More than forty years after his death, Nasser is still present in the Egyptian imaginary. His character is widely invoked, his legacy debated, his pictures raised, and his speeches circulated. Of all the Arab leaders of the past century, few had a lasting impact that extended to other Arab countries as had Nasser. His unparalleled position, still felt to this day, transforms him from history to memory, from the realms of political scientists to the works of writers and artists – in short, from a real figure to a metaphor. Whether glorified or demonised, elevated or debased, hailed as a symbol of freedom, anti-colonialism and social justice, or tarnished as a ruthless dictator who cultivated a personality cult and popularised the authoritarian model of regimes among Arabs, Nasser is an emotional and divisive subject, an agglomeration of meanings that transcend the direct outcomes of his rule to dwell deeply in the psyche of generations of Egyptians and Arabs, becoming a site on to which they project their dreams and aspirations, defeats and disappointments.

In his recent attempt to analyse the Nasserite ideology, Egyptian historian Sharif Yunus concludes by arguing that detractors of Nasser as well as his panegyrists testify to the perennial omnipresence of the president in Egyptian life. For Yunus, Nasser is the ultimate materialisation of the notion of the ‘saviour’, the dream that is so ingrained in the Egyptian imaginary. Why cannot even those who realise the falsity of this concept ‘leave Nasser in his tomb and transcend him?’ asks Yunus. His argument is that Egyptians have yet to produce an alternative political model that can replace Nasser's. Those who no longer believe in the ‘individual hero’ are liberated from a grand delusion but they still cannot fill the vacuum that is left by Nasser, the supreme representative of that model. In other words, for Egyptians to cease invoking Nasser and his associations and consider him part of a distant past, a drastic change must occur to the way they conceive of themselves vis-à-vis their reality, history, and nation state – a transformation of their social imaginary.