Sabrina Elisabeth Lilleby

SABRINA LILLEBY, then a graduate student at University of Texas, Austin, Texas, was approved funding in October 2019 to aid research on “Healing the Self: Infrastructural and Reproductive Labor among Women in Cairo,” supervised by Dr. Kamran Asdar Ali. This project seeks to describe and understand how therapy, self-help and general mental health discourse emerged as a response to the mood that emerged in Cairo following the revolution in 2011 and the coup in 2013. It maps the collective affect over the span of a decade through interviews, ethnographic fieldwork and examination of cultural artifacts such as films, novels, and social media posts and show how these events left affective traces — in the form of emotional heaviness and persistent worry — in the intimate lives of the participants. Many of those interviewed turned to therapy and self-help practices as a way to understand and metabolize these affective responses in the ruins of the revolutionary dream. They did not disengage from politics. Rather, they redirected their efforts toward changing their self and their immediate environment. Women were the main actors who carried this out because they — both across generations and social classes — have performed the crucial function of caregivers. Many women now continue this role but in novel ways such as through seeking therapy for themselves while simultaneously supporting their families, friends, and communities. By carrying out this important work they have prevented social anomie