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The Arab Uprisings

The Arab Uprisings. Mass protest, border-crossing, and history from below. Mass Protests. d emonstrations, strikes, direct crowd action,

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The Arab Uprisings

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  1. The Arab Uprisings Mass protest, border-crossing, and history from below

  2. Mass Protests • demonstrations, strikes, direct crowd action, • uprisings: “those crucial moments when the old order becomes no longer endurable to the masses, they break over the barriers excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives, and create by their own interference the initial groundwork for a new régime” (Trotksy, 1934: 17) • Who was involved? What did they achieve? What is distinctive about them? • post-colonial history from below

  3. The revolution really has been televised • An archive and a half • Filiu, The Arab Revolution • Tripp, The Politics of Resistance • Amin, Masrwa-l-Masriyyun / Egypt & the Egyptians • Stora, Le 89 Arabe, Piot etc… • www.jadaliyya.com;http://www.merip.org/mer/mer258/ • Beinin & Vairel, Social Movements etc….

  4. Post-colonial history from below • Interpretive subjects (not discursive effects) • Politics, political imagination, culture (not socioeconomic determinism) • Creativity and syncretism in culture (not essentialism) • Power-relations, violence, inequality (not the hermeneutic circle) • Constructed collective historical subjects (not endless multiplicity) • Aggregative dynamics / hegemonic contestation (not unremitting micrology)

  5. Tahrir / Liberation Square, Cairoposted 1 February 2011

  6. A Rich History of Protest • Unruly contention: unruly, non-routine and disruptive mobilization by large numbers of highly motivated persons addressing the existing distribution of power and resources (inspired by Tilly /Tarrow + Linebaugh /Rediker) • Ottoman Istanbul 1730, 1806 (Shaw) • Morocco, 1844-1912 (Burke, Laroui) • Egypt/Urabi 1881-2 (Salim, Schölch, Cole) • Iran 1905-6 (Afary) • Egypt 1919, 1952 (Lockman, Berque); Iraq 1948 (Batatu) • Egypt 1977/ Algeria 1988 (Roberts, Beinin) • Iran 1979 (Abrahamian) • Palestine 1987-91 (Hiltermann)

  7. Palestine, Intifada, 1987

  8. What mass protest did directly • the people reject the regime: performance (Tripp) • breaking “fear and the culture of fear” (Ismail) • threatening to paralyse the economy (Alexandra) • massively degrading police capacity by defensive physical force • Defeating the baltagiyya / thugs

  9. NDP Headquarters, 28-29 January 2011

  10. What it did indirectly • neutrality of the army • regime withdraws the police (28 January) • US vacillation

  11. “The people and the army are one hand”, 13 Feb 2011

  12. What it didn’t do at all • seize state power (cf Iran, 9-11 February, 1979)

  13. Revolutionaries Defeating Imperial Guard, Iran, February 1979

  14. Who? • Not only Facebook youth, industrial workers, and / or the Muslim Brotherhood • youth of popular quarters, informal sector, return-migrants, petty service providers, retailers, self-employed, crafts-workers, manual labourers, minor civil servants • the ‘petty-bourgeoisie’ not so scuffling after all – and an important segment of the crowd

  15. What about the Tunisian Wind? • accounts for timing • a possibility and a plan • mobilizing the popular quarters – the cause of Muhammad Bouazizi • Not exactly pan-Arabism • Key arena of hegemonic contestation is national-state • Ideas crossed borders, materials did not

  16. What’s Distinctive? • not only domination without hegemony • but a movement without alternative hegemony (no Khomeini etc)

  17. Movement + Leadership

  18. Neither a curse nor a blessing • Strength: the movement is the message: to register a rejection appropriate for the moment • Weakness: “switchmen” of history (Weber, Hanson, Post-Imperial Democracies) • Can’t abolish history – need for leadership, and demands of the moment • How to make productive? Find a global common ground?

  19. Switchmen of History? • “Not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men's conduct. Yet very frequently the 'world images' that have been created by 'ideas' have, like [railway] switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest. 'From what' and 'for what' one wished to be redeemed and, let us not forget, 'could be' redeemed, depended upon one's image of the world”. Max Weber, Sociology of Religion, 1920

  20. Conclusion • Domination without hegemony • Movement without alternative hegemony • Mass protest is a symptom, a result, and a cause in this global context • A transnational struggle for democratic politics itself?

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