ABSTRACT
The Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser is rumored to have expressed regret that Fairouz was not born Egyptian. Apocryphal or not, it is a pregnant sentiment. Was not Nasser the father of revolutionary postcolonial Arab nationalism? Did not his pan-Arab radio station Voice of the Arabs invite the Rahbanis to compose songs for Palestine in the 1950s? Theoretically, it should not have mattered to Nasser whether Fairouz was Egyptian, Lebanese, or Iraqi. On the one hand, Nasser’s wish points to the tension between individual state and pan-Arab nationalisms in the region. More important for the purposes of this book is the anecdote’s indication not just of the importance of cultural production to postcolonial nation building, but also of the role of gender in that process. The phenomenon of the star in this region was not only a twentieth-century mass-media creation, but also a handmaiden of postcolonial nationalism. For the purposes of this chapter, the gendered
nature of that metaphor is apropos. Not only were many of these stars women, but it has also become abundantly clear that nationalism is a gendered phenomenon.
