2011 is not 1968: an open letter from Egypt

As Egyptians trickle into Tahrir to commemorate the 2011 revolution, hijacked by the army, it becomes ever more important to listen to the unheard voices. 

Philip Rizik, Roar Magazine

On the morning of January 25, 2014 as people trickle into Tahrir Square, it is once again important to realize where we point our gaze to understand a bit of what is taking place in Egypt. A discourse of terror has scared many into supporting with blind faith a military leader who claims to be able to re-instate the good old days of stability. This discourse of fear also has the opposite effect and across the population there are those who are not falling for the terror trap.

Revolution in Bad Times

By Asef Bayat, New Left Review

Back in 2011, the Arab uprisings were celebrated as world-changing events that would re-define the spirit of our political times. The astonishing spread of these mass uprisings, followed soon after by the Occupy protests, left observers in little doubt that they were witnessing an unprecedented phenomenon—‘something totally new’, ‘open-ended’, a ‘movement without a name’; revolutions that heralded a novel path to emancipation. According to Alain Badiou, Tahrir Square and all the activities which took place there—fighting, barricading, camping, debating, cooking and caring for the wounded—constituted the ‘communism of movement’; posited as an alternative to the conventional liberal-democratic or authoritarian state, this was a universal concept that heralded a new way of doing politics—a true revolution. For Slavoj Žižek, only these ‘totally new’ political happenings, without hegemonic organizations, charismatic leaderships or party apparatuses, could create what he called the ‘magic of Tahrir’. For Hardt and Negri, the Arab Spring, Europe’s indignado protests and Occupy Wall Street expressed the longing of the multitude for a ‘real democracy’, a different kind of polity that might supplant the hopeless liberal variety worn threadbare by corporate capitalism. These movements, in sum, represented the ‘new global revolutions’. [1]

Black, not Noir

Adam Shatz, London Review of Books

'That Smell’ and ‘Notes from Prison’ by Sonallah Ibrahim, translated by Robyn Creswell

New Directions, 110 pp, £11.99, March, ISBN 978 0 8112 2036 1

When we first meet the nameless narrator of Sonallah Ibrahim’s 1966 novella That Smell, he’s just been released from prison, but no one is there to greet him, and he’s in no mood to celebrate. He remains under house arrest, free to wander the streets of Cairo so long as he returns home by dusk, when his police minder has to sign off on his curfew. Things could be worse: he could be back in prison, where he remembers being beaten, ‘shaking with cold and fear’. But when he looks for ‘some feeling that was out of the ordinary, some joy or delight or excitement’, he draws a blank. On the night of his release, the police throw him into a filthy holding pen because he has nowhere to stay:

There were a lot of men there and the door kept opening to let more in. I felt something in my knee. I put my hand down and sensed something wet. I looked at my hand and found a big patch of blood on my fingers and in the next moment saw swarms of bugs on my clothing and I stood up and noticed for the first time big patches of blood smeared on the walls of the cell and one of the men laughed and said to me: Come here.

Egypt: Days of anger

by Salwa Ismail, Index on Censorship

The sustained mass protests that began in Egypt on 25 January lit the spark of revolution in a country long subject to repressive rule. The scale of the protests, the resilience of the protesters and their firm resolve to bring down the regime represented an unprecedented movement in Egypt and come as a wonderful corrective to the unfounded view of Egyptians as politically apathetic. For more than a decade now, Egypt has been witnessing increased levels of collective action involving broad segments of society. Between 1998 and 2008, industrial workers mounted thousands of protests, numerous strikes and sit-ins. The textile workers revived their long-established tradition of activism, best exemplified by 10,000 workers of the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in al Mahala al Kubra going on strike in 2008. There have been newcomers on the scene of public engagement and action as well, most notably the tax collectors who staged an 11-day occupation of central Cairo demanding better pay, also in 2008. Alongside this mobilisation for economic change, other groups in society organised and pressed for political reform. In April 2006, in a widely publicised and well-regarded move, a group of prominent judges held a sit-in led by the Judges’ Association to denounce electoral fraud in the 2005 elections. The regime responded with punitive measures, bringing a number of the judges before disciplinary panels to sanction them. Subsequently, judicial oversight of elections was repealed in the constitutional amendments of 2007.

A private estate called Egypt

by Salwa Ismail, The Guardian

There is a lot more behind Hosni Mubarak digging in his heels and setting his thugs on the peaceful protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square than pure politics. This is also about money. Mubarak and the clique surrounding him have long treated Egypt as their fiefdom and its resources as spoils to be divided among them.

Political Life in Cairo’s New Quarters

Political Life in Cairo's New Quarters

by Salwa Ismail, University of Minnesota Press, 2006

Since the 1970s, Cairo has experienced tremendous growth and change. Nearly three million people now live in new urban communities characterized by unregulated housing, informal economic activity, and the presence of Islamist groups.

Salwa Ismail examines the effects of these changes in Political Life in Cairo’s New Quarters. Working in Cairo, Ismail interviewed new quarter residents, observed daily life in markets and alleyways, met with local leaders, and talked with young men about their encounters with the government.