Negotiating Space. The Evolution of the Egyptian Street, 2000-2011 (original) (raw)
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Why and how do ordinary citizens lacking previous activist experience, come, at certain times, to stage protests, block roads, close public administrations, or occupy public spaces, in order to reclaim what they consider is their right? In Egypt, ordinary people have increasingly, albeit occasionally, endorsed protest as a means to press demands, as shown by a continuous frequency of popular mobilisations despite a very repressive context since July 2013. However, despite the persistence of serious grievances and limited results, most of these collective actions have not exceeded the local scale, remaining dispersed, discontinuous and ephemeral. This thesis argues that beyond repression and other authoritarian constraints, which only provide a partial explanation, most popular mobilisations are also prevented from expanding by the vicissitudes of leadership on the one hand, and a set of local sociocultural features on the other. Beyond traditional social movement studies, which main...
This article contemplates symbols and values inscribed on Cairo’s landscape during the 2011 revolution and the period since, focusing on Tahrir Square and the role of the Egyptian flag in street discourses there. I start by briefly pondering how intertwined popular narratives readied the square and flag as emblems of dissent. Next I examine how these appropriations shaped protests in the square, and how military authorities who retook control in 2013 re-coopted the square and flag, with the reabsorption of each critical to that of the other and executed in the same place: Tahrir. Pro-military factions have created the pretense that they were for the revolution by altering the square and structures around it. Furthermore, the square has remained open to the public, but ceased to be inviting. This relates to post-revolutionary alterations that psychologically repel entry. I consider these changes in light of affordance theory, value sensitive design research and especially the defensible space model, arguing that Tahrir Square has been symbolically cordoned and closed.
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On 25 January 2011, Egyptians took to the streets demanding political and social reform. In Cairo, protesters converged upon Tahrir (‘Liberation’) Square, which remained constantly occupied until the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak on 11 February. In this narrative, the author recounts his experiences over 12 days as a participant in what is now referred to as the Egyptian revolution. He concludes with reflections on the situation that emerged in the square, focusing in particular on some of the factors that may have contributed to the success of its continued occupation: the swift creation of an embryonic form of community, and the receding of the usual identities based on class and religion in favour of a simple yet powerful identity as people of the revolution.
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[English] The development of contentious collective action in Egypt has encouraged the emergence of new spaces of protest, but also the development of new strategies of opposition. This article aims to investigate the mobilization of the Cairo Ultras groups by examining their use of space, first within the stadium grounds, and particularly through their use of graffiti art. Through an analysis primarily centred on their graffiti, we wish to account for the evolution in their mobilization, as well as understand the development and transformation of their messages. The present study is, for the most part, based on a thorough analysis of graffiti and street art collected during a series of field trips conducted between 2012 and the beginning of 2015. The majority of the data was gathered around Tahrir Square and Mohammed Mahmoud Street, as well as around the Ahly and Zamalek stadia. Graffiti are of particular interest in the Egyptian case, most notably because they allow for expression of a specific social and/or political reality using precise graphic and discursive rules. [French] Le développement de l’action collective en Egypte a favorisé l’émergence de nouveaux espaces de contestation mais aussi le développement de nouvelles stratégies d’opposition. Cet article a pour but d’examiner la mobilisation des groupes Ultras au Caire en procédant à une analyse de leur utilisation de l’espace, d’abord à l’intérieur des stades, et ensuite à travers leur utilisation de l’art du graffiti. Par le biais d’une analyse centrée principalement sur leur graffiti, nous souhaitons rendre compte de l’évolution de leur mobilisation, ainsi que comprendre le développement et la transformation de leurs messages. La présente étude se base pour l’essentiel sur une analyse approfondie de graffitis et de fresques collectés lors d’une série de terrains conduits entre 2012 et le début de l’année 2015. La majorité des données ont été recueillies autour de la place Tahrir et de la rue Mohammed Mahmoud ainsi que dans les rues entourant les stades d’al-Ahly et de Zamalek. Les graffitis sont particulièrement intéressants dans le cas égyptien, notamment parce qu’ils sont capables d’exprimer une réalité sociale et / ou politique spécifique en utilisant des règles graphiques et discursives précises.
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How, after two years of revolt that if anything were meant to shift the very terms of political subjectivity, do we make sense of what appears to be the unlikely popularity of Egypt's latest military rulers? Much of the commentary and imagery would seem to suggest that the military, garbed in revolutionary cover, have succeeded where countless others have failed in postcolonial polities and achieved some kind of hegemony and broad consensus. By contrast, this article argues that if the military have been able to seize the initiative to drive themselves as a populist wedge between restoration and revolution this is not because they have attained consent but because they have been able to mobilize organizational and discursive machinery much more quickly and effectively than anyone else. That is, to take advantage, in this interstitial temporal space between end and beginning, of the organizational weakness of Egypt's revolutionary street politics. A weakness only magnified in the rush to electoral politics. What this disjuncture, underlines, then, with increasing urgency, is not the question of "voluntary servitude" but the question of form. Both the party and the much-heralded horizontality of 'the street' appear lacking; the latter capable of sublime insurrectional moments-the re-enacted rupture-but not the necessary sustained assault on institutions. The form-to-come will have to emerge from the struggle itself, and the article gestures to the possibility of new collectivities that might be found in the coordination between the revolutionary subjectivities and networks that emerged from the revolt and the life-worlds of Egypt's 'informal' urban poor that have both participated in and provided the enabling conditions of revolt.