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?