By Gary Alan Fine, February 16th, 2011 
Thousands, hundreds of thousands, of ecstatic Egyptians have been seen celebrating in the streets and squares of Cairo. They are delighted that they are to be ruled by the Egyptian military who have dissolved the parliament and abrogated the constitution. This once was the well-worn tradition of banana republics. Surely the idea of the military as an institution of popular rule has changed dramatically. The duly, if not fairly, elected government has been overturned through the continuing demonstrations of the people. Hosni Mubarak is no longer President Mubarak. What is next?
In the coming days and months and years citizens and power brokers in Egypt will shape the answer to this question. And Americans will be watching nervously. There is a joke among Jews, all social change is to be evaluated through the prism of a simple question, “But is it good for the Jews?” Jews are not the only ones who ask the question. All peoples worry how massive change will affect their own lives. American policy makers and pundits are asking the equivalent question. If we determine that change has distressing consequences, a search begins for explanations and for those responsible. Typical of the narcissism of nations, the question of blame will arise. “Who is the scapegoat?” “Who is the traitor?” We read history backwards to discover culprits. Should the outcome in Cairo not be to our liking it will be hard for Americans to avoid asking: “Who Lost Egypt?”
Sixty years ago a powerful version of that question was being asked by journalists and in the halls of Congress: Who Lost China? The Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-Shek had recently fallen to the communist troops of Mao. Americans believed that China was within our sphere of influence. We had been propping up the corrupt Nationalist regime, but suddenly these leaders fled to Taiwan. We found Chinese troops fighting against American soldiers on the Korean peninsula. Perhaps most of the blame could be given to Chiang’s corrupt . . .
Read more: Who Lost Egypt?
By Nahed Habiballah, February 15th, 2011
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel warned a group of European diplomats of the result of ‘the riots’ in Egypt and the possibility that the government could fall in the hands of radical Islamists. Amidst concern for what is happening across its southern border, Israel struggles with a haunting fear that the ‘democratic Jewish state’ may end up with an extremist neighbor. Personally, I found Netanyahu’s remarks repulsive for two reasons.
Firstly, it is quite puzzling to me why Jewish extremism is less threatening than Muslim radicalism. Recently, we have witnessed a shift in Israel’s form of government from a somewhat democratic type to a religious extremist one. In numerous occasions Netanyahu himself has celebrated and encouraged religious extremism in his country with his support of Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem and his defense of the occupation of ‘Jewish land’ in the West Bank and Gaza. Also, as was reviewed in DC, he has refused to take any action against religious officials after they incited hatred against Arab minorities.
Secondly, the Prime Minister insists on the existence of an ‘Islamic threat’ despite numerous testimonies and evidence that the Muslim Brotherhood represents only a segment of the Egyptian people. Of course, Netanyahu knows full well that playing the ‘Muslim extremism card’ is politically powerful in a world that has turned Islamophobic. To give just one recent example, the former US Assistant Secretary of Defense, Mary-Beth Long, has voiced concern over the ‘democratic moves’ in the Arab world. She cautioned that the consequences of overthrowing old regimes might be both a threat to American interests in the region as well as Israel’s security.
This is a paternalist approach that has been used by previous colonialist powers. The idea is that Arabs are not ready for democracy and possibly do not deserve it yet, especially when it might create unwanted results for the Western democratic world and for Israel.
Prime Minister Netanyahu considers Israel the only stable country in the rocky region. In fact, time and again, the Israeli government uses the instability of . . .
Read more: Democracy, Israel and Egypt
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 14th, 2011 
I had the good fortune of being an eye witness to one of the major changes in the geopolitical world of my life time. I observed the Soviet Empire collapsing, chronicled it at the front lines, even before many saw the collapse coming. I don’t have such a privileged seat as we observe the transformations of in Egypt and Tunisia, but my intuition tells me that these may be every bit as significant as the ones I saw in their infancy thirty years ago. We can’t be sure that the changes begun this past month will reach a fully successful conclusion: fully? probably not. But there is no doubt that the world has changed, not only there, but also here.
A big change: the idea of the clash of civilizations has been defeated. It turns out, and should be clear to all, that Muslims are quite capable of initiating a genuine democratic movement. It may or may not prevail, but it is certainly an important strain in Egyptian and Tunisian political culture.
Another big change: I suspect that the commitment to democracy is now “in,” more appealing than radical jihad, even for the disaffected in the Muslim world. How long this lasts and with what effect will depend on the continuing success of the transformation begun last month. I believe this is the first major victory in the so called “war on terrorism.”
A little change, close to home: in everyday life, Islamophobia may be in retreat. After seeing the images from Cairo, why should Juan Williams wonder about that person in Muslim garb on an airplane? It may never have been particularly rational, but especially not now. There are crazy people of all sorts of cultural and religious persuasions, and also admirable ones. Now the admirable of the Arab and Muslim world are front stage. Now they are most visible. Only the most close-minded will refuse to see them, i.e. over at Fox,  Glenn Beck but, I suspect, not Juan Williams.
And now the “only democracy in . . .
Read more: The Week in Pre and Re-view: Revolution in Egypt and Beyond
By Daniel Dayan, February 12th, 2011 
Both the Tunisian insurrection and the Egyptian revolt have been described in terms of an absolute evil versus an absolute good, i.e. a mean, illegitimate and greedy dictatorship in contrast with a popular insurrection. In a first snapshot one can define the insurrections as “lessons in democracy.” But the larger question is: What comes next?
In the French account of the Tunisian events, an immolated street vendor has become an emblem, or ‘root metaphor’, for the uprising. Here was a young man who had gotten himself an education but could not find a job in the corrupt economy that was controlled by the families of the former president and first lady, the Ben Ali-Trabelsi clan. Courageously, this young man tried to earn a living by acquiring a street-cart to sell vegetables. The youngster went wild with grief when the police confiscated his cart. He put himself on fire. Immediately, he became a symbolic figure, a martyr. But whose martyr will he be? Who are the future victors?
The Ambiguity of ‘NO’
These current insurrections are often described as negations of what exists. Yet, what exists is rarely unambiguous. Rejection of the former Tunisian president Ben Ali can be inspired by both a yearning for a just or free society, as well as by a desire for another sort of authoritarian society. In the case of Egypt, some analysts believe that the dismissal of Mubarak carries an obvious meaning. But of course it does not. Behind it can be both the urge to challenge a police state AND the wish to salute another type of police state. Mubarak himself is both an adversary of democracy and an enemy of fundamentalism.
The first images of the Egyptian insurrection were crowd shots, aerial views. They project unity over diversity. While the masses show unanimous fervour now, over time the picture will become more specific. Already now we can see that the champions of democracy wear hijabs, demonstrators carry banners proclaiming “Mubarak in Tel Aviv,” they stomp with their feet on American and Israeli flags, and row after row of protesters . . .
Read more: Tunisia and Egypt: Questioning Insurrections
By Elzbieta Matynia, February 11th, 2011 
As I post this, Mubarak has resigned. The military is in control. Elzbieta Matynia submitted these reflections yesterday, and now they are even more timely. She looked beyond the immediate crisis and imagined the process of successful political transformation, thinking about past experiences, specifically about Roundtables – the form invented in the late twentieth century to facilitate peaceful transitions from dictatorship to democracy. She writes in South Africa looking at Egypt, thinking about South Africa and her native Poland. She presents her position in three acts. -Jeff
Act One: The Meeting on the Square
How many of us, including the tourists to Egypt’s pyramids, were really aware that Egypt has been under a state of emergency for 30 years now? That the rights and freedoms of its citizens, guaranteed in the constitution, were indefinitely suspended, including the freedom of association, freedom of movement, and freedom of expression? (Except for family gatherings it is illegal for more than four people to gather even in private homes.) How many of us knew that censorship was legalized (no freedom of the press) and that tens of thousands have been detained without trial for defying these limitations? That people have lived in fear of the ubiquitous security forces? And that the number of political prisoners in this country of 77 million runs over 30,000…
Just a reminder to those of us who try to make sense of the developments in Egypt, including the recent Day of Rage, and the Day of Departure…
The people who gathered on Tahrir Square saw themselves for the first time as citizens, and indeed the square became their newly constituted public space. For Hannah Arendt such a coming into being of a space of appearance is a prerequisite for the formal constitution of a public realm. In this space, there is an accompanying enthusiasm and joy of discovering one’s own voice, even if interrupted by the attacks launched by undercover police and those who side with the ruling . . .
Read more: Egypt, Squaring the Circle: A View from Poland and South Africa
By Vince Carducci, February 10th, 2011 
Vince Carducci blogs about art and culture in Detroit at Motown Review of Art. He has written for many publications, including Artforum, Art in America, the Brooklyn Rail, and PopMatters.
The term “agitprop” has a negative connotation among American thinkers in the Western liberal tradition, a residue of the high-culture/mass culture debates of the Cold War era. In his DC post on the Belarus Free Theater, for example, Jeff Goldfarb writes:
“They [the actors] create a free space in a repressive society. They do so not just to make a political point, but a cultural one, creating art, not agitprop.”
Part of the anxiety rests in the hermeneutics of suspicion, the perception that ideology, which agitprop is at the service of, ultimately deals in false consciousness, that it’s a veneer that serves vested interests and thus occludes “true” knowledge. Critical theory awards a privileged position to “art” as resistant to ideology due to its ostensible autonomy. And yet even Theodor W. Adorno, arguably the most mandarin of the Frankfurt School meisters, acknowledges a dual nature for art, characterizing it in Aesthetic Theory as both autonomous object and embedded social fact. (Early on in that famously gnarly tome he writes: “Art perceived strictly aesthetically is art aesthetically misperceived.”)
Clifford Geertz offers a solution to the problem in “Ideology As a Cultural System.” For Geertz, ideology isn’t necessarily deceptive (in the service of what he calls “interest”) or symptomatic (a manifestation of what he calls “strain”) but instead is a semiotic system that uses metaphor to “grasp, formulate, and communicate social realities that elude the tempered language of science” (and I would add formalist aesthetics). From that perspective, what is called agitprop might be less normatively called visual culture, part of a semiotic system in which art is simply one aspect, if a culturally privileged one. I think of this with respect to the work of Dylan Miner, which was on view in Detroit last fall.
An assistant professor in . . .
Read more: The Art of Dead Labor
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 9th, 2011
How does the head of state of the oldest of modern democracies, born of a revolution, approach the uncertainties of this revolutionary moment? Many are quick with criticism of, but also with appreciation for, President Obama’s apparent conservative realism.
Ross Douthat wrote in Monday’s Times: “Obama might have done more to champion human rights and democracy in Egypt before the current crisis broke out, by leavening his Kissinger impression with a touch of Reaganite idealism. But there isn’t much more the administration can do now, because there isn’t any evidence that the Egyptian protesters are ready to actually take power.”
On my side of the political tracks, opinion is different. My friend and colleague, Elzbieta Matynia, posted on her Facebook wall an open letter: “Dear Barack, Dear Mr. President, Why are we still hesitant to join the Egyptians’ cry for their rights and dignity? The longer we wait, the more doubt there is around the world in the sincerity of our commitment to democracy. Why are we failing to appreciate that these determined people are trying hard not to resort to violence? Too often, geopolitics has smothered the hopes of an entire people!”
A more extended application of these questions was developed in a piece by Asli Bali and Aziz Rana, “Supporting democracy in the Middle East requires abandoning a vision of Pax – Americana.” But I wonder about such judgments of the President and the Western leaders. Are these judgments responses to actual policy, or are they responses to the politics of gestures as examined by Daniel Dayan in his post last week?
Gestures that are thought to reveal what is going on in closed negotiations between the authorities and some oppositional figures, but may not actually be representative, may be more significant as expressions in and of themselves, as Dayan suggests. Their appearance is significant. They have a power, while they may not be telling an underlying story.
As President Obama seems to gesture toward human rights, democracy advocates in Egypt and abroad are heartened, while America’s traditional allies in the region . . .
Read more: Obama and Egypt
By Hazem Kandil, February 8th, 2011 
Today, I was planning to present my reflections on the events in Egypt, using the insights of our conversations at DC, but Hazem Kandil, a sociologist from Egypt, sent in his latest thoughts about what is happening there, providing critical insight that I have not seen elsewhere. My thoughts from a distance will wait until tomorrow. -Jeff
If scholarship has failed the Egyptian revolutionaries, they too have failed scholarship. The revolution, as gallant as it may be, has so far benefited little from what theorists of revolutions have to offer. A cursory look at the history of popular revolts suggests the following:
– Popular uprisings eventually subside if demonstrators do not take the initiative and suffice with demanding concessions from the old regime (such as asking the president to step down) because people cannot keep coming out, and state institutions (such as the military), as well as other countries cannot be asked to chose between an established regime and a vague body called “the people.” In revolutions, you cannot stand still; if you do not move forward, you will be pushed backward.
– To transform a popular uprising into a revolutionary situation, demonstrators must create a situation of dual power.
– Dual power requires that demonstrators immediately elect a governing body and charge it with managing everyday life (coordinating neighborhood watches, administering food distribution, negotiating with foreign government, and so on).
– This governing body can then demand the recognition of the people, state institutions (such as the military), and other countries of its legitimacy as the new power.
– This state of polarization between an old fading power and a new rising one is what eventually destroys the existing regime.
As long as demonstrators fail to apply this recipe, the power struggle will come to resemble a chessboard where one side makes all the moves and the other merely blocks its advances. The absence of a strategy for victory transforms a potentially revolutionary situation into a waiting game where the only option revolutionaries have is to keep their fingers crossed and pray for their rivals to lose, . . .
Read more: Revolutionary Failure in Egypt?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 7th, 2011 
This has been another eventful week, and for another week I am a bit late in posting the review. Thinking about the “news,” thinking about what is new in our world, I have been mesmerized by the remarkable drama in Egypt, the conclusion of which is far from certain. At DC, we have been trying to make sense of this, with side glances at related problems. I think in fact that the standard ways of understanding these revolutionary times require such glances, because conventional ways of thinking mislead. I am going to address this with a couple of short posts, the first today, the second tomorrow, thinking about the revolutionary moment by reviewing the posts of my colleagues. I will start by reflecting on an apparent comedy and move toward an examination of potential tragedy.
Some of the conventional responses to the events in Egypt would be funny, if they weren’t so serious. The prime example is that of Glenn Beck: “Islam wants a caliphate. Communists want a Communist, new world order. They’ll work together, and they’ll destabilize, because they both want chaos, period.” That this is what he gets out of the complex events in Egypt reveals the power of ideological thinking.
Beck, ever on the lookout for conspiracies and frightening analogies, normally distills a powerful brew. But it seems a bit weak when it comes to a major foreign affair, indeed quite foreign for him and his audience. I suspect that even the confirmed Fox News viewer is put off by Beck’s week long attempt to demonize the obviously well meaning Egyptian activists, who have appeared on our television, computer and mobile screens.
In fact, I wonder what Gary Alan Fine thinks. In his appreciation of Beck, he makes two strong observations, leading to a provocative conclusion: Beck is a talented communicator, expressing popular skepticism about elites who purport to know what is best for the people, better than the people. And he pays intellectuals the complement of taking them seriously. Therefore: “Glenn Beck is an endowed professor for the aggrieved, presenting . . .
Read more: Week in Review: Egypt, Glenn Beck and Democratic Transition
By Daniel Dayan, February 4th, 2011 
This is Daniel Dayan’s second in a series of posts written in response to the WikiLeaks dump. It analyzes how leadership is practiced in a changing media world, moving from “investigative’ to “ordeal” journalism. I think it provides theoretical clarification of yesterday’s post on “The Politics of Gesture in Peru,” and I think it also can be used to illuminate the discussion of how leaders, particularly President Obama, have responded to the dramatic events in Cairo, which I will address in my next post. -Jeff
From Flower Wreaths to Live Behabitives
Presidential gestures are often boring. Presidents must carry flower wreaths, listen to anthems, hoist flags, light eternal flames. In J.L. Austin’s terms, one could say that these routine tasks enact the “behabitive dimension.” This gestural dimension is steadily growing. It also is changing by becoming less routine, even risky.
Today’s gestures are meant to respond to unexpected situations. They take place in real time. There is nothing routine when Bush responds poorly to Katrina victims, or when Sarkozy calls young people who insult him “scumbags” (racailles). Of course, presidential jobs still consist of what Austin would call “exercitives.” Yet, the “exercitives,” speech acts making decisions such as orders and grants, increasingly give way to a vast array of “behabitives” such as offering condolences, “apologizing,” asking forgiveness, dissociating from, displaying solidarity .
Why the Importance of Behabitives? The Question of Visibility
While at the heart of governmental action, processes of deliberation, moments of decision are not really visible. They only become visible through announcements, or, much later, through their results. Yet the multiplicity and variety of media available allow for an almost continuous visibility of the political personnel.This visibility is expected to consist in presentations of self, which are anticipated, deliberately performed and controlled by those who choose to appear in public.
This visibility also consists in situations where those who “appear in public” lose control over their appearances. Suddenly thrown in the public eye, political actors are submitted . . .
Read more: Political Leadership and Hostile Visibility
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