Orientations, ideologies, intellectuals

The following discussion of supra-Egyptian nationalism treats the phenomenon on two levels. The first is an analysis of the underlying nationalist orientations reinterpreting Egypt's place in the world which developed after 1930. The second is an analysis of the specific ideologies which built on those new orientations, instructing Egyptians as to how to behave in their reinterpreted environment.

By “orientation” we mean the overall accounting people make of the place of themselves and their society in the wider world. Orientations are the global outlooks found in a society. On the one hand, they involve drawing lines: between us and them, self and other. On the other, they attempt to identify, in very broad terms, the network of symbols and values appropriate as the basis of the collective existence of a society. In content, orientations consist of a large body of overlapping, interrelated, and not necessarily totally consistent moods, attitudes, beliefs, and interpretations of reality. Generalized and diffuse in nature, they provide the basic assumptions and presuppositions about a society's relationship to its environment which are implicit in the specific arguments, theories, and debates occurring in intellectual and political circles.

While orientations are clearly a response to the temporal situation of a society, in and of themselves they do not offer a program for altering that situation. Orientations lack an operative, programmatic dimension. Both logically and historically, they precede attempts to define blueprints for current and future change.