Work: Institutionally Privileged Spaces

The press release that we wrote up (at work) in the previous media committee meeting was printed on the back cover page of Al Ahram, the national newspaper. Felt very satisfying at first. In fact, I didn’t go home early the night it came out so I told my mother on the phone that it was published and she said now you know that its editorial content was fitting for al Ahram.

But like I said, it was satisfying…at first. The idea that I’ve been keeping telling people when they asked me what its like to work with the First Lady is me saying that because we’re in an institutionally privileged place and we should use that privilege for better purposes. Which to some extent, and if looked at from a series of angles, it’s a good idea. I remember reading in Gayatri Spivak’s ‘Can the Subaltern Speak’ that we need to unlearn our institutional privilege so that we can listen better and understand the position from which we enunciate.

But I think from another angle there’s something that makes me unsatisfied partially. The lady who used our article but put her name as the one writing it, Mona Ragab, is one of the people who works at Al Ahram and cover for the Movement its activities. She used our article completely without changing really anything in it. I mean this institutionalized privilege that sounds like its there to be made better use of than currently speaking, has its strings that are equally as worrying. Now there’s Mona Ragab not doing her work and you start to worry about what kind of staff is at al Ahram. This is not about dissing Mona Ragab. On the contrary, I admire that she covers things for us and that’s she willing to publish it quickly. But I feel that encouraging someone, from your institutionally privileged place, to not do their work and use yours instead is problematic.

I feel that if now I made my mother read what I just wrote, she would totally disagree with the last sentence I wrote in the previous paragraph. She would say that the issue is not about your privileged place encouraging malaise at all. And that’s why I said this isn’t a diss on Mona Ragab. But can we agree that there’ll be deception at least? I mean using your name on an article that obviously isn’t written by you begs the question, who is she trying to deceive. I mean it could be deceiving people and encouraging naturally written articles or deceiving her boss because she was too lazy or tired to be on time with her own articles.

And the blame cannot lie on Mona Ragab at all because this is public knowledge to people in our office and we could say something about it. But we don’t. And I didn’t even think to make an issue out of it. And anyone who’s told me I tell. The people in the Media Committee with me know about it because they wrote it. I’m sure parents, friends, and relatives also know or will find out about it soon. And it goes on through that spiral again.