The Arab Uprisings

MASS PROTEST, BORDER-CROSSING, AND HISTORY FROM BELOW

The Arab Uprisings

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 halfFiliu, The Arab RevolutionTripp, The Politics of ResistanceAmin, Masr wa-l-Masriyyun / Egypt & the

EgyptiansStora, 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, Cairoposted 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 armyregime 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, 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

What about the Tunisian Wind?

accounts for timinga possibility and a planmobilizing the popular quarters – the cause of

Muhammad BouaziziNot exactly pan-ArabismKey arena of hegemonic contestation is

national-stateIdeas 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 hegemonyMass protest is a symptom, a result, and a

cause in this global contextA transnational struggle for democratic

politics itself?