The Utopia of Midan Tahrir
Esther G. M. Schoorel
Bachelor thesis:
Cultural Anthropology and Sociology of Developing Societies (UvA) Supervisor: dr. M.P. Lindo, 2nd reader: dr. K.M Witsenburg
Date: June 15, 2013 Studentnumber: 10002381 Email: egmschoorel@hotmail.com
Keywords:
Egypt, uprising, Tahrir square, discourse, utopia
Abstract:
From January 25th until February 11th 2011 Egyptians collectively stood up in protest to demand freedom, social justice and dignity from the repressive Mubarak regime. The numeric
and symbolic heart of the Egyptian uprising was Midan Tahrir: the square in the heart of Egypt’s capital Cairo. During eighteen days the square the people that occupied the square together developed an extraordinary moment in time, referred to as if it were a utopia. In this article I will deconstruct this notion of Tahrir as utopia, by critically analyzing this discourse
and the way it is represented by three mainstream media channels (BBC, Aljazeera and Alarabiya).
Content
Introduction 3-5
1 The construction of meaning 5-9
2 The establishment of liberation 9-14
3 Inside the square 15-19
4 The celebration of difference 20-25
5 Moral transcendence 25-27
6 Conclusion 27-29
Introduction
January 25th was the Egyptian national holiday to commemorate the police forces. In the year 2011 however, this national holiday took on a whole new meaning. Ten days earlier the Tunisian people had successfully rid themselves of the Ben Ali-regime after a month of massive nationwide protests. The 25th of January was the moment that the Egyptian uprising officially began. A national holiday for the corrupt police force was the perfect moment to defy them.
What followed was an eighteen-day protest in which Egyptians massively occupied squares throughout the country and defied the police forces and the regime. Although there were large protests throughout the country, the symbolic and numeric heart of the uprising was unmistakably Midan Tahrir. It was to the almost two million protesters on this square that the government’s, media’s and the world’s attention was turned. The world was startled by the sudden massive uprising where millions of Egyptians showed their discontent with the situation in their country and bravely stood up for their rights. After the first days of success the protests started to attract more and more Egyptians of many different social and
economical backgrounds. In the end there were almost two million protesters there to demand Hurriyya, Adalah Ijtima’iyah wi Karama - freedom, social justice and dignity.1
Midan Tahrir became the center and the symbol of the Egyptian uprising, the space that was occupied by almost two million Egyptians in resistance of the thirty year long repressive regime of president Hosni Mubarak. The square is located in downtown Cairo and is one of the major junctions of the city. It is always bustling with traffic here, forcing the passerby to either take one of the subway tunnels to the other side or crossing several of the incredibly busy roads. Along the edges of the almost 32.000 square meters of open space stretches a large roundabout. The large open space in the middle is what was the heart of the protest in the spring of 2011. On the northern end of the square the Egyptian Antiquities Museum is located, an impressive red building from the time of khedive Isma’il Pasha. On the southern end the square surrounded by an array of fast-food restaurants, apartment buildings and hotels. When I visited the square it was one and a half years after the revolution. It was my first time ever to visit there and I had been anticipating to go; in the spring of 2011 the place caught my imagination, as I am sure it caught the imagination of so many others
1 The chant ‘Hurriyya, Adalah Ijtima’iyah wi Karama’ was the most widely used chant and became a symbol
throughout the world. During the Egyptian uprising this was a place that possessed a
collective effervescence so powerful that it could almost be felt through the television screen.2
As a close follower of the events in Egypt I noticed a pattern in the discourse about the initial eighteen days at the square, it was something about a special atmosphere during these days that kept returning in interviews, art, articles and other media produced about the revolution. It was a discourse about an atmosphere of solidarity, as is expressed in the interview above, in which time and time again mentioned that differences between people didn’t matter during these days. Articles appeared about women participating at the square next to men in a way that they had never done before; about Muslim Brothers who were defending the square with liberals and about Copts who were blessed by conservative Muslims. Gender, class or religion couldn’t divide people anymore, this is articulated in the recurrent phrase: ‘we were all
Egyptians now’.3 Another protester says: ‘It was a utopic society. We all felt one people; total unity’ (sic), in an interview reflecting on the eighteen-day revolution, and: ‘The perfect Egypt would be the Egypt in Tahrir square’.
In this article I want to zoom in on those eighteen days at Midan Tahrir. How did this discourse of solidarity come about? How is it possible that people are able to create this sense of community and utopia? I will deconstruct this notion of ‘a sense utopia’, by looking at what different events constituted this meaning. To understand how the collective focus and mood are constructed I will use Foucault’s notion of discourse, in the first chapter I will explain what I understand to be discourse and why I deem it useful for this analysis. I will explain what the implications are of looking at the Egyptian uprising through a media-filter and how the media was an integral part of the construction of the sense of utopia in multiple ways. In the following chapters, after this critical assessment of the media coverage, I will turn my attention to those elements in the discourse conveyed by the media that constitute this sense of utopia. In chapter 2 I will turn my attention to how the protesters created both an ideational and physical sense of ‘us versus them’, through the struggle over the square against the Mubarak regime and pro-Mubarak protesters. After chapter 2 I will turn to the core of Tahrir square, where the safe communal area was. In chapter 3 I will look at the unifying factor among the protesters, following this in chapter 4 I will assess how this common identity
2 Collective effervescense is a term of Emile Durkheim to describe how at communal gatherings people can generate a communal euphoria with the effect that individuals transcend their normal state of being (2001: 162). I discuss the term in depth on page 15-‐17.
made a celebration of other differences possible. Finally in chapter 5 I will assess the idea that the protesters were able to behave in an idealized moral manner. To understand what
happened I will look at the eighteen days as a ritual; a ritual in the way that Collins has defined: an interaction in which a group of people is physically assembled; focus their attention on the same object or action and are aware that the other is maintaining this focus and who share a common emotion and mood (Collins in: Bellah 2005: 185).
Chapter 1.
The construction of meaning
Discourse is not simply what is being said; discourse is a ‘system of representation’ (Hall 1997: 72). Foucault described the concept as ‘a group of statements which provide a language for talking about – a way of representing knowledge about – a particular topic at a particular historical moment’ (Ibid.). Discourse overcomes the distinction between language and
practice: it defines the way we think and the way we act, thereby both defining and producing the objects of knowledge. The Foucauldian interpretation of discourse, which is endorsed and clarified by Hall, I will use to understand how the discourse of Tahrir square came about. As Hall explains in his article: to study discourse is to study where meaning originates. Thus by focusing on the discourse in and about Tahrir square during the Egyptian uprising, I will try to identify how the events there gained their meaning.
Meaning is expressed in language, symbols, objects, but also in the way of thinking, motivation and even in the way people use their body. All these aspects, or discursive practices, together create a ‘system of representation’ that emerged about the Egyptian uprising. Concretely, in this article I will look at the language used in and about the square, the way this language was shared, the actions that were carried out, the objects that were used on the square and the way people interacted with each other there. Furthermore I will also analyze the symbols that were used and the thoughts and the motivations of the protesters, obviously all these expressions of meaning are deeply intertwined with each other. Following Hall, I will focus on certain statements that shape the kind our knowledge; to the topics that are discussed and are governed by certain rules that prescribe how we talk about them and don’t talk about them and to certain subjects who personify the discourse (Ibid.). The feeling of solidarity, the experience of ‘being one’, is a system of representation that developed during these eighteen days of protest at the square. It is a discourse that is not only important
to make sense for those eighteen days of the uprising; but also after, as the events acquired meaning far beyond the limited space and time of these days.
As someone who has not actually been at the square during the uprising it is impossible to generate any objective and overall idea of the discourse at the square, for I will always be dependent on the selection of others and their choice in what to focus on, whether they be scholars, journalists or revolutionaries. Furthermore since I don’t speak or read Arabic I am limited to the media that produce in the English language and that is thus not necessarily produced for the Egyptian or even Arabic community, but also for the Western community.
At the moment that the revolution started (and Mubarak was still the ruling president) there was no independent Egyptian press, all national media was tied to the regime. National media were unable to give out any ‘real’ news and for much of the Western media it was dangerous and often impossible to reach the square at all. The independent news stations that did cover the events and are also widely watched and valued in Egypt and beyond are
Aljazeera, Alarabiya, BBC and CNN. I’ve chosen to use the coverage of the first three
channels as my main research data.4 Aljazeera is a news station owned by the emir of Qatar is a highly valued news channel. Aljazeera is a progressive news station that believes that every viewpoint must be given attention; thus showing both the viewpoint of for example Al Qaida as well as the U.S. viewpoint. This has made the channel controversial in both the West and the Middle East. Through its ‘total immersion coverage’ of the Egyptian uprising the channel however gained incredibly on popularity among Western public (Halliday&Plunkett 2011). This ‘total immersion’ is expressed in a promoting, almost propagandist, role; the channel gave the events much prominence both during and after the initial eighteen days.
There has been a lot of critique about the coverage of the media’s representation of the uprising. As both Aljazeera and BBC are liberal valued channels, and BBC also Western, we might question the way they represent and interpret events. The amount of attention they decide to give to the events, the people they chose to portray, the topics they choose to focus on, the terms they use and so forth are thus all influenced by this liberal ideology. Rabab el-Mahdi argues that they have portrayed it as a ‘youth, Facebook, middle class revolution’ and ignored the other Egyptians that were part of the revolution (2011). As part of their liberal bias, they have focused on those people that fit their ideas of a just revolution. It is here that the last station, Alarabiya, comes in. Alarabiya is Aljazeera’s counterpart and owned by a
Saudi royal family, this news station is seen more conservative and Islam oriented. The station’s English spoken news coverage is very limited, however I chose to include it in my research as it poses a radically different vision of the Egyptian uprising than the ones we get from the other stations. I will thus mostly use it to reveal inconsistencies in the overall story, as a correcting force and alternate voice.
As the international media is my only access to the image of the uprising as produced by international media I am limited, on the other hand it will give me an interesting perspective. By using these sources as my research data I will show on the one hand where meaning originated at Midan Tahrir during the uprising, while at the same time I will show the limits of and inconsistencies in the image an outsider gets from these data. I will pay attention to the role of power in the process of acquiring meaning at this particular historical moment. In this article I thus do not intend to represent the objective events at the square. The discourse is in interplay with everyone involved in the uprising, partly determined by the protesters, partly by the way the media decide to bring forth what they see and partly by the way the protesters and the media interact with one another. There are a lot of aspects to bear in mind when assessing the image the media brought forth. First of all the media determine the discourse of the revolution by the amount of attention they decide to give to the events, the people they chose to portray, the topics they choose to focus on and so forth. So on the one hand it was the community at Midan Tahrir that created a certain discourse about what was going on by chanting, making art, shouting slogans, defying the regime and forming a community
together. On the other hand it was the media that spread this discourse, favoring certain voices and discrediting others. Many of the journalists were Egyptians and revolutionaries
themselves, which no doubt influenced the way that they interpreted and covered what they saw. Furthermore there was also an interaction between the media and the protesters. The protesters were well aware of the presence of the media at the square and of the image they convey about themselves. As you see in many of the live news items at the square, there are always protesters who immediately direct their attention towards the camera and act towards it, by making peace signs, singing, shouting etc. We can thus confidently assume that the media-presence has affected the behavior of protesters. Finally, and maybe the most important, the discourse that the media generated plays a very important role in how the uprising will be remembered.
Maybe the most obvious example of this is the naming given to the events, in Egypt but also in the other Arab countries that had an uprising. The naming of these events carries in
itself an interpretation and a political statement. I have chosen to use the word ‘Egyptian uprising’ rather than revolution, transition or spring. Aljazeera and BBC use the terms: ‘revolution’, ‘transition’ and ‘unfinished revolution’ (for the period 2011-now) and Alarabiya simply ‘revolution’. The word revolution carries the implication of radical change and
success; I do not believe that there has yet been a radical change in the political climate of Egypt and it also an unfinished process yet. In a dialogue between Lila Abu-Lughod and Rabab El-Mahdi for the journal ‘Feminist Studies’, El-Mahdi (Egyptian feminist and revolutionary herself) expresses her annoyance with the use of the terms ‘spring’ and ‘awakening’ because, as she argues, it implies that the Arab people awoke from a sleep or some comatose state (2011). The idea that the Arabs ‘awoke’ denies the difficult and impossible position they have been in vis-à-vis a corrupt repressive regime and the protests and resistance of Egyptians prior to the spring of 2011. The word uprising is in my opinion more suitable to the large wave of protest that has been present in Egypt from January 2011 until now, pointing to the fact that this period has been defined by a constant state of
criticism, protest and active change. Throughout this paper I will refer to those initial eighteen days as ‘the uprising’, even though the uprising did not end after these days, but it was the definitive and changing moment.
I will focus on the discourse that has been generated by the international media. This brings me to the final aspect that Hall focuses on; namely how discourse acquires authority; how people come to accept certain ideas and representations as ‘the truth’. In the development of the dominant discourse of Midan Tahrir it were not just the protesters that determined this, but most notably the media had a prominent role in determining the dominant discourse to the outside world. They have the power to determine what is shared with the world and how it is shared, as recognized institutions they had the authority to, to a certain extent, determine the truth about what was going on. Hamed Dabashi is critical of ascribing such a prominent powerful position to the official media, and takes a radically opposite standpoint. According the media Dabashi they must now compete with social media, therefore leaving them no power: ‘The mainstream media (a figment of the tormented imagination) have no power to misrepresent anything’ (2012: 68). Although I disagree with Dabashi, he is correct in drawing attention to the great influence and the controlling force of social media on the media
coverage of the Egyptian uprising. Social media can force official media to draw attention to certain events and work as a correction to what the official media cover, it basically it
subverts the monopoly on news of the official media. However it doesn’t have the reach nor the authority of the official media.
The protesters were largely depending on the solidarity of the media for the uprising to be a success, as they had the power to determine whether the uprising was portrayed in a positive way and even noticed both nationally and internationally. Tragic illustrations of this are the uprising in Bahrain and to a lesser extend also the one in Yemen, which due to political censorship were ignored by all media and therefore did not get recognized. This led to an almost unnoticed eradication of the protests by the respective states and the ignorance of the international community, even though the protests were characterized by the same
demands and peaceful demonstrations as those in Egypt and Tunisia. Although this is also a demonstration of the hypocritical and egocentric attitude of the international community (that only shows solidarity with people fighting for freedom when it is convenient to their own agenda) it is also shows the powerful position the media occupies in such events. Without positive media attention the Egyptian uprising would not have created the solidarity,
motivation and sentiment that it did among fellow Egyptians that were not at the square, nor the solidarity of the international community.
Chapter 2.
The establishment of liberation
‘Like ageless Cairo, Midan al-Tahrir cannot sit still (…) Whenever a new regime feels the nation's capital needs a new look, the Midan has been the place to start’.5
As public places, squares have maintained an important function for hosting demonstrations against political authority across the globe. Squares are public spaces that were created in order for the subjects to witness the splendor of their regime in all it’s glory. It is exactly there that those same subjects would later revert to, to demonstrate against the regime. Prior to the spring of 2011 the square thus already maintained a rich symbolic and historic value for the Egyptian nation. Midan Tahrir was initially named ‘Midan Ismailia’ and was designed at the end of the nineteenth century as part of the modernization of Cairo by khedive Isma’il Pasha (Nassar: 2011). The khedive developed this part of the city as a European style leisure area for the rich, in what was at the time the outskirts of the city. Thus when the Egyptian struggle for independence initiated, Isma’il Pasha’s European neighborhood became a target, since it figured as a symbol of the imperialist rule. Kaviraj explains in an article about the use of
5 These lines were written by Egyptian author in a1998 article about Tahrir square, published in the Cairo times
public space: revolutions are struggles against an autocratic regime as well as struggles over public space (Kaviraj 1997: 95). To be able to topple authority, one has to dominate these key spaces.
When the 1952 revolution brought to power the radically left and nationalist regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Nasser renamed all streets, squares and buildings in this part of city and replaced many of the buildings by communist style blocs. Midan Ismailia was renamed ‘Midan Tahrir’: liberation square. The square became a symbol for the struggle for independence from the colonial powers; it became a symbol for an independent Egyptian nation. Since ’52 Tahrir square has been the site of national protest, hosting for example also the bread riots of 1977. Over time, as Cairo expanded, what was first a rich suburb came to lie in the center of the city. Nevertheless the area always maintained its key position as a place of authority; at the moment of the uprising it housed the head quarters of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party (NDP), the Mugamma (an important administrative government building) and the state-media news stations. Since Tahrir square is the symbolical and administrational center of government authority, it is the strategic place to conquer when defying national authority. Protest in this space demands attention from the authority and inverts its all-powerful position (Ibid.).
That revolutions are often a struggle over public space is extremely visible in the struggle over Tahrir square. What was a struggle for freedom, social justice and dignity was initially acted out in the form of a struggle for the iconic square. As I examined the news items about the first days of the uprising it isn’t until February 3rd that the word ‘peaceful’ is mentioned in relation to atmosphere at the square. Particularly the first week of the uprising was marked by violence and there was a constant struggle between the protesters and the police forces and pro-Mubarak demonstrators over the occupation of space. These first days of the revolution were marked by intense violence and it was very unsure that the protesters would triumph at all. Where protests at other times would have ended due to the violence of the police, this time there was no stopping it. This first phase of the uprising was a phase in which the old status quo was lifted; on Aljazeera it was described at as ‘breaking the fear barrier’.
In the following chapter I will focus on this struggle. I will use the separation phase of Van Gennep’s rite de passage to gain insight into what this initial period of violence meant for the establishment of the feeling of solidarity at Midan Tahrir. Van Gennep describes the rite de passage as a ritual consisting of three succeeding phases: the separation, the liminal and the initiation phase. The separation phase of the ritual ‘comprises symbolic behavior
signifying the detachment of the individual or group either from an earlier fixed point in the social structure, from a set of cultural conditions (a ‘state’), or from both’ (Turner 1969: 94). According to Van Gennep, this initial phase is needed to open up possibilities to create change. The group of protesters detached themselves from the fixed social structure imposed on them by a repressive regime. While in Van Gennep’s and Turner’s definition of the rite de passage the three phases succeed each other in order, I will show that the protesters on Midan Tahrir were in a constant state of fighting the status quo throughout the uprising. It did not end when the protesters conquered Midan Tahrir, because it was until the 11th of February when Mubarak definitively gave up power that the square ceased to be a site of struggle that needed to be protected. Where the police forces and pro-Mubarak demonstrators aimed at keeping the protesters of the square, the protesters aimed at maintaining their space. This initial period of starting to actively oppose the regime and not backing out despite the violence that was used against them, the protesters already established change and detached themselves from the earlier social structure.
In an article about the spatial dimensions of street protests against the Milosevic regime in 1996-1997 Serbia, Stef Jansen also focuses on the importance of public space (2001). Jansen uses the term ‘liberated places’ (a term he borrows from Routledge); these places were the ones conquered by the protesters (Ibid.: 44-45). Liberated places came to represent opposition. In Mohammed Rashed’s participants account of the time at Midan Tahrir he describes a similar process; on the 1st of February the square was declared ‘free territory’ by the protesters, he writes (2011: 25). He also writes that this free territory created a physical as well as an imaginary barrier between the protesters and ‘the other’: the regime and anyone else against their revolution. This feeling was even increased by the fact that the liberated place, like the ones in Beograd, was not stable. Around Tahrir square there was a frontline, where groups of mostly young men took turns to defend their territory, which was constantly under attack from ‘the other’. The front line remained in a phase separation throughout the uprising, for the uncertainty and the threat remained constant until Mubarak resigned and surrendered. The cause of protesters at Tahrir square gained incredible
legitimacy from the irrational and enormous violence that the regime and its allies incited on them. While they were under constant attack there was a certain determination to remain in the square no matter what. This determination only grew the more violence was incited on them from the other side, the more there cause was legitimized and the more they became to depend on each other as protesters. As the idea of ‘the other’ was enforced, the idea of an ‘us’
in the form of the protesters was also amplified. As one of the protesters articulates it in an Aljazeera interview: ‘There was one Egypt inside Tahrir and another Egypt outside’.6
‘They [the regime] empowered us through their violence; they made us hold on to the dream of freedom even more. We were all walking around with wounds, but we still
kept going. We were even treating injured horses that they had used in their brutal attacks against us’.
Salma El Tarzi7
In this quote Salma El Tarzi basically sums up the entire image that is presented of the protesters in the media. The protesters were not the agitators of violence, but rather the victims who defended themselves and defended their area for a just cause; and they were thus courageous. Their courage is expressed in the discourse by their and the media’s language, mostly by the phrase that the protesters ‘broke through the fear barrier’. Another recurrent framework that returned in all media and interviews was ‘determination’. The protesters seemed to posses an almost unbelievable sense of determination, which appeared to enable them to defy anything. One of the iconic images became a picture of a man sleeping in the wheels of a tank, to make sure the tank would not narrow the area the protesters were
occupying. The protesters were unsure if the army would turn against them or would maintain its neutral stance and were afraid the army would try to drive them out of the square.
Protesters kept on defending their territory, despite getting injured or being exhausted. On the 26th BBC posted several interviews with protesters including one with Zakaria, who says: ‘random unprovoked attacks by the police were very common throughout the day. When we first arrived at the square we were quiet, some prayed and others rested after the long march. The police immediately started spraying us with water cannon from an armored vehicle’.8 Aljazeera features similar accounts. Both also repeatedly mention the unequal fight. Where the police forces came with tear gas, armored vehicles and guns, the protesters had to defend themselves with improvised armor: brooms, stones or their bare hands. The same inequality is reflected in the accounts of when the pro-Mubarak supporters came to Tahrir armed with knives and sticks to incite violence. ‘I felt like they only came out to be enjoying themselves. It was almost like a real life video game’, one protester says in an Aljazeera documentary
6 http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/02/2011217134411934738.html 7 http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/02/2011217134411934738.html 8 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12289124
about the pro-Mubarak supporters. The pro-Mubarak supporters are virtually only known in relation to the violence they incite against the protesters, which is the way they were
perceived from the viewpoint of the square. Where the protester’s violence had the function to protect a liberated territory; the regime’s violence was an illegitimate attack without moral purpose.
The differentiation between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is reproduced in the media of all three channels, be it on each in different ways. Seeing that all media covering the uprising were by definition seen as enemies of the regime, the media automatically became intertwined in the binary opposition themselves. Especially as the Aljazeera channel became a target of violence from the regime. Alarabiya offers a different picture than the other channels. What is for example not emphasized by Aljazeera or BBC but is by Alarabiya, is that there was also violence incited by protesters against pro-Mubarak supporters. On the day of the ‘Battle of the camel’, which is remembered as maybe the most traumatic day of the uprising, Alarabiya wrote: ‘at least six riders were dragged from their beasts, beaten with sticks and taken away with blood streaming down their faces. Elsewhere, an angry crowd of anti-Mubarak protesters beat at least 10 pro-regime demonstrators with sticks, a second correspondent added’.9 This image is in contest with the image that is represented of the protesters elsewhere; that characterize themselves as fundamentally peaceful and only acting in defense against an outrageous violence. Although BBC and Aljazeera do not deny violence from the anti-government protesters side, they frame it either in abstract terms (‘it was very dark and violent on Tahrir today’) or in terms of self-defense.
Aljazeera actively reproduced, and I would say even propagated, the image of the courageous protester. They for example described the protesters as ‘pro-democracy
protesters’, while BBC and Alarabiya uses the (more adequate) terms ‘anti-government protesters’ or ‘anti-Mubarak protesters’. This term is a prime example of what is meant by the imposition of liberal values on the uprising. Aljazeera describes the protesters as
‘pro-democracy’, while this is not the message all protesters endorse. Sometimes even quite the opposite, as is described by Lucie Ryzova (2012). Ryzova writes about the men that were in the front line throughout the uprising; while the people in the middle of the square were available for media attention, these men were fighting the police. They are known by the name wilad sis, they are young and socially marginal (Ibid.). Ryzova describes their role in the uprising as the fighters that took their chance to take revenge on the police forces, of
9http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/02/02/135980.html
whom they have been an easy target for many years. The uprising for them was not about liberal ideals such as democracy. In fact, Ryzova writes, they were probably not even adequately familiar with such concepts as many of them are illiterate.
Returning to my initial question, how the feeling of utopia was created on Tahrir square, the struggle over the space of Tahrir square served two purposes. First it created a stark
symbolical and even a physical sense of ‘us versus them’. The protesters developed a discourse in which they were seen as peaceful, courageous, determined and striving for a worthy moral cause. This discourse was largely reproduced and, through the use of certain terms and the focus on certain actions, enhanced by the media. Only Alarabiya contested this discourse in some ways. The ‘other’: the police forces and pro-Mubarak protesters, were seen as irrational attackers that took up a disproportionate amount of power and weapons to
destroy a defenseless enemy. It was therefore undeniable to the protesters that they stood in their right, which only increased their determination and belief that they would eventually triumph. Furthermore by breaking free from the status quo and establishing a position in which they could be seen as inherently different from the ‘other’ the protesters successfully separated themselves from the social structure. This made room to establish change. But their collective fight against the regime was also essential to a feeling of empowerment and of solidarity among the protesters.
Secondly, the struggle made the existence of the heart of the square possible.
The frontline served as the physical buffer between the liberated space and the outside, so that in the middle a safe haven was created for the protesters. It was the core of the square, where ultimately the sense of utopia could develop. As a site that was conquered but required a constant struggle, the protesters created a both physical and ideational boundary that separated them from the rest of the country. It was a place they fought over and earned, clearly demarcated from the violent and hostile space outside. It is hard to argue that with this amount of determination and courage the protesters didn’t earn their liberated place and thus that they didn’t earn the rule over the country. It was the space where, referring back to Rafaat, the Egyptian people could now start to develop a ‘new look’ for their country. In the following chapter I will turn my attention to the inner part of the square where the sense of near ‘utopia’ was created.
Chapter 3. Inside the square
‘This is the only place in Egypt where you don’t have to fear being tortured when you speak your mind’
- Saeed10
The front line of the square stood in stark contrast to the inner side of the square, through the defense of the front line the protesters created a safer core-area within Midan Tahrir. It is this area that is referred to when the protesters and the media speak of the square in terms of solidarity and safety, even despite the constant threat that the regime would win back the square by pushing through the defense at the front line or by infiltrating among the protesters.
On the BBC website we see a bird eye-view of Midan Tahrir made on February11th. We see how the five and a half square kilometers are completely packed with people.11 Across the pictures we can click on the different areas to get a close up picture showing how the square was organized: we see how the protesters made a place to dispose garbage, a street clinic, a pharmacy, they made a wall where newspapers were attached to daily and a main stage where protesters could call the others to action. BBC refers to the square as ‘the camp’, later they even write about ‘the city’. Looking back a year later, Aljazeera refers to the square in even stronger terms: ‘the land of the free’ and ‘the Republic of Tahrir’. All these terms indicate the sense of independence and self-sufficiency the square possessed.
Virtually all interviews in the news express an immensely powerful feeling of safety produced by a feeling of community, solidarity and an incredibly euphoric atmosphere. The question remains, how can we explain the events that happened within this liberated place? Journalists and protesters alike have expressed their amazement by the euphoric atmosphere and the amazing solidarity at the square during the days of the uprising. Several anthropologists have also asked the question how it was possible that women were such prominent actors in the revolution and where the solidarity between Copts and Muslims came from (Mahmood 2011; Agrama 2011; Hafez 2011). People at the square seemed to bypass their personal needs and everyone acted in service of the community.
10 http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/02/201127162644461244.html 11 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12434787
We might start to understand how this situation could emerge by going back to the concept of the ritual. In 1915 Emile Durkheim published ‘The elementary forms of religious life’. In this book he coins a term that he never greatly elaborated on himself, but that came to serve as a concept with great social value. In the introduction I already briefly dropped the term: ‘collective effervescence’. Collective effervescence is used by Durkheim to describe how at communal gatherings people can generate a communal euphoria with the effect that individuals transcend their normal state of being (2001: 162). The concept of collective effervescence is very similar to the by Victor Turner developed term ‘communitas’ (Turner 1969). Like collective effervescence, communitas is an experience of intense community during a ritualized moment in society. The difference from collective effervescence lies in the fact that communitas is a phenomenon that Turner locates within the liminal phase of the rite de passage. The liminal phase is an ambiguous state in which the subject is ‘betwixt and between’: neither the former anymore nor yet the latter. Turner describes this moment as ‘in and out of time’; thereby the ones involved lose any sense of social position: ‘it is as though they are being reduced or ground down to a uniform condition to be fashioned anew and endowed with additional powers to enable them to cope with their new station in life’ (Ibid.: 95). In this situation where emotions are very intense and the outcome of the ritual is
uncertain, people tend to develop a sense of particular sense of community that Turner defines as communitas.
Durkheim also works places collective effervescense of ‘in and out of time’, only he frames it as the difference between the ‘profane’ and the ‘sacred’. The sacred is not
necessarily a religious event, but a moment that is set outside of everyday life. The uprising was not (essentially) a religious event; it was an extraordinary moment in history and thus utterly placed outside of ‘the profane’. To Durkheim collective effervescence is related to moments in time where people seek to get together and where emotions are very intense. In these sacred moments social bonds are reaffirmed and morality is reassessed. As both Turner and Durkheim stress; these phenomena are not merely instinctual but are created by a
common focus and intense emotions that makes it into a space for change. ‘It is a transformative experience that goes to the heart of each person’s being and finds in it
something profoundly communal and shared’ (Turner 1969: 138). It is exactly the conscious setting aside of the ordinary everyday life that made that the protesters were able to
definitively and consciously reassess their behavior, ideas and morals. This is also what makes these moments into moments in which change in society can be established.
Appropriating these two terms to the Egyptian uprising is not unproblematic; there are some important differences to the ways Turner and Durkheim described the terms and the situation that we are speaking of here. It is therefore that I chose to take up both concepts, for they can add to each other in several ways. Firstly, when Turner speaks of a rite de passage he speaks of the change the individual goes through; rather than society as a whole. The Egyptian uprising was first and foremost aimed not to establish a change in the individual protesters, although this might have also been what in fact happened, but it was aimed to change the entire Egyptian society. More particularly it was aimed to overthrow a long established corrupt and repressing system. Thus it is here that we can better turn towards the idea of collective effervescence; in which Durkheim does aim at the rethinking of the
structure of the entire society. Secondly (and essentially addressing the same problem) when Turner speaks of an ‘ambiguous’ situation, in which people are unsure whether they will in fact be able to fulfill their rite de passage; the situation he speaks of is not an existential threat to society. The Ndembu people that Turner speaks of to illustrate his concept, always have a superior that is watching over them and a society that is there to return to. The liminal phase through which the ‘neophytes’ (as he calls them) go through is institutionalized by society. They must be reduced to classlessness in order for the society to assign them their new social position in the group, which function as a social security system to them (Ibid.: 103). This is a very existential difference with the situation during the uprising, in which the protesters were truly unsure of the question whether they would come out successfully or taken down by the hostile Mubarak regime. It was thus in their case not a question whether they would
individually be able to transform successfully, their entire situation was inherently unsure and threatening as the front line remained under a constant attack. On the other hand Turner’s concept is very useful for his focus on the defining insecurity of the situation that leads to the bonding and the feeling of solidarity among those involved. Both concepts can serve as a tool to make sense of the feeling of solidarity at Midan Tahrir during the Egyptian uprising.
Below I will show how the protesters set their place at Midan Tahrir apart from everyday life and how this enabled them to attain this sense of solidarity. Their behavior, motivation and ideas created by this state in turn affected the reproduction of this discourse by the media.
‘We’re all Egyptians: men, women and children. We all represent the country equally: young and old, rich and poor’
- Tahrir square protester12
The community at the centre of Midan Tahrir was characterized by the diversity of its people; all in terms religious affiliation, political affiliation, gender, age and class. This is a fact that has been commented on inexhaustibly. Not surprisingly of course, since it denotes the power and the widespread support for the uprising among Egyptian society. But it was not merely a given fact, but an essential part of the discourse and the success of the uprising. The diversity of the people was represented along several different lines, with a not accidental focus on some of its forms. In this chapter I will firstly discuss how such a diverse people united and then I will go into two of the most emphasized forms of diversity.
One of the important aspects of the emergence of communitas is the disappearance of differentiations between people; as people are being ‘ground down to a uniform condition’ enabling them to interact with each other on an equal level. As I explained in the chapter before, this uniform condition was created through stepping out of the everyday structure of society and being in a uncertain threatening state. Before I have already commented on Rashed, who uses the term ‘anti-regime identity’ to explain how it was possible that so many different people could unite themselves during the uprising (2011). This common goal, to get rid of the regime, was very important for the basis on which the protesters were united. However, as I will show, Rashed’s analysis is too simplistic; as there were different ways in which the protesters created a way of uniting themselves. They created a ritual of
re-appropriation of their entire society together.
Apart from their common goal, there was also another common denominator among the protesters: all the protesters were Egyptians. Of course this fact is intricately linked to the fact that they stood up together the regime that enforced its rule upon the national subjects; thereby creating the unison of its enemy. As our entire world is divided up in nation states, we tend to take the fact that the Arab spring emerged along national lines for granted. Since all Egyptian citizens have been subject and victim of the same regime, they thus share a history and are tied up in a shared state structure. The freedom, dignity and economic security for which they stood up collectively, is thus a deprival shared among Egyptians and though
linked to that of for example Tunisia it isn’t the same freedom, dignity or social justice, for it has a different history. Reading the media accounts of the uprising the use of national symbols is also prominently visible, but is not made very explicit or seen as something that needs commenting upon. I have, until now, also spoken about ‘the Egyptians’ without
problematizing this concept. However looking at Egypt’s history: Nasser’s pan-Arabism and the relatively short life of the nation-state one might question if this can be taken for granted. The way the protesters also identified with other Arabs in for example Tunisia (there were a few people carrying Tunisian flags) however was seen as extraordinary. I touch here upon particularly interesting topic, there have been questions about the rise pan-Arabism following the solidarity among Arabs of different nations during the revolutions. The fact that people of the different Arab nations were able to inspire each other and help each other to stand up against their respective states, has led some to argue that pan-Arabism is on the rise and to question the applicability of the term nationalism in the Arab world (Gause 2011; Sawani 2012; Lynch 2011). I think it is very clear that all uprisings had a very nationalist character, seeing how the ‘Egyptianness’ of the protesters was taken as a logical and natural entity. In fact I even want to argue that one of the prime ways of rethinking society was rethinking what it meant to be Egyptian, in this respect the uprising has had a great impact on the envisioning of the national character. Where Mubarak had been actively working on dividing Egyptians along political, religious and gender lines to discourage any united resistance against his regime, during the uprising Egyptians reshaped these divisions. The national identity became a prime symbol, as the protesters stood up for the well being of their own nation. Thus the Egyptian as a common identity played out in many comments such as the one above as well as in the extensive use of the flag in many different ways. People painted their faces with the colors of the flag, used it in their graffiti art and in the protest-banners they were holding.
Rather than the elimination of differences, we saw a discourse that represented in terms of the celebration of differences between Egyptians. This was expressed firstly in relation to Egyptian identity; which was framed in terms of its diversity. The two most
explicit ‘celebrations’ were those of religious solidarity and the one of gender equality, which I will discuss thoroughly in the next chapter.
Chapter 4.
The celebration of differences
‘Arise o Egypt, arise. Arise Egyptians: Muslims, Christians and Jews’
- 1919 revolution song, recited during the uprising13
According to the BBC ‘the sign of the crescent embracing the cross was everywhere: from the careful calligraphy of the handmade placards, to slogans picked out in stones on the floor’.14 The image of Muslims and Christians acting in religious solidarity with each other is one of the very powerful images that we got from Midan Tahrir during the revolution. The
relationship between the Coptic and the Muslim community is not an unproblematic one. Hosni Mubarak has been one to heighten and amplify these tensions as a sort of divide and rule-policy. As we saw, it was exactly against this that the protesters turned themselves, seeking an alliance with the other based on their common nationality, enemy, suffering from that enemy and the common goal to get rid of him. Leaving behind the structures of everyday live and the things that divide them in these structures, there was room to rethink how to interact with each other. I do not at all want to claim that Copts and Muslims do not interact normally and regularly with one another in Egypt at other times; rather, as I will show as well from the way religious solidarity was enacted, that protesters explicitly sent out the message to one another that they respect and value each other.
Again the discourse of religious solidarity is expressed in actions, symbols, language and also very bodily practices. For example the bodily embracement of another as is demonstrated in pictures where Muslims and Copts are celebrating together. The mutual respect was also enacted in for instance the fact that Muslims and Copts took turns praying while the other group took on the duties of protecting the square and ultimately in the instance when Coptic protesters formed a chain around the Muslim protesters during their noon prayers.15 Another account that I found in different places and shapes is that of the Muslim acknowledging and blessing the Christian for something they did at the square, of which the following (although not from one of the mainstream media channels) is a very telling example:
13http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12407793 Note the fact that this line is in fact still exclusionary
of anyone that would not identify with one of the three faiths.
14 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12407793 15 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-‐middle-‐east-‐12407793
“There is a scene I remember well, it was in the middle of Tahrir square. I saw a young boy spitting on the ground. Of course, because of this atmosphere of a utopic society, I felt I could speak to everyone. Everyone was smiling, it was a nice feeling, so I stopped the boy and told him: ‘we are here for Egypt. We came because we love the country, why spit on the ground?’ At this moment I felt a hand tapping my shoulder from behind, so I turned and saw a man who looked like a Sheikh; he wore a galabiyya and had a beard. He said to me: ‘God bless you’” (pauses and laughs) ‘‘Could there be anything more beautiful than this? He probably noticed my hair and the cross on my wrist, and realized I was Christian. I felt this is the Egypt we are on the streets for”.
Mariam16
What binds all these actions, words and symbols together is its celebratory and explicit character. It is very prominent that in all these actions protesters are not merely made up of both Copts and Muslims, but they actively convey that they are from both religions and that they embrace each other. All of them have suffered from the Mubarak regime and have even been driven apart by him. In this sense the solidarity they created at Tahrir was a true counter-discourse to the counter-discourse of the regime; in which Copts and Muslims were inherently
different. As is also apparent form Mariam’s account is the uniqueness and the empowering effect of the overcoming of religious differences. However, as Saba Mahmood notes, the problems in society between the two groups are also structural and thus not quite so easy to definitively overcome (2011: 60).
The issue of religion in the uprising, or in the Middle East in general, however also has quite political meanings to the different media stations particularly when we’re talking about the Western ones such as BBC. This is amply demonstrated in an interview on the BBC between a British London-based interviewer and an Egyptian Tahrir-based reporter. The interviewer repeatedly keeps asking about the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on the square, where the reporter keeps stressing the fact that the Brotherhood is not a prominent actor. They are there, but not in the identity of Muslim Brothers: ‘I’m not seeing their members among the protesters because their members are part of Egyptian society’.17 This interview is a very clear example of a widespread fear in the West for political Islam and the possibility that they would come to power. The Muslim Brotherhood did not appear on
16 This is a translation from an Arabic spoken interview with Mariam, the interview is an episode from the series
‘SAMAR Tahrir my revolution’ an interview series with Egyptian people.
17 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12325287
Aljazeera or Alarabiya at all during these days yet. To focus on the religious solidarity at the square is thus not simply showing the events, but also seems to imply a need to reassure the Western audience that they do not have to fear the uprising. The difference is with Alarabiya, that frequently comments on Islamic leaders and Imams speaking at the square and joining the protesters. The problem of who gets to represent what happened and therefore decides what will be the focus is at least equally prominent in the issue of women at Midan Tahrir during the uprising, to which I will now turn my attention.
‘When the men saw that women were fighting in the front line that changed their perception of us and we were all united, we were all Egyptians now’
- Salma El Tarzi18
It seems almost to be an ever-returning mantra: ‘we are all Egyptians now’. Women in the Egyptian uprising were very prominently present and their engagement is something that has been depicted as a big change and opportunity for Egyptian women to change their position in Egyptian society. Especially after so much violence and exclusion of women from politics took place right after the uprising, the issue of women in the uprising has become a very contested one. In many of the media accounts formulated in the period after February 11th 2011, the solidarity during the uprising is mentioned with nostalgia and disappointment that it didn’t last.
The revolution is generally depicted as a moment in which women could speak up, although the representations of this vary. In an Aljazeera talk show Rabab El-Mahdi, an Egyptian feminist, expresses her anxiety with the way the Western media portray the women at Midan Tahrir. For example on BBC they speak of women as in the following quotation:
‘Egyptian women proved to the world that they were not voiceless and oppressed’19. This Orientalist portrayal of Arab women as exactly ‘voiceless and oppressed’ is part of a Western discourse about the Middle East that played out during the revolution. El-Mahdi argues that it is not the presence of women at the square, nor the fact that they joined in protest that makes their presence there so powerful; but the fact that they were equally valued to men. This viewpoint endorses the idea that diversity did simply exist at Midan Tahrir, but as being an actively communicated towards other protesters, the regime and the outside world. But we may question the extreme focus on women during the uprising in the media, while ‘the
18 http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/02/2011217134411934738.html
Muslim/Arab woman’ is a highly controversial and politicized issue. It is mainly Aljazeera that promotes the powerful role of women during the uprising already in its coverage. BBC and Alarabiya return to the subject after February 11th, in relation to violence that erupted against women in the aftermath of the uprising. During the uprising they merely comment on the presence of women, the equality between men and women and the absence of sexual harassment, but don’t feature special articles about women at the square as Aljazeera does. The absence of sexual harassment is often used as the example of the difference between the Egypt in the square and the Egypt outside the square.
There is a common thread throughout the discourse about women at the square; women’s rights are a contested field in Egypt and there is a lot of ground to gain, thus feminists were a prominent voice in Midan Tahrir. They embraced this moment to establish change. As the quotation from Salma El Tarzi in an Aljazeera interviews depicts: women were feeling differently about their relation to men during the uprising. As they fought alongside men and worked with them for a common goal; men and women were given an opportunity to rethink the relationship between them. This image of the woman fighting in the front line of Midan Tahrir is thus a very powerful part of the discourse, but is not
straightforward. Lucie Ryzova writes that the wilad sis, who were fighting at the front line, ‘might fight hand to hand besides middle-class women activists, but they would never tolerate their women to be there’ (2011: 3). Another aspect that comes forward in the interviews is that they were able to sleep next to their fellow male protesters, without having to fear them. This in fact is something that many Egyptian women would actually not even desire to do. Aljazeera opens an article with the following words: ‘here they (the women) describe the spirit of Tahrir – the camaraderie and the equality they experienced – and their hope that the model of democracy established there will be carried forward (…)’ (italics added).20 There is a clear focus on the notion of democracy in Aljazeera’s accounts; also the women they interviewed were all highly educated and politically engaged. We might thus, again, ask ourselves if we are presented with an image that only shows us the liberal middle-class women and their opinions and experiences. This is something with which some academics have been frustrated, like Rabab El-Mahdi in a different interview says: ‘I feel as if they (the media, academics and political elite) are talking about a different country/society than the one in which I have been active during the past decade’ (Abu-Lughod & El-Mahdi 2011: 4).
El-Mahdi justly criticizes this focus on certain women; however the many accounts of women who felt empowered by the way they experienced the days at Midan Tahrir
shouldn’t be negated. It is quite impossible to say which part of the protesters these women represented, or even what part of society the women at the square represented. For my interpretation of the discourse inside the square itself, their discourse of gender equality is very important. It became one of the markers of the eighteen days of the uprising afterwards and is a frequently reproduced idea in the media, its representativeness is not often
unquestioned.
I have deliberately elaborated on the former two issues: religion and gender. In my
introduction I have written that discourse acquires authority; people come to accept certain ideas and representations, because there are certain institutions that have more power in determining what becomes truth. Gender and religion are specifically two of those issues that have come to be central in the discourse of solidarity on Midan Tahrir, by means of the knowledge that the media shapes of it. These two topics are part of a long prevailing but also highly contested discourse in which the discourse of Tahrir became intertwined, they have gained great prominence in media coverage. As I have noted many times already, it was also by means of for example age or class that people who were usually not in interaction with each other came in a state of great solidarity during the revolution. A great example arises again from an interview of Samar TV with Amr, who recounts an example of a young guy playing music on his motorbike while an old man with a beard was dancing around him.21 The solidarity was thus was not confined two these two realms that got so much attention. This attention in turn affects how the revolution is remembered and interpreted, as the knowledge and ideas of the media gets reproduced even now in shaping our knowledge of what happened in Egypt after February 11th 2011. The emphasis on solidarity in diversity also directs attention away from the inequality that was there nonetheless, as Amr says in the interview, the youth had the feeling it was their revolution. Amr expresses that it is time for the older Egyptians to make room for the youth to rule, expressing a somewhat antithetical comment to what I’ve written above.
In the discourse of solidarity the diversity of the protesters at Tahrir square became a prominent symbol of the uprising. By being ground down to the same condition, people were able to interact with others in ways that they wouldn’t in the structure of everyday life. This
interaction was shown in the entire way of communicating with one another and reinforced itself as it became celebrated. The diversity of the protesters gave their case strength, proving that it was not a small section of the Egyptians that supported this revolution. This diversity became a discourse of celebration: through this celebration of the diversity the Egyptian people the protesters redefined what it means to be Egyptian. To the protesters, being
Egyptian meant to oppose the regime and to embrace anyone who wanted to actively work for the perils of the revolution: freedom, social justice and dignity. This active work on society however was not merely expressed in the embracement of differences and the resistance against the regime; it also gained a very practical expression in the form of taking care of each other and the public space. There was an incredible excitement about the morality of the people in Tahrir square, people seemed to somehow transcend themselves morally during the eighteen day protests. On this I will elaborate in the next chapter.
Chapter 5. Moral transcendence
‘In our community we’re trying to set an example of how we can all live together. It’s like a city in a city here; we are the kernel of the revolution’
- Malek Mustafa ‘The ordinary conditions of life are set aside so definitively and so consciously that people feel the need to put themselves above and beyond custom morality’ Durkheim writes as he explains collective effervescense (Ibid.: 163). We have seen this moral transcendence in the way people interacted with each other, but it is also a key issue in the way people took care of each other and the public space at Midan Tahrir. In the media accounts the fact that many facilities were taken care of in the square better than in Egypt in general, despite the difficult circumstances is constantly adresssed. People took care of the square; keeping it clean and organizing a recycling point while ‘Egypt has no formal system of recycling’.22 Also the street clinic that was set up by volunteer doctors was by some experienced as ‘an
improvement on what they are used to’. Supplies are given out for free; people share there food; give each other clothes; a wall with newspapers attached to it is put up for those who can’t afford to buy a newspaper, the examples that are listed in the reports on Aljazeera and
BBC seem almost endless. On Aljazeera an ecstatic reporter even shows us the lost and found stand at the square, where some people even hand in money that they found lying around the square.23 Again it is only Alarabiya that also shows another side of the sentiments at the square: in an item about the lively trade service that emerged on the square they give voice to both enthusiastic as well as a less enthusiastic vendor called Fatima. Fatima, who sells flags, says: ‘I am not with the protesters. All those youths do not know what’s best for them’.24 While Aljazeera and BBC extensively cover the altruistic deeds of protesters, Alarabiya focuses on the square more in terms of a place of trade. Also the positive interviews are in the light of trade rather than giving; like the example of Mohammed, a tea vendor for whom it is the first time to perform his job in peace while he does not get harassed.
Alarabiya thus somewhat puts in perspective the perfect image that we get in which ‘people showed the best of themselves’.25 Nevertheless there was undeniably a great sense of moral transcendence. This is not so surprising, as we see the uprising as a moment in which people were very consciously reassessing their society. They were there to plead for their ideal society, in fact, and this is something that the protesters also addressed literally, the square was a place in which they needed to prove the fact that they were morally good
opposed to Mubarak’s regime. In his participants account of the uprising, Rashed says: ‘it was both a message to the regime that we could manage ourselves without any imposed
government or police presence, and a practical expression of the feeling that Tahrir square was now liberated territory’ (2011: 27). As we see that the days at the square were
definitively set apart from everyday life, as a moment ‘in and out of time’, we can begin to understand how people achieve such a moment of ‘moral transcendence’. The issue is
intricately intertwined with the issue of constant threat and ambiguity from the outside world. For, as also speaks from Rashed’s comment, the protesters were subject to one another; a moment outside the laws, rules and structures of society and under the surrender of each other’s goodwill. This taken together with their collective purpose makes their ability to behave in a idealized manner comprehensible.
There is another issue that must be addressed when critically assessing the ability of protesters to morally transcend themselves. The success of the protester’s rested for a great part with the journalists that would share their story with the international community: they depended on their ability to get their message out. To gain legitimacy and the solidarity of the
23 http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/anger-in egypt/2011/02/20112811181499676.html 24 http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/02/08/136756.html
25 http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/revolutionthrougharabeyes/2012/01/201218104338440276.html
rest of the world the protesters only had their non-violent and morally good identity, which had proven to be very powerful in Tunisia as well. This also brings in another variable, making the situation more complex. Although the square itself was a place outside of the structures of everyday life, the ones that were watching the images at home were very much inside their everyday structure. This evokes the question if the image of the square might have had a very different impact to those watching and reading from the outside. We must thus not underestimate the power of the journalists, and perhaps what they were able to see as
protesters adjusted their behavior to the presence of the camera, on the behavior of the people at the square. Journalists acquired a special position within the square, as they also realized themselves: ‘the protesters depend on sympathetic coverage and they fear what might happen if the media spotlight currently trained on the square goes dark’.26 In turn, since the journalists were conscious of their very crucial role on the square, this must have affected the way they experienced the situation and thus the way they reported on it greatly.
The moral transcendence of protesters was thus in no way ‘mysterious’ or ‘sacred’ as you could associate the idea of a ritual with. In fact it was a very conscious process and necessary virtue for the protesters to give their protest any chance of success. This is in line also with the way Durkheim and Turner describe the emergence of the ability of people to transcend their own morality in these times: while these are moments placed outside of ordinary life in which people actively work on a transformation they can achieve such a moment of moral transcendence.
Chapter 6. Conclusion
‘The perfect Egypt would be the Egypt in Tahrir square’
- Amr
In this article I have sought to deconstruct the sense of utopia Tahrir square during the
uprising as it was portrayed in the media. By closely examining the produced English-spoken coverage by three mainstream media-stations; BBC, Aljazeera and Alarabiya, I have tried to deconstruct this discourse. What and who did these media represent? What and who not? And how did they represent things? I have turned my attention to those four components of the
