Atomic aesthetics: gender, visualization and popular culture in Egypt

Abstract

‘Women are like atomic energy’, proclaimed the title of an article published in the Arabic-language journal Al-Hilal in 1950. The article documents a debate between two male friends grappling with the question of whether women resemble atomic bombs or atomic energy. One asserts that women are like atomic bombs, because they can destroy the lives of men, while the other—the author—contends that because women create life, they are rather more like atomic energy. After all, he notes, the only purpose of atomic bombs is destruction and death: ‘Where, then, is the role of the affectionate mother, the merciful sister, the loyal wife, the generous angel?’ he questions, in a characteristic description of how nationalist modernizers at the time saw the role of women.¹ The author of the short piece was Muhammad Tawfiq Diab (1886-1967), an Egyptian journalist known for anti-colonial activity. It was part of an almost 200-page thematic issue dealing with the atomic age, which included articles translated from popular English-language magazines. The cover featured a woman's face, with an iconic ringed atom and an electricity tower transmitting power through her head (figure 1). Diab's text demonstrates that by 1950 atomic technology had become a regular part of everyday life and language in Egypt. Used jokingly as an analogue for gender and a reference point for power, it had become ‘disassembled’, disconnected from the larger political and military context in which it had emerged.²

Figure 1

Cover of Al-Hilal, October 1950 issue

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This article is concerned with the gendered representations used to narrate the emergence of the nuclear-armed world in Egypt. How was the atomic age visualized? What role did gendered images, symbols and metaphors play in mediating the atomic age? Founded on feminist–postcolonial analysis, the article engages with visual media and popular culture between 1945 and 1952. It presents a plurality of images: the widespread depiction of the bomb as an egg, a small and aesthetically pleasing object, alongside more alarming illustrations of the bomb as a monster. It argues that gendered visualizations of the atomic age invoked a fundamental feature of nuclear technology, namely its ambivalence.³ As Diab's text suggests, through the contradictory frameworks of nationalist rejuvenation (women as energy) and violent destruction (women as bombs), nationalist modernizers embraced the ambivalence of nuclear technology and participated in the co-production of the nuclear-armed world.

This research contributes to the growing feminist literature on symbolism within nuclear weapons, using an empirical case to better contextualize and conceptualize the nuclear condition.⁴ It demonstrates that nuclear symbols were not only masculine but also feminine, enabling scholars to revisit the notion of nuclear discourse as phallic, which has become conventional wisdom since Carol Cohn's ground-breaking article.⁵ The article speaks simultaneously to visual International Relations (IR), highlighting the shifting and ambivalent nature of early nuclear imaginaries from the global South and challenging the dominant narratives, histories and aesthetics of the atomic age. By studying voices and visuals deemed peripheral, this article shows ways in which nuclear technology was understood beyond the dominant frameworks of deterrence and desire for weapons.

The period under examination in this article was formative for Egypt. It was marked by anti-colonial modernization, which sought to remake citizens and construct new gendered roles. Independence was looming over the horizon, but British troops were still on Egyptian territory with the declared goal of protecting the Suez Canal. There was an acceleration of nationalist movements that challenged the colonial presence and the authority of the king, culminating in the Free Officers' coup in 1952. Tracing the historical visualization of the nuclear age in Egypt on the cusp of independence elucidates its contemporary nuclear politics. It shows the roots of the techno-nationalist approach underlying current Egyptian nuclear policy-making. By revisiting how nuclear technologies were visualized, and came to be normalized, this article works towards identifying and denaturalizing the social structures within which the nuclearized world gained meaning.⁶

This article also has a secondary objective, namely to demonstrate that people in states that did not possess nuclear weapons also participated in the production of the nuclear-armed world, though their discursive involvement with the nuclear condition has been overlooked. Gabrielle Hecht's seminal work Being nuclear has shown that people in the global South are consistently written out of nuclear histories, aside from well-publicized concerns about proliferation.⁷ This article challenges top-down, state-centric and hegemonic perspectives on nuclearization, but through the voices of an exclusionary male intelligentsia. As Diab's text suggests, women were generally the subjects of articles, not their authors. The voices in this article are predominantly those of male political actors, such as journalists, cartoonists and writers, whose authority was linked both to their gender and their class status. The attempt to ‘write back’, therefore, must entail uncovering gendered relations and considering the exclusion of women.

The next section of this article outlines its theoretical underpinnings and methods. The empirical sections examine contradictory depictions of nuclear technology. One shows how nuclear technology was represented on the national level as offering the possibility of postcolonial rebirth; the next shows how it was represented on the international level as leading to death. Another deals with the mythologization of the bomb as beautiful, tiny and extremely destructive; the next shows its disassemblage and depoliticization as hyperbole and as a mundane object. The concluding section outlines the policy implications of this research.

Visualizing the bomb: feminist–postcolonial intersections

The intersection of feminist and postcolonial approaches offers new opportunities for understanding nuclearization, though there is also potential to productively explore the tensions between the two approaches. Cohn highlights the techno-strategic discourse of US defence circles through their representation of nuclear weapons as instruments of masculine strength. She offers unique insights into a setting that is highly militarized, reflecting the hegemonic status of the United States.⁸ This can be contrasted with the Egyptian context, where male intellectuals criticized the colonial connotations of nuclearization. They situated the bomb within the history of empire, as a climax of the dark side of modernity.⁹ Its unprecedented destructive force was perceived as exacerbating global inequalities in power. These intellectuals' experiences of the nuclear-armed world are therefore starkly different from those described by Cohn of hegemonic masculinity at the centre of power.

For Egyptian authors writing on international politics, colonial violence was a main reference point that informed their analyses of the bomb. Like others in the decolonizing world, they perceived the bombings of Japan as racialized, a reflection of the idea that non-white lives were less worthy than white lives and more likely to be subjected to violence without repercussions.¹⁰ This sense of hierarchy is also echoed in the contemporary nuclear order: institutionalized concerns over horizontal nuclear proliferation incorporate depictions that are both racialized and gendered, evoking Orientalist descriptions of irrationality and irresponsibility.¹¹ Yet, as Diab's text indicates, nationalist politics were ‘preeminently patriarchal’.¹² Elites relied on sexist motifs and placed women in a supporting role. Much like nuclear technology, women were seen as needing to be tamed and made productive for the nation. Male intellectuals considered women to be strategic national assets and dismissed them as political actors in their own right.

This article's theoretical approach thus builds on scholarship embracing feminist–postcolonial intersections to consider such silences and gaps.¹³ It pays attention to how gender intersects with class, race and other social hierarchies to produce distinct dynamics of subordination.¹⁴ Drawing on the insights of feminist scholars, I conceptualize masculinity and femininity as political categories that are performative and fluid, subject to destabilization and contestation, rather than fixed or stable.¹⁵ I critically engage with the visualizations produced by the nationalist intelligentsia to understand how their experiences of nuclearism were intertwined with imperialism, but also how they were active agents in the co-production of the nuclear-armed world. In bringing these voices to centre stage, this article sheds light on the conflicted, inside/outside, position of nationalist intellectuals amid decolonization, aspiring concurrently to unsettle binaries of national vs international, masculinity vs femininity and even colonizer vs colonized.¹⁶

I adopt the feminist proposition that gendered images, symbols and metaphors play a key role in narrating, imagining and criticizing, but also sustaining, the nuclear-armed world. The article similarly embraces the main points of departure of visual IR, emphasizing that visuals mediate political debates, particularly in visceral and affective ways.¹⁷ Playful and parodic images in particular have emerged as an area of feminist inquiry, which has long emphasized the importance of embracing and interpreting ambivalence and multiplicity.¹⁸ The images described in this article, and their changing meanings, illustrate modes of visualization of the nuclear world beyond the iconic image of the mushroom cloud, which reflects the specific vantage point of the United States.¹⁹ They serve as a counterpoint to this hegemonic perspective. Focusing on these alternative visualizations and imaginaries enables us to consider the agency of actors typically seen as beyond the scope of nuclear politics.

Early visualizations of the nuclear age emerged in an atmosphere of concealment. Few images were disseminated in the immediate aftermath of the bombings of Japan. Censorship by US forces during its occupation of Japan restricted and controlled information.²⁰ Photographs depicted the destruction of the cities but not the physical trauma inflicted upon their people.²¹ International media therefore obtained information about the bomb only from official channels. Truman's declarations after the bombing of Hiroshima—that the weapon used was more destructive than 20,000 tons of TNT and over 2,000 times more devastating than any bomb used before²²—were echoed in the headlines of Egypt's largest newspaper Al-Ahram on 7 August 1945. However, these figures, and the absence of much other information, left space for authors and artists to imagine the nuclear age.

This article analyses these imaginations. It looks at the magazines Ruz al-Yusuf and Akhir Sa'a, which used caricatures, satire and colloquial forms of Arabic to appeal to broad audiences. They combined commentary on political affairs, especially on the national independence struggle, with social commentary, including on gender relations. The material was covered in a light-hearted and often derisive manner. I focus on the content of the visuals, rather than on their production and reception, but it is worth noting that these magazines had a wide circulation that was comparable to, or even surpassed, those of official newspapers.²³ Despite their playful tone, these sources became authoritative, especially on the Egyptian national question.²⁴ As images were not so abundant during this time, these visuals shaped how people imagined the nuclear world. The magazines are complemented by articles in the literary–cultural journal Al-Hilal, which had a regional resonance and readership, facilitating transnational political thought across the Arab world, and the 1951 film My mother-in-law is an atomic bomb.

The analysis focuses on the gendered meanings embedded within the images, texts and metaphors that reflected on but also constituted world politics during the key historical juncture of decolonization. The objective is to ‘make feminist sense’ of these visualizations, to understand how gendered imagery was used to narrate nuclear politics and how it intersected with nationalist reflections on technology, war and the international system.²⁵ Specific visualizations were selected because they recurred. It is worth noting that while the cartoons in these magazines were critical of the international system, they often contained racist or anti-Semitic stereotypes. The subsequent empirical sections delve into these imaginaries and their gendered dimensions: the egg as hope for national rejuvenation, monsters as fear of nuclear war; depictions of the bomb as tiny and technologically sophisticated, but also as an apolitical metaphor for power.

The effendi and the egg: postcolonial and national rebirth

Of the different visual symbols used to depict the atomic bomb in the materials surveyed, the egg is the image that recurs most frequently. This extends to written descriptions as well, in which the bomb is likened to an egg (bayda), and authors erroneously claim it is the size of an egg.²⁶ The image of the egg connects to gender not only because of its explicit association with fertility, but also because it is connected to discussions on national rebirth. This feminized symbol is used in reference to its potential positive applications for the nation, a sense of life within the egg, while depictions of the bomb on the international level focus on destruction and death—reiterating ideas of ambivalence characterizing nuclear technology.

In one article, 'Abbas Mahmud al-'Aqqad (1889–1964), a renowned Egyptian writer, poet and literary critic, asks a male friend what he would do if he had a buwayda (small egg or ovum), implying the atomic bomb.²⁷ ‘If you had one of these small eggs that attacks cities, replaces the need for armies and fleets’, he asks, ‘what would you have done with it during the war?’ The article, entitled ‘If Egypt possessed atomic bombs’, is accompanied by a drawing of two of the three Giza pyramids, the Sphinx, and a woman carrying an egg in the palm of her right hand (figure 2). The woman here represents the nation, a common visualization of Egypt in nationalist discourse, which has continued in the postcolonial era.²⁸ Here she holds the nuclear egg in her hand, ready to be used for the nation's future.

Figure 2

Image accompanying the article ‘If Egypt had atomic bombs’

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Source: Al-Hilal, Oct. 1950.

There is a tendency in global security discourses to project patriarchal ideals of protection onto women.²⁹ Such masculinist logic is discernible in this image, which specifically emphasizes postcolonial rebirth. Indeed, when describing what he would do with the atomic bomb, the author declares that he would use it to finally obtain Egyptian independence from Britain. Rather than confront the colonial powers directly, he would detonate the nuclear egg in the desert or on an island as a display of Egyptian power. Aqqad concludes that this is the only use of the bomb that can enhance peace, contrasting it to a potential detonation on the battlefield, which he argues is morally unjustifiable. He concludes his commentary by addressing the colonial authorities directly and demanding their departure. ‘Leave,’ he orders, ‘otherwise, we are capable of expelling you.’

This is the only text surveyed that mentions Egyptian detonation of an atomic bomb or indeed possession of it—an idea that became more commonplace during the 1960s, when Egypt briefly pondered a nuclear weapons programme.³⁰ ‘Aqqad's discussion may be seen as a form of mimicry, drawing upon ideas of deterrence that were being formulated during the Cold War, as well as the United States’ specific application of it, testing nuclear weapons in the desert or on an island, locations that are constructed as empty spaces. In this case, however, the bomb would be detonated not by the state but rather by the productive nationalist intellectual, known in Egypt at the time as the effendi.³¹ The image of the nationalist intellectual is one that is both gendered and classed; it indicates a specific incarnation of urban and middle-class male modernity.³² The bomb, in this discussion, is disconnected from its role as a weapon of war and made into an object of protection. The effendi replaces the hero-warrior figure, and by making the possibility of nuclear war inconceivable, he offers a false promise of protection.³³ While the egg starts as a weapon of war in his text, ‘attacking cities and replacing the need for armies and fleets’, it ultimately becomes emancipatory. The bomb, initially a source of destruction, becomes a source of protection; once a source of death, it becomes a source of life.

The egg was likened to Egyptian postcolonial rebirth in other depictions centred on the role of the nationalist intellectual. In a cartoon published as early as August 1945, a man is holding the egg representing the bomb in his hand, ready to use it for purposes deemed constructive: combating illness, poverty, illiteracy and (colonial) occupation.³⁴ The figure is a recurring character in Egyptian satirical magazines known as al-masri effendi (the Egyptian effendi), representing the nation.³⁵ His modernist inclinations are revealed in his fez and suit—the signature sartorial look of the effendi, albeit combined with rosary beads, to produce a uniquely Egyptian nationalist subject. The effendi's body language is proactive, determined to save the country from various ills. The targets identified in the cartoon overlap extensively with the objectives of the emerging postcolonial state, particularly its aims of modernization. As in Aqqad's article, the possibilities encapsulated in the egg are harnessed by the male intellectual for the benefit of postcolonial rebirth. The egg can be wielded and controlled for nationalist purposes. Assuming the role of the progressive leader, the modernist male figure controls nuclear science and technology to create the desired nation and embrace the emancipatory power of the atomic age.

As elsewhere in the decolonizing world, the technological potential embodied by the atomic age was seen as potentially reinforcing self-determination and enabling the objective of establishing a modern and independent state—a stark indication of how nationalist intellectuals inadvertently welcomed the nuclear world. In the few years following 1945, atomic science would be discussed through its potential applications to realms as wide-ranging as architecture and urban planning, fertility and medicine—all key priorities of the postcolonial state.³⁶ This widespread sense of imminent postcolonial rebirth is inextricably intertwined with intimate spaces of sexuality and nationalist reproduction. The overlap between postcolonial imaginaries and sexuality is apparent in an image, unrelated to the bomb, in which the famous masri effendi is sitting next to a woman, but under the watchful eye, and angry glare, of an armed British soldier. ‘I want to kiss you’, the effendi tells her, ‘but I'm waiting for this soldier to leave from here’.³⁷ The notion of nuclear science and technology as rejuvenating and strategic continues to feature in Egyptian politics.³⁸ However, in the aftermath of the Free Officers' coup in 1952, the national icon of the effendi was arguably replaced by that of the military man, who continues to be depicted as the country's saviour.³⁹

Monsters, rockets, death

The metaphor of the egg is generally, but not always, a positive one. Other depictions, even in the same magazines, are ambivalent about the possibilities that might emerge from the egg. For example, the notion of life within the egg is invoked in a cartoon showing a chick, labelled ‘peace’, hatching from the atomic egg (figure 3). The image, however, is a mockery of the Allies' claim that the atomic bomb could create peace. It aims to expose the oxymoronic nature of the claim that a deadly bombing could create any form of perpetual peace, and suggests that no good could come from the newly developed atomic egg.

Figure 3

Chick, labelled ‘peace’, inside the egg, labelled ‘the atomic bomb’

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Source: Ruz al-Yusuf, no. 897, 23 Aug. 1945.

Critical depictions of the role of the bomb in the international sphere are more likely to characterize it as a monster. These images suggest a divergence between the bomb conceived of as giving life on the national level and taking life on the international level. While the possibilities of life emerging from the bomb appear to be emancipatory on the national level, those emerging from it on the international level point to its violent and destructive nature.

One recurring theme is that of in-fighting among world leaders, who are portrayed as being too immature to be the aspiring guardians of the international system. Cartoons of in-fighting are accompanied by depictions of the Earth being frustrated or tired with world leaders and international politics.⁴⁰ These images suggest that the Cold War was a petty rivalry and also one that was actively harmful to the world, both to humans and to nature. The visualization of international actors, especially western leaders, behaving immaturely or irresponsibly inverts the patronizing discourse such leaders adopted towards their colonies. This discourse was deeply gendered: colonized people and lands have historically been feminized in relation to masculine colonial power.⁴¹ By stressing that the world under the tutelage of colonial powers was heading towards destruction, these cartoons mock the infantilizing claim that colonized people are the ones unprepared for self-determination.⁴² Instead, international actors are depicted as not fully grasping the dangers they have unleashed on the planet, in contrast to the nationalist effendi who controls atomic power productively. These caricatures play on the familiar trope of the foolish man who cannot put the genie back in the bottle, and therefore loses control over the situation.⁴³ They suggest that the bomb is not simply what it appears to be. At the same time, the image of a genie reinforces the notion of a nuclear eternity—that is, a future that inevitably contains nuclear weapons—and reproduces nuclearization as irreversible.⁴⁴

This lack of control is evident in a 1946 caricature that depicts the bomb as King Kong. The huge gorilla is trapped in a cage, surrounded by international leaders trying to set it free, while the Earth observes this scene fearfully from afar. The caricature carries the caption: ‘The atomic bomb … a new King Kong. Each one wants to release it to eat the others, but it will eat all of them!’⁴⁵ These metaphors of monsters unleashed on the Earth are a reminder that people were attuned to the dangers of nuclearization and engaged in attempts to criticize it, despite the pervasive focus on nuclear technology as potentially emancipatory. While these images alluded to nuclear annihilation, they did not depict the effects of a full-blown nuclear war. Fear of nuclear war is consistently implied but never directly tackled, remaining within the realm of the unimaginable.⁴⁶

However, the distinction between the national and international spheres is never absolute, and several images attest to the Egyptian effendi adopting a proactive international stance. In one example, a number of actors are tossing the bomb (drawn as a small rocket) onto one another: the United States onto Russia, Russia onto the United States and Britain, Britain onto Russia and the United States (alluding to unsaid British resentment of the US becoming the hegemonic global actor, on which Egyptian texts tended to reflect mockingly), and the Zionist movement onto the Arabs (referring to escalating tensions in Palestine prior to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948).⁴⁷ The final frame shows the effendi requesting four atomic bombs, which ‘would allow him to rest, the world to rest, and these other four actors to rest’. ‘Resting’ here carries three implied senses: first, an end to the political struggles to which Egypt was subject; second, an end to the ongoing global tensions between Great Powers; and third, death. Once again, the nationalist intellectual is remaking the world order, enabling a national revival and even ridding the world of injustice.

This cartoon features a process of ‘worldmaking’ which accompanied decolonization, seeking to radically transform international politics and to confront global inequality and racism.⁴⁸ In this context, the effendi effectively saves the world from these international actors, whose immaturity and hunger for power have bred life-threatening rivalries. At the same time, he protects the Middle East, saving Palestine and the Arabs from the Zionist movement, which was commonly perceived as a colonial project. This cartoon in some ways presages Egypt's role as a leader in the Arab world; while Egypt was already a cultural centre, it would later also become the political and intellectual leader of pan-Arabism. The effendi still represents the male saviour, even on the global stage; yet he prioritizes Egyptian nationalism and pan-Arabism. As in Aqqad's recourse to using a nuclear explosion to expel colonial powers, a nuclear detonation was considered acceptable for the larger purposes of independence and decolonization. This male embodiment of responsibility and rationality has been discussed by Claire Duncanson and Catherine Eschle in connection with nuclear weapons as a way to enable or secure the state, although in this case it is combined with an emphasis on anti-colonial justice.⁴⁹

In addition to the blurred lines between the national and international spheres, the roles of colonizer and colonized are also not fixed, a point which can be discerned in Egypt's patronizing discourse towards Sudan. A 1946 cartoon depicts a Sudanese effendi excitedly telling the Egyptian effendi about uranium discoveries in Sudan, to which the Egyptian effendi replies: ‘Keep it down, otherwise the English will hear you and will never leave Sudan!’⁵⁰ While the cartoon is a critique of British presence in Egypt and Sudan, it depicts Sudan as imprudent, requiring the guidance of the Egyptian effendi, echoing Egyptian colonial and racist attitudes towards Sudan. Egypt's contentious role in Sudan was, in the words of Eve Trout Powell, that of a ‘colonized colonizer’, and this sense of cultural and political superiority was key in the construction and articulation of Egyptian national identity.⁵¹

A beautiful bomb: feminine shapes and sizes

While the previous two sections have dealt with who was using nuclear technology and whether their purposes were productive or destructive, this section and the next turn to how nuclear technology was drawn, described and metaphorized, paying attention to the gendered, yet fluid, depictions of nuclear objects.

The size and shape of the atomic bomb are inscribed on women's bodies in multiple visualizations. As a supposedly tiny object, the bomb is implicitly associated with beauty. A powerful example of this is found in a short satirical piece in Ruz al-Yusuf, which quotes a political leader declaring that ‘[working at] the ministry is the best way to lose weight’, presumably owing to the hardships of the job. The day it becomes permissible for a woman to assume a ministerial post, the text proceeds, she will be able to dispense with all slimming operations. ‘If a ministry is controlled by a woman who is the size of a bomb weighing 200 tonnes,’ it concludes, ‘then she will eventually become the size of an atomic bomb!’⁵² The bomb, here, represents the sleek and slim woman. Explicitly contrasted with the ‘older model’ of the bomb, the atomic bomb is the modern woman of the future.

While the metaphor of the egg is not used, the bomb is still depicted as being minuscule, yet simultaneously aesthetically appealing. The aesthetics of the bomb were grafted onto women's bodies elsewhere, for example through atomic bomb-themed pageants and mushroom cloud dresses in the United States, which sought to render nuclear weapons familiar or controllable.⁵³ Such rituals entailed projecting the atomic age through women's bodies; but they were more explicitly celebratory than the metaphors described here, which contain an element of fear. Gendered descriptions of the bomb as tiny in Egyptian discourses did not aim to make it less lethal, or shift the gaze away from its violence; rather, the bomb's beauty and smallness seemed to be part of its mystique, an embodiment of its destructive potential.

The view of the bomb as tiny probably persisted because of the association with atoms as minuscule particles.⁵⁴ According to conventional gender norms, smallness tends to be non-threatening and feminized.⁵⁵ As such it is usually not associated with military objects, which tend to be vast, scary and masculinized.⁵⁶ Yet in this case, the aesthetic category of smallness aligns with ideas of technological sophistication encapsulated within the egg, which imbue it with immense power. Its ability to be small and feminine, yet still to cause masculinized destruction, arguably becomes part of its mythical status, part of the claim that it is a revolutionary object. The tension between the egg as a feminized symbol and its use for masculinized purposes reflects the larger contradictions that accompanied descriptions of the bomb. It also destabilizes the notion that nuclear weapons must be inherently linked to patriarchal or phallic imagery to be made desirable, powerful and mythical. It attests to the fluidities and disruptions that can be uncovered within gendered conceptualizations of international politics, while reiterating the importance of locally situated histories.⁵⁷

In drawings where the bomb is not represented as an egg, it is still sometimes placed comfortably within the palm of a hand—another unrealistically small portrayal.⁵⁸ Even in depictions that do not obscure its role as a military device, it is imagined as being tiny. It is often drawn in a way that resembles a grenade, a depiction that emphasizes agility and flexibility as well as smallness. These descriptions—invoking the seemingly contradictory characteristics of femininity and masculinity—embraced the view that nuclear weapons were qualitatively different from other military technology.⁵⁹ Such consistent references to the bomb as tiny and yet extremely powerful played on its emerging reputation as miraculous, a term authors would regularly use while discussing atomic science and technology.⁶⁰ As Laura Considine suggests, nuclear discourse is made powerful through these contradictions of the rational–scientific and the mystical–sacred.⁶¹ Here, the element of smallness aligns with ideas of technological sophistication, and this sense of scientific brilliance reinforces the mythical connotations of nuclearization, despite recognition of the dangers of nuclear weapons.

Authors embraced this imagery of smallness and sophistication even as they criticized nuclearization. For instance, in a November 1945 commentary ridiculing the link between atomic bombs and peace, Najib al-Rihani (1892-1949), a well-known Syrian–Egyptian actor and playwright, declared that war would continue as long as global powers competed to produce more lethal weapons. ‘One discovers a bomb the size of a chicken egg, the other discovers a bomb the size of an ostrich egg … and so on,’ he writes, ‘while we [colonized people] merely play the role of the extras [kombars]’—using a term derived from the Italian word comparsa, which is still used in Egyptian Arabic to imply someone who is useless.⁶² This text reflects some of the themes mentioned above: a demand for a more active role for Egypt on the international stage; a critique of the militarized violence of the international community; a mockery of the idea of the bomb as leading to peace—all combined with an embrace of the metaphor of a tiny deadly weapon.

Echoing Cohn's discussion of the allegories of birthing the bomb, the visual of the egg inadvertently depicts the bomb as something that occurs naturally, rather than being artificially created, indeed requiring vast material and political resources to produce it.⁶³ Similarly, this idea of a natural occurrence is discernible in the term ‘proliferation’—borrowed from biology—which contains a notion of self-begetting.⁶⁴ While aiming to emphasize its lethality, the visualization of the bomb as naturally occurring ultimately obscures responsibility for its development. It effectively separates the bomb from the intricate technological infrastructure within which it can be operated, and it conceals the complex military mobilizations and structures needed to detonate an atomic bomb or to render it functional. The bomb becomes an independent actor with a life of its own. Such descriptions reaffirm the ‘nuclear sublime’, in which awe for its massive destructive and technological power seems to test the limits of language.⁶⁵ These frames are consistent with global depictions of the bomb as transformative and/or revolutionary, despite their reliance on feminine ideas of smallness and beauty.

The element of hyperbole is significant: writers and political analysts in Egypt in the mid-1940s were generally removed from the centres of power and therefore often relied on rumours and their imaginations when it came to narrating nuclear weapons. This sense of exaggeration resulted in practices of disassemblage, made possible through reference to the bomb using mundane objects, such as the egg, which ultimately played a role in the normalization and depoliticization of the nuclear age. The enthralment with the bomb as a spectacular object, which I have described here, can be contrasted with the descriptions in the subsequent section, which render it mundane. While aiming to demystify nuclear weapons, this symbolic representation overlooked and even normalized the destruction these weapons caused.

Disassembling the bomb

‘Have you heard that an atomic bomb the size of an egg can destroy an entire city?’

‘That's very odd. This means that five atomic eggs can transform the world into an omelette!’⁶⁶

As the above joke suggests, the atomic bomb rapidly emerged in Egypt as a trope through which to reflect upon destructive power, that was used especially in mocking and critical commentary. Such examples demonstrate the extent to which the bomb had entered the popular imagination and become a cultural reference detached from its actual meaning. Its use as a metaphor can be understood as a type of disassemblage, as seen in Diab's metaphor of whether women are ‘productive’ (atomic energy) or ‘destructive’ (atomic bombs). Coined by Ann Laura Stoler, the term ‘disassemblage’ offers an analytical framework to understand how imperial ideas and items are severed from their political and military contexts.⁶⁷ It illustrates how terminologies of nuclear violence were made unremarkable and normalized into everyday vocabularies.⁶⁸

The day after an atomic test at Bikini Atoll in 1946, Akhir Sa'a contained a piece chronicling a conversation on the experiment. The event was not accorded much importance, deliberately, as reflected in the headline: ‘The atomic bomb is a distraction [tahwish]’. In the text, one of the figures declares that the news reports and the widespread fear regarding the atomic bomb may be exaggerated, to which the other replies: ‘The songs of Umm Kulthum [one of the most famous Egyptian singers at the time] are more touching [ashad ta'thiran] than the atomic bomb,’ playing on the meaning of the word ta'thiran to imply not only influence or effectiveness but also emotional and affective impact.⁶⁹ This indifference towards the bomb can be understood as a refusal to give in to the US spectacles of fear. Deeming the test unworthy of visualization, the magazine departs from the imaginary described above of nuclear weapons as spectacular and beautiful. For example, a 1948 lecture by the military official Hassan Fahmi Rajab at Fu'ad (now Cairo) University on witnessing atomic tests was accompanied by a video of the detonation. Produced by the US military, the film—in colour, prior to the commercialization of colour cinematography—was described in a commentary on the lecture as ‘one of the rarest, most beautiful and wonderful’ visuals ever observed, a comment linked to the discussion above on the use of feminine terminology to glorify the bomb.⁷⁰ Both of these approaches—exalting the test and ignoring the test—reflect and maintain the erasure of subaltern voices and bodies that were harmed by nuclear detonations. They indicate a participation, even if inadvertent, in the depoliticization of this experience.

Two weeks later, Umm Kulthum (1904–1975), the Egyptian singer referred to in Akhir Sa'a the day after the Bikini test, herself wrote a short piece in the magazine—a rare case of female authorship afforded to her because of her prominent status. Entitled ‘Our atomic bomb’, her column began by describing the fear still associated with the atomic bomb and the American sense of political superiority derived from its ability to threaten nations with the bomb. Writing self-derisively, she insists that Egypt possesses a more lethal weapon and refers to a distinctly Egyptian characteristic of utter indifference towards others. If such a characteristic were to be projected onto the international level, she writes, Egypt would not need to negotiate with the British colonial administration for its independence.⁷¹ Like the discussion on the bomb as ineffective, this satirical text seeks to highlight Egyptian talents and traits, suggesting that there are many types of resistance that can potentially challenge such military power and technologically sophisticated tools. These two texts allude to the sense that the materiality of the bomb was increasingly irrelevant to discussions about it.

Humorous uses of the term ‘atomic bomb’ were eventually completely disconnected from war or international politics. For instance, the 1951 black-and-white film My mother-in-law is an atomic bomb [Hamati qunbula zarriya] dealt with attempts by a young bride's mother to break up a loving relationship to set her up with a wealthier man.⁷² Much like print media, commercial Egyptian cinema was widely consumed across the region, playing a significant role in the construction of a national community and identity.⁷³ While the film has been identified as part of apocalyptic cinema, it does not deal with nuclear war.⁷⁴ Rather, it shows how the bomb had become a reference point disconnected from its original meaning. The film deals with war only in a highly metaphorical sense, as it follows the couple's battles with the wife's scheming mother-in-law. The term ‘atomic bomb’ is uttered only once in the entire film, by the husband in reference to an incriminating photograph the mother-in-law forces him to put in his pocket.⁷⁵ Similarly, the imagery of the atomic bomb, is only invoked in the opening credits, where the mother-in-law's image is accompanied by little rockets around her face.⁷⁶ The reference to the mother-in-law as an atomic bomb arguably derives from her being not only cruel and destructive but also power-hungry. The use of this metaphor in the title and opening credits reflected popular interest in the atomic age, a sensationalist and widely discussed topic on which the film-makers could capitalize. By disassembling the bomb, the film also participates in the erasure and banalization of the actual violence caused by atomic weapons.⁷⁷ The use of the atomic bomb as an apolitical, even generic, metaphor for destructive power ignores its horrors and normalizes nuclear violence.

At the film's core is a dispute over power, over who gets the final say in the household: the husband or the mother-in-law. The film explicitly invokes the mother-in-law's desire to be ‘the man of the house’, and her desire to ensure that the couple respect her authority at home is depicted as threatening and emasculating. The film's analogy of the mother-in-law as an atomic bomb aligns with the previous discussion of women threatening the happiness of men. This is part of a broader gendered trope of the mother-in-law as malicious or dangerous, yet productive.⁷⁸ Her potential and power need to be controlled, like those of the nuclear egg. The film ends with the mother-in-law subdued, agreeing to live with the couple, on their terms—suggesting that they were successful at taming her power. The film concludes, as does Diab in his debate about whether women resemble atomic bombs or atomic energy, that women can be controlled and made productive for the nation. These popular culture sources and metaphors reflected wider efforts at the time to specify the roles of women, and especially their strategic significance for the postcolonial nation.

Conclusion

This article has sought to shed light on the relationship between gender and nuclear politics in the context of decolonization, using Egypt as a case-study. It demonstrates that visualization of the atomic age in early Egyptian imaginations reflects the ambivalence of nuclear technology. This is evident in the gendered frames evoked by nationalist modernizers: the metaphor of women as nuclear energy, suggesting national rejuvenation, and women as nuclear bombs, indicating unprecedented destruction or lethality. It is also evident in the interplay between the bomb as a beautiful, tiny and technologically sophisticated object, and as an exaggerated and even comical reference point for destructive power. During a time when visual depictions of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons were still fluid, nationalist modernizers articulated the technology's ambivalence through their use of an array of gendered images, metaphors and symbols, and in this process they embraced and normalized nuclearization. The article therefore offers an in-depth, historicized understanding of how early processes of visualization mediated Egyptian policies and thought on the nuclear age, including the embrace of techno-nationalism, which is still discernible in the present.

Furthermore, through these elite perceptions of the international nuclear order, the article analyses nationalist masculine subjectivities, in the midst of anti-colonial struggle, who did not necessarily embrace nuclear proliferation. Beyond the Egyptian case-study, this challenges the long-assumed relationship between masculinity and nuclearization in feminist IR. Despite its continuous reiteration in this literature, the conceptualization of nuclear weapons as masculine or phallic is not necessarily universal but is perhaps particular to nuclear weapon states. Descriptions of the bomb can draw upon feminine symbols to narrate the emergence of the nuclear-armed world, thereby reinforcing its masculinized military power. An important point for policy-makers and practitioners seeking disarmament is that feminizing nuclear imagery and politics is not necessarily a viable avenue for denuclearization, as it can merely reinforce the nuclearized world and reproduce social hierarchies.⁷⁹ The critique of nuclear weapons as masculine is therefore insufficient to counter nuclearism and must be accompanied by ways to denaturalize nuclear weapons more broadly. One way to do this is through historicized accounts of the nuclear age, connecting how interpretations of the origins of the nuclear world and memories of the past shape possibilities for present and future ideas on nuclear politics.⁸⁰ This does not mean that we are bound by past ideas; rather, that in order to conceptualize alternative non-nuclear futures, more work is necessary to disentangle the origins of the nuclearized world and to offer paths beyond nuclear eternity.

Meanwhile, the article takes seriously suggestions to explore visualization not only of, but also from, the global South.⁸¹ Through this empirical application of visual IR, I have demonstrated that symbols of the nuclear age have not always been static. The plurality of images described here offers a view into rarely explored nuclear imaginaries, which can destabilize and decentre dominant visual regimes, such as the now iconic image of the mushroom cloud. By considering alternative modes of visualization, IR scholars can understand nuances in nuclear imaginaries and challenge the ‘origin story’ of the nuclear world.⁸² Studying nuclear histories from the decolonizing world can also provincialize dominant narrative structures about nuclear weapons that have been predominantly built around western case-studies and states that possess nuclear weapons. Indeed, lesser-known cases of nuclear thought have enabled scholars to offer alternatives to canonical literature on nuclear weapons in IR, illustrating that ideas of nuclear peace and deterrence did not naturally follow from the existence of the bomb.⁸³ Instead, nuclear policy in different parts of the global South reflected a desire for autonomy.

By excavating early visuals, and their shifting meanings, we can learn about the strategic implications of the nuclear age for anti-colonial nation-building, including the fears and hopes reflected within these visualizations. These imaginaries, criss-crossing the realms of the international, regional and domestic, connect to efforts at nation-building, and the threats and promises surrounding the process of imagining and making a state. Obtaining a fuller picture of nuclear histories in the global South will allow us to better understand states' nuclear intentions and also their participation in efforts to reshape the nuclearized world and contest its parameters.

Finally, the material analysed in this article highlights the importance of considering the role and agency of nationalist elites in the global South in the co-production of the nuclear-armed world. By underlining the ways in which intellectuals in the decolonizing world also played a role in the emergence of nuclearism, this study challenges the perception of people in the global South as passive victims of ordering practices, or as lying beyond the scope of nuclear politics. Thinkers did not only consume international debates on nuclear weapons; they also fundamentally engaged with and redefined the meanings of the nuclear world, visually and verbally. Through a feminist–postcolonial analysis, we can transcend and unravel dichotomous conceptual categories and binaries of power, while still paying attention to hierarchies and silences.

Footnotes

Author notes