When the Silent Past Gets a Troubling Voice Facebook Publics, Circulatory Texts and the Negotiations of National Identity

This article traces the contemporary (re)interpretations of a 14 minutes of Ameri-can newsreel footage depicting 1928 Cairo as it circulated through popular Facebook communities dedicated to the nostalgic discourse of Egypt's 'good old days' or 'al-zaman al-gamil,' perceived as an era of morality and proper Egyptianness. Among the several orientalist scenes captured on the footage was a character improvisation perceived to be 'profane' by the proponents of this ideal imaginary of the past. Consid-ering online and offline ethnography and discourse analysis of online commentaries, this article examines how nationalism, conspiracy theories, identity politics and post-revolutionary frustrations are discussed through the circulation of representations of the nation's past. By tracing the pre-and post-digital life of this footage, it presents a case study on how cultural texts acquire meanings as they migrate from one medium to another and how online publics are formed around the (re)circulation and (re)inter-pretation of these texts.