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]

Frantz Fanon and the Arab Uprisings: An Interview with Nigel Gibson

Nigel Gibson was interviewed by Yasser Munif in Jadaliyya

The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon’s magnum opus, was published in 1961, a few days after his death. The book was not only influential for several generations of grassroots movements and activists in Africa, the United States, and Latin America; it was also discussed and debated extensively in intellectual circles across the globe. The reception of the book was more mitigated in the Arab world. This might be due to Fanon’s sweeping criticism of national bourgeoisie, which seized power after decolonization and became an intermediary class between Western powers and local populations. The Martiniquan intellectual was skeptical of revolutions from above, as was the case with several anti-colonialist movements in the Arab World. Interestingly, while the Arabic translation of the The Wretched of the Earth came out shortly after its publication in French, it omitted many passages because they were critical of the national bourgeoisie. Fifty years later, Fanon is almost absent in public discourses in the Middle East and is still marginal in the Maghreb. The uprisings should have been an excellent opportunity for Arab intellectuals and activists to engage with Fanon’s work on the revolution and the subaltern in the new conjuncture. However, despite the significance of his political philosophy for the current revolts, his books are either out of print or conspicuously absent from many bookstores in the Arab world.

The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots & Uprisings

What is going on? Of what are we the half-fascinated, half-devastated witnesses? The continuation, at all costs, of a weary world? A salutary crisis of that world, racked by its victorious expansion? The end of that world? The advent of a different world? What is happening to us in the early years of the century - something that would appear not to have any clear name in any accepted language?

   

Let us consult our masters: discreet bankers; media stars; hesitant representatives of major commissions ; spokesmen of the ' international community ' ; busy presidents; new philosophers; factory and estate owners; stock market men and boards of directors; chattering opposition politicos; urban and provincial notables; economists of growth; sociologists of citizenship; experts on all sorts of crises; prophets of the 'clash of civilizations'; heads of the police, justice and 'penitentiary' systems; profit assessors; productivity calculators; the prim editorialists of serious newspapers; human resources directors; people who in their own view are of some account; people one would do well not to take for nobodies . What have they got to say about it, all these rulers, all these opinion-formers, all these leaders, all these thimble-rigging tyrants?

Asef Bayat on the Arab Spring

'Arab Spring is part of the General Strike of the South': An Interview with Vijay Prashad

Radical Notes

Vijay Prashad's new book, Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK Press, 2012) captures the complexity of the Arab revolts – by bringing out the history and historical forces behind them. The book exposes the West's imperial anxieties and their fear of the organic – the mass character of these uprisings. It demonstrates the resoluteness of the "rebels from below", that they will not allow the Arab lands to "be the same again", that they are dissatisfied with the Present and they want something more than the "21st century delusions" that neoliberalism delivers. Most importantly, Prashad's book reconfirms that "the rebellion from below has its own radical imagination." The following discussion with the author is an attempt to read the book with him to understand the implications of his analysis of the Arab revolts.

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.

An opportunity to abolish Africa’s false divide

by Naefa Khan-Crookes, Business Day

NORTH Africa has been portrayed as distinct from the rest of Africa, a clever divide-and-rule technique. Frantz Fanon, writing half a century ago, succinctly encapsulated this phenomenon when he wrote : "Africa is divided into Black and White and the names that are substituted — Africa south of the Sahara, Africa north of the Sahara — do not manage to hide this latent racism. It is affirmed that White Africa has a thousand-year-old tradition of culture; that she is Mediterranean, that she is a continuation of Europe and that she shares in Graeco- Latin civilisation. Black Africa is looked on as a region that is inert, brutal, uncivilised — in a word, savage."

The ‘Arab Spring’ and the city

by Marcelo Lopes de Souza and Barbara Lipietz, December 2011

‘Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa, das Gespenst des Kommunismus’ (‘A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of communism’): thus Marx and Engels captured the zeitgeist at the turn of the 20th century, beckoning in the process revolutionary changes and brighter tomorrows for Europe’s working class. Today, it is as if those very words were being revived—adapted by numerous observers to fit the current socio-political processes in the Arab world. This time around, it’s the Arab elite being haunted and the spectre is that of democracy. However, is such a depiction remotely accurate?

Reflections on the Arab Spring

By Anustup Basu, Mute Magazine

Twittering teens or absolutist ayatollahs, men we can do business with or loony autocrats? The media's proliferation of polarities is a strategy to fragment the connectedness of events and disavow western Realpolitik. Here Anustup Basu reveals the transnational composition of a Spring that is now an Autumn

In a column published on 25 May, 2011, The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman issued a pious call to Palestinians. In the wake of the Arab Spring, he invited them to learn from the Egyptian insurrection and adopt the ‘Tahrir Square Alternative' (TSA).

The Revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East are Just the First Step

by Tristan Gevers, The Star

As rebels moved into Tripoli, Libya’s capital, Barrack Obama said that “The Gaddafi regime is showing signs of collapsing. The people of Libya are showing that the universal pursuit of dignity and freedom is far stronger than the iron fist of a dictator”. Months before, in January of this year, the Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met a similar fate in February. There have been movements – successful or not - in Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Algeria and Syria amongst other places.

Transition, Human Rights and Violence: rethinking a liberal political relationship in the African neo-colony

by Michael Neocosmos, Critical Studies Seminar, Rhodes University, 31 August 2011

The courage, inventiveness and organisation of the people of North Africa in Tunisia and Egypt, as the new year of 2011 was turning, have evidently disproved (if refutation were needed) the thesis of „the end of history‟. In doing so they have provided renewed enthusiasm for 'people power' and a popularly driven process of mass mobilisation in which people can not only force the resignation of dictators and seemingly the (partial or full) collapse of authoritarian states, but crucially also demand a greater say in the running of their own lives. In standing up against oppression in this manner, people have asserted that they are no longer victims but full blown political subjects. Yet the appearance of the masses on such a broad scale on the political scene for the first time since independence cannot be assumed to mean that they will remain there, and not only because coercive military power has yet to be transformed.

Salwa Ismail on the Arab Spring

A new Arab street in post-Islamist times

by Asef Bayat, Foreign Policy

The popular uprising in Tunisia has surprised many — Western observers, the Arab elites, and even those who have generated this remarkable episode. The surprise seems justified. How could one imagine that a campaign of ordinary Tunisians in just over one month would topple a dictator who presided over a police state for 23 years? This is a region where the life expectancy of ‘presidencies’ match only the ‘eternal’ rule of its sheiks, kings, and Ayatollahs who bank on oil and political rent (western protection) to hang onto their power and subjugate their people. But the wonder about the Jasmine revolution — and the subsequent mass protests in Algeria, Yemen, Jordan, and more spectacularly in Egypt’s numerous cities on Jan. 25, 2011 — also comes from a common mistrust among the Arab elites and their outside allies about the so called ‘Arab street’ — one that is simultaneously feared and pitied for its‘dangerous irrationality’ and ‘deplorable apathy.’

Living Fanon: A commemoration

by Nigel Gibson, Public Lecture hosted by the Paulo Freire Project, School of Education and Development, University of KwaZulu Natal and the Church Land Programme, Pietermaritzburg, May 30, 2011

What better way to celebrate, commemorate, critically reflect on, and think through Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth fifty years after its publication than with a new North African syndrome: Revolution - or at least a series of revolts that continue to rock the region. Fanon begins The Wretched writing of decolonization as a program of complete disorder, an overturning of order - often against the odds - willed collectively from the bottom up. Without time or space for a transition, there is instead an absolute replacement of one “species” of humanity by another (1968:35).

Year of the boomerang? Frantz Fanon and the Arab uprisings

Fatin Abbas, Open Democracy

Fifty years ago, in 1961, a young Martinican psychiatrist by the name of Frantz Fanon published The Wretched of the Earth, a political tract that, in the years to follow, would become the handbook of revolutionaries everywhere, from Ché Guevara in South America to Steve Biko in South Africa. At the time of writing the book, Fanon was stationed as a psychiatrist in Algeria, a country that was then in the grip of a protracted and bloody revolution. In 1954 the Algerian people had risen en masse against French colonizers who had ruled them brutally for more than a century. The Algerian War for Independence lasted eight years, ending with the expulsion of the French in 1962. It came to be known as the “War of a Million Martyrs” because of the countless Algerians who died in the struggle.

Mass mobilisation, ‘democratic transition’ and ‘transitional violence’ in Africa

by Michael Neocosmos, Pambazuka

The courage, inventiveness and organisation of the people of North Africa, particularly in Tunisia and Egypt as the new year of 2011 was turning, have provided renewed enthusiasm for ‘people power’ and a popularly driven process of mass mobilisation in which people can not only force the resignation of dictators and seemingly the (partial or full) collapse of authoritarian states, but also crucially demand a greater say in the running of their own lives. In standing up against oppression in this manner, people assert that they are no longer victims but full blown political subjects.[1]

Egypt and the revolution in our minds

By Nigel Gibson, Pambazuka

‘What makes the lid blow off?’ Fanon asks in ‘The Wretched of the Earth’, reflecting on the revolution against French colonialism in Algeria 50 years ago and thinking about the future ‘African revolution.’ In Egypt, a country where 50 per cent of the population is under 30 years old and which has known no other regime than Mubarak’s state of emergency, with its torture and surveillance, it was the reaction to the murder of Khaled Said, a young blogger beaten to death by the police, that was a turning point.

La révolution surgit comme un voleur dans la nuit

Richard Pithouse, Indymedia Paris

La vie, la vie ordinaire, suit certains rythmes. Nous grandissons, les saisons changent et nous occupons de nouvelles places dans le monde. Quand vous n’êtes plus un enfant, vous laissez de côté toutes les choses enfantines et vous passez à l’étape suivante de votre vie. Mais il existe une multitude de gens en ce monde qui n’ont pas la possibilité de faire construire une maison, de se marier, de s’occuper de leurs enfants et de leurs parents vieillissants. Il existe une multitude de gens qui vieillissent sans pouvoir sortir d’une existence misérable et épuisante. Ils réussissent parfois tout juste à rassembler quelques sous en vendant des tomates ou des chargeurs de téléphones portables dans la rue, pour louer un taudis au fond d’une cour.

Revolution Comes Like a Thief in the Night

by Richard Pithouse, LibCom

Life, ordinary life, is meant to follow certain rhythms. We grow, seasons change and we assume new positions in the world. When you have finished being a child you put away childish things and move on to the next stage of life. But there is a multitude of people in this world who cannot build a home, marry and care for their children and aging parents. There is a multitude of people who are growing older as they remain stuck in an exhausting limbo, perhaps just managing to scrape together the rent for a backyard shack by selling tomatoes or cell phone chargers on some street.