an ecofeminist standpoint, “how we treat nature and how we treat each other are inseparably linked” (Gaard, 2001, p. 158). Women are “connected symbolically, psychologically, economically, and politically to the treatment of nature,” (Gaard, 2001, p. 159) as they have both been subjugated to the same colonial, patriarchal oppressive narratives. Thus “climate change is indisputably a feminist issue” (Allison, 2017, p. 152).

Today, patriarchal, Eurocentric science-led development initiatives such as building dams, go against the water cycle, which ancient cultures were centered (Shiva, 1988, p. 173). In turn, women, particularly from the Global South have led the way for water justice (Opel, 2008, p. 500) and popularized the mantra that there is “no climate justice without gender justice” (Singer, 2020, p. 272; Sultana, 2022, p. 120). The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda and Egypt's Vision 2030 Strategy have also emphasized the need for spaces that encourage women's and youth involvement in sustainability efforts (Hawken, 2017, p. 76; The Cabinet of Ministers, 2017).

Decoloniality, as an epistemological and ontological project may be useful in facilitating a culture of care by and for women and the environment. Especially since, in Egypt, women’s bodies are perceived as markers of Egyptian identity (Hafez, 2014, p. 178). Decoloniality remains woefully undertheorized and understudied in the Arab, North African, and “Middle East” regions (Alkadry, 2002; Daifallah, 2019; Mignolo, 2011). Decoloniality emerges at the peripheries of Eurocentricity and centers the pluriversality and multiplicities of liberatory projects of the “ex-colonized epistemic sites” (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2015, p. 489). It is deeply “contextual, relational, practice based, and lived. In addition, it is intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, and existentially entangled and interwoven” (Walsh, 2018, p. 19). Decolonial praxis transcends geo-political time, space, and colonial boundaries, and emphasizes that decolonizing knowledge, power, institutions is an ongoing pursuit.

“Climate justice is in many ways inherently about praxis” that necessitates constant participant-centered, antiracist, feminist, anti-capitalist, interrogations to dismantle systemic inequities, through collaboration (Sultana, 2022, p. 119). A decolonial ecofeminist praxis can dismantle the colonial hierarchy of knowledge and celebrate embodied subjectivities. Five decolonial ecology practices have been identified to offer more “creative, reflective, equitable, inclusive and effective in aiding a just transition to a more sustainable world” (Trisos et al., 2021, p. 1207). These practices embrace the multiplicities of knowing and communicating science to dismantle colonialism, though diverse collaborative ways, beyond academia (Trisos et al., 2021, p. 1207). Using these practices, I explore how young Egyptian women use applied performance as a tool for decolonial ecofeminist praxis, from which we may reclaim and restore our relationships with water bodies.

Applied performance may activate decolonial ecofeminist praxis, as it centers participants (who oftentimes do not have pre-existing theatrical training) as co-creators of knowledge. It offers accessible, memorable, creative opportunities for individual and collective authorship to address self-identified issues in non-traditional performance spaces. (Kuppers, 2019). Through performance ethnography, fieldwork data may be creatively transformed to honor participants voices (Madison, 2010, p. 13). Performance can also be a site for full-body knowledge transformation: physically, emotionally, and intellectually. It somatically activates the body though a dialectical process of doing and interpreting (Madison, 2010, p. 7). Public performance, like site-specific devising, may illicit public inquiry (Madison, 2010, p. 6). Using performance in service of climate justice therefore transforms the embodied epistemologies of activism through creativity and imagination. When participants embody issues they care about, they become more invested in ongoing change.

While there is increasing evidence of applied performance being used by and with women in the region (Al-Azraki, 2020; Fahmy et al., 2021; Kandil, 2015; Skeiker, 2015), there remain limited avenues for Egyptian women to creatively negotiate decoloniality and ecofeminism. In addition, there is a need in environmental communication for more studies on “gender intersectionality in human and more than-human relationships” (Singer, 2020, p. 270). Particularly those that activate a “feminist ethic of care” and call on communal, transformative practices that legitimizes the voices of the marginalized (Singer, 2020, p. 278).

Site-specific devising for ecological care

Prior to this site visit, participants practiced reclaiming and reconstructing the histories of Egyptian women, though shadow puppetry, visual arts, and oral heritage. Here, I reflect on our visit to the Philae Temple Complex—which includes Philae Temple and the Temple of Isis.²

In site-specific devising, the historical, cultural, colonial context of the space is an integral facet of creating the performance. Philae was built in 280 BCE by the Ptolemies to honor Osiris (the first Pharoah and god of fertility, agriculture, and the afterlife), his wife, Queen Isis (goddess of motherhood, magic, and fertility), and their son, Horus (god of the sun and healing). Under the Romans, it was a Coptic Christian sanctuary; and in 1836, Napoleon's army left graffiti, marking his military conquest of the region. The Temple of Isis was the last one built in the classical Egyptian style and was one of the last places where she was worshipped (The Editors of Encyclopaedia, 2015). With modern day developments to regulate the flow of the Nile, the Old Aswan Dam was built in 1902, followed by the High Dam in the 1960s, which submerged 500 km of the historic Nubian land—including Philae’s original location (Elcheikh, 2018, p. 241). In 1971, UNESCO undertook “the greatest archaeological rescue operation of all time” (Elcheikh, 2018, p. 241) and relocated the temple complex to higher ground on Aglikia Island.

We took a short boat ride³ from the mainland to the island. Our journey together was our first step of three in the devising process rather than simply meeting there. While the Nile is part of their daily commute,⁴ participants noted never critically thinking about how they co-exist with the longest river in the world. To help set the scene, I recalled how the Nile provides a lifeline for Egypt, providing most of its freshwater, economic prosperity, and cultural significance. In a country that is 90% desert, Egypt’s past, present and future are deeply intertwined with the Nile. Therefore, how we care about the Nile informs the survival of future generations.

On the boat, I led collaborative embodied activities to ground them. As Egyptologists, Franck Goddio and David Fabre, who led the underwater excavations to uncover artifacts for the Khoiak festival noted, “the Egyptians were fundamentally people of the river; everybody lived by its flow and the rhythm of its flood. The cycle of inundation carried with it no less than the hopes of recurring fertility, shaped political and economic institutions, beliefs and religion and rendered Egypt subject to the whims of the Nile” (2021, p. 16). However, today, the High Dam has substantially altered Egyptian’s way of life. While a source of renewable energy, the dam ensures that the Nile no longer floods. We no longer live in accordance to the water cycle, rather we try to work against and augment it for our needs (Shiva, 1988, p. 194). One participant noted this may be one reason we don’t care about it as much today and take it for granted. Perhaps ecofeminist performance praxis may offer us a moment to pause and reactivate our critical self-reflection to care about our non-human relations.

After the boat ride, the second step we devised was at the temples (Figure 1). The participants ran around all day, chatting with local guides, taking notes, and reenacting the stories in front of their respective bas relief sculptures. They accidentally found a narrow staircase behind the Temple of Isis that led directly to the Nile. Under the shade of a tree, we dipped our feet in the cool, clear water and gazed off into the horizon to the island ahead of us, listening to the sounds of the water and the birds in the distance. We embraced the cool breeze and giggled over this seemingly secret discovery. Here, we were reminded of the power of the Nile, as it shapes our surroundings and pondered how our ancestral maternal elders—including Isis herself—would have interacted with it. Our daydreaming was cut short when the guards found us. Confused, they said it wasn’t safe and we could fall in, requesting we leave. “There’s nothing to be seen, looking out at the Nile!” they said.

Figure 1. Participants devising at the Philae Temple. Photo by Gamal Megly.

Nothing to be seen? I reminded the participants and the guards that in Ancient Egyptian and Ptolemaic times it was believed that “Osiris is the Nile consorting with the Earth which is Isis, and the sea is Typhon (Seth) into which the Nile discharges its waters and is lost to view and dissipates” (Goddio & Fabre, 2021, p. 25). As this appreciation for the symbolism of the Nile has been lost overtime within Egyptian culture so has the care or attention given to the river.

We returned to the temple, and recounted the Triumph of Horus play—the oldest script ever written—performed during the Khoiak festival to celebrate Osiris’ life, death, and resurrection (Hedges, 2022, p. 40). The annual festival occurred in the last month of the Egyptian calendar, signifying the start of the planting season after the flooding. The festivities concluded with a public parade along the Nile, mirroring Isis’ quest for Osiris’ dismembered body and resurrecting him (Goddio & Fabre, 2021, p. 25). Valuable ecofeminist connections in this story influenced our creative process. First the priests make the “Osiris Sokaris” vegetan out of corn, symbolizing his body.⁵ Then a priest, as Isis, ladles earth soaked in water from the holy lakes, into fourteen vessels (his body parts). This ladle served as an epithet of Nut, Osiris’ mother, and thus symbolized “the regeneration of his body in the womb of the goddess of the sky” (Goddio & Fabre, 2021, p. 102). By the end of the month, the germinated seeds in the vegetan symbolized Osiris’ divine transformation, and the farmers could start planting.

As I explained this tradition the participants visualized themselves in these roles and performed their interpretation (Figure 2). At the temple, surrounded by the Nile, we connected our present realities with that of our ancestors. We are reminded that “we are all bodies of water” (Neimanis, 2012, p. 96) and that the Nile offers decolonial connections of ecological care. As in the Khoiak, we too, publicly embodied the spirits of these gods on a boat performance on the Nile. While they created a vegetan as a vessel for the regenerative transformation, we used our own bodies for ecofeminist care.

Figure 2. Participants practicing embodying the story of Osiris, Isis, Horus. Photo by Gamal Megly.

Through water, the young women centered the embodiment of Isis’ in particular, to practice ecological care through ancestral maternal connections. “In ancient Egyptian texts, no deity speaks more than Isis” (Bommas, 2022, p. 42). The abundance of sources in which she speaks directly to others, or about events in her own words, is notable for our ecofeminist devising. Embodying her, at her temple, the young women being her to life and give voice to her history whilst authoring theirs. One suggested they sing “Pride of Isis,” as the introductory scene of their devised performance. This was an ode to Isis that many of us had just heard performed by Egypt’s United Philharmonic Orchestra for the Pharaohs’ Golden Parade a couple months earlier, in April. The ode, taken from an inscription at another temple dedicated to Isis in Deir el-Shelwit in Luxor, was sung following the phonetic pronunciation of the hieroglyphs agreed upon by Egyptologists (Par Madja’at, 2021). The participants huddled around one phone, carefully listening, and humming along. Within a few minutes, they picked up the lyrics and sang loudly, as if breathing new life into the silent temple that has been void of performance for centuries.

Then the young women practiced the song and choreographed movements to resemble the hand gestures of the bas-relief sculptures. Participants as Isis, Osiris, and Horus stood together, while the others sang and did their movements in a single file. Upon reaching, Isis would open her wings, unveiling Osiris and Horus, who were concealed beneath them. Their first performance was at the temple’s entrance, where Horus is depicted rising as the sun god (Figure 3). However, once again, their creative self-authorship was disrupted by a guard, “performance is not an appropriate avenue to learn about history or engage with this temple, and you are disrupting the tourists,” she proclaimed. Undeterred, we silently staged the scenes, as though we were posing for photos.

Figure 3. Participants staging their performance at The Philae Temple entrance. Photo by Gamal Megly.

We left shortly after these embodied explorations and hoped to continue our third step of devising on the Nile. I quickly dressed one participant in the Isis costume (which I had made) that we were not allowed to wear at the temple. The flowy blue, floor-length dress could be worn by various body types, above the performer’s clothes. On top, was a red collar embroidered with gold, blue, red, and turquoise beads. The gold wings were designed with two black elastic bands to secure them to the performer’s arms and had a small pocket for inserting a thin wooden rod, to hold the wings taut.

Staging their same scene, with the Temple of Isis in the background (Figure 4), Isis, Osiris, and Horus, stood at the bow of the boat (Figure 5). The singers walked in a single file towards them, alternating their arms, by crossing them across their chests, and opening them above their heads. This was the first time the other participants had heard the ode and seen the full performance. They watched in awe as the otherworldly hymn resonated through the air, re-awakening the ancient ritual of the Khoiak Festival. We were greeted by curious street vendors and boatsmen on the pier, who had gathered around to watch our unexpected performance, and smiled in recognition of Isis.

Figure 4. Participant wearing Isis costume on the boat with the Temple of Isis in the background. Photo by Gamal Megly.

Figure 5. Participants performing on the boat. Photo by Gamal Megly.

Finally, the participants reflected in their self-reflection journals at the end of the day, highlighting their insights about Isis, what they may learn from her, especially regarding their connection to the Nile. Honoring the participants as speaking subjects (Madison, 2010, p. 24), and in line with Isis’ efficacy of speech, here are a few examples of participants perspectives in their own words⁶:

اريد ان اكون اكثر ابداعا وتركيزا؛ لكي اكون هويه اقدر بها اكمل على هويه جدودي اللي تعبوا وابدعوا عشان يكونوها. عايزه اكون اكثر جديه اكثر اهتمام بالعلم والتراث .

I want to be more creative and focused, so that I can cultivate an identity that builds on that of my ancestors, since they creatively and tirelessly innovated theirs. I want to take knowledge more seriously to care about my heritage.

المسرحية فدتني لان اتعلمت ان اختلاف القيم والاختيارات حاجات بسيطه جدا وصغيره بس بتمثل جزء كبير في حياتي.

The performance benefitted me as I learnt that even the smallest and simplest of values considerably influences my life.

الشجاعة، الايجابية، الثقة اللا محدودة بالذات .

Courage, optimism, and limitless trust in yourself.

ان الست القوية وتسطيع فعل كل شى.

That a woman is strong and can do anything.

قوية واثقة من نفسها، صبورة، رحيمة، عندها امل للحياه وقائدة جريئه.

Strong and believes in herself, patient, merciful, has a hope for life, and is a bold leader.

الاصرار والارادة، القوة، الإخلاص، الأمل، الصبر وطولة البال، الجمال، الحب، الحكمة، الثقة .

Determination and persistence, power, loyalty, hope, long-lasting patience, love, beauty, wisdom, and belief in herself.

As participants show in their comments, by celebrating Isis through site-specific devising, our collaborative experiences that day activated a form of decolonial ecofeminist care. When young women take up space through creative self-expression in public, they intentionally disrupt the coloniality of the space and deliberately renegotiate their relationships with it. When young women embody their interpretation of an ancient ritual, to honor the goddess of motherhood, fertility, love, healing, and the moon, they evoke a form of ecological care. Their feminist public performance evokes “the ‘true’ or unmediated voices of the nation” (Elsadda, 2010, p. 321). Our decolonial ecofeminist praxis reveals our interconnectivity across time and space—with ancient women and among ourselves—re-negotiating our relationships with the water that sustains us. Such transformational experiences that encourage reconnection with ourselves, each other, and our environments offer a way to foster the embodied, relational ethics of care we need to envision a decolonial feminist ecology.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Only 19 attended the site visit I reflect on in this article. The rest went to The Nubian Museum on a different day. Both groups engaged in site-specific devising that generated different pieces for the final performance at the end of the program.

2 While known to the Ancient Egyptians as Aset, and to the Ancient Greeks as Isis, this temple was built by the Ptolemies, and thus remains named “Temple of Isis.” Today, Egyptians widely recognize her as “Isis,” and that name is used more popularly than Aset.

3 We took a motorboat rather than a felucca (traditional sailing boat), due to the size of our group and out time restrictions. A felucca would have enrichened this devising process further.

4 Depending on where they live, participants drive alongside the Nile, drive over the bridge above the dam, or take a boat across the Nile.

5 This vegetan is supposedly the first mummy, which was made of corn.

6 The Arabic text is the participants’ original writing. The English translation is my own.