Between a Rock and a Hard Place: The Challenges of Building Coptic Spaces in Contemporary Egypt

Abstract

The Coptic community of Egypt operates daily under pressures from state, society, and the Coptic Orthodox Church, and yet are expected to be an invisible minority that places its national identity over its ethnoreligious one that it is often ostracized for. This thesis explores how Copts navigate the concept of space in Egypt, and more importantly, how, through a process of cooptation, creative subversion of, or opposition to the systems they operate under, build space for themselves outside of what they had been restricted to. This thesis explores ideas of visibility, panopticism, and hegemony as I discuss the historical and sociological intricacies of Copts in Egypt engaging in quiet practices and loud actions.