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The Alpha and the Omega: Divination, Deliverance, and Delusion in Digital Egypt
Abstract
When protesters first rose up against Mubarak's state on 25 January 2011, there appeared to be no single figurehead to follow, no leader to genuflect to, no organizer to manage it, no order to follow, and no authority to preside over the outcomes. That has not, however, changed the extent to which reverence for personhood has been emblematic of the revolution from its early days and prior. These challenge the interchangeability of agents, the horizontal camaraderie, and the unpredictability of improvisation, opened up spaces for the novel inscription of memory, the iconization of sacrifice, and the historicization of the faceless, nameless martyrs. Even those youth who called for the protests, many of whom were at first anonymous or politically inconsequential, had their brief period in the limelight following the toppling of Mubarak and they gradually faded into the background as politics resurrected hierarchy and vertical decision-making. Politicians and institutional operators took over as the revolution quickly lost its innocence and became a battle between pre-existing authoritarians, established orthodoxies, established orders, and the leaderships of “tribalized” constituencies. Today, some five years since the revolution, what is most evident is that Egypt's crises and its presentation as a nation on the edge of the abyss and awaiting deliverance, all remain part of a performance of utopian imaginary. President Sisi was inspired by a divine hand to interrupt the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood and rescue the country for assured disintegration. Alternatively, the brutal coup that toppled the religiously-avowed Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi will eventually crumble with divine intervention once Morsi emerges victorious and come out of prison to assume his rightful authority over the country. Youth revolutionaries, largely defeated by the status quo, may hold hope in the spirits of the martyrs who will not let them fail. Copts, who felt curtailed by the Islamists, may be compelled to believe that the Lord intervened to derail a plan that would have spelled their depopulation from Egypt. This paper will examine the power of messianic discourse in the political expressions of various actors in the Egyptian polity, particularly online. This includes supporters of military-man Al-Sisi and Islamist Morsi and other players on the scene. This is a detailed discourse analysis of the convictions and expressions of these groups as well as the way in which they perform, enact, and illustrate messianism.
Discipline
Communications
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries