The Arab Uprisings
MASS PROTEST, BORDER-CROSSING, AND
HISTORY FROM BELOW
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
The revolution really has been televised
 An archive and a half
 Filiu, The Arab Revolution
 Tripp, The Politics of Resistance
 Amin, Masr wa-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….
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)
Tahrir / Liberation Square, Cairo
posted 1 February 2011
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)
Palestine, Intifada, 1987
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
NDP Headquarters, 28-29 January 2011
What it did indirectly
 neutrality of the army
 regime withdraws the police (28 January)
 US vacillation
“The people and the army are one hand”, 13 Feb
2011
What it didn’t do at all
 seize state power (cf Iran, 9-11 February, 1979)
Revolutionaries Defeating Imperial Guard, Iran,
February 1979
Who?
 Not only Facebook youth, industrial workers, and /
or the Muslim Brotherhood
 youth of popular quarters, informal sector, returnmigrants, petty service providers, retailers, selfemployed, crafts-workers, manual labourers, minor
civil servants
 the ‘petty-bourgeoisie’ not so scuffling after all – and
an important segment of the crowd
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 nationalstate
 Ideas crossed borders, materials did not
What’s Distinctive?
 not only domination without hegemony
 but a movement without alternative hegemony (no
Khomeini etc)
Movement + Leadership
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?
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
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?