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The Egyptian Revolution(s) and the emergence of new Subaltern Subjects
Abstract
The problematique of the relation between power and resistance has recently again become topical in relation to the waves of social movements and unrest which have swept across North Africa, the Middle East, and beyond. This paper aims to analyze processes of subjectivation for identities of resistance, focusing on the frames within which identities of those who seek to ‘resist’ power(s) are established, and the impact they produce. The “Arab Revolutions” which started in Tunisia in December 2010 were met with surprise by the wider (especially but not only) Western public as well as by the ‘experts’. As a still dominant narrative highlights the supposedly leading role played by the educated, globalized, internet-connected Middle-class youth in the Arab Uprisings, there is been an excess of research focus on political actors and institutional processes at the ‘top’. This paper aims to investigate the emergence of new subaltern subjects as protagonists of the Egyptian Revolution(s). As street politics played a fundamental role in the protest movements before 2011, the role of some ‘traditionally political’ actors, such as independent trade unions and students, had been analysed in recent studies, but still little research exists on the trajectories of these subjects since 2011. Based on intensive fieldwork (interviews, focus groups and participant observation), the paper will look at the new, problematic, emerging subaltern subjects, and at their practices of resistance. In particular, I will look at both those already active subjects –such as independent trade unions and civic activism- and especially those without a tradition of political activism, like the football ‘ultras’, and the self-organised spontaneous resistance in the ‘social nonmovements’ ‘hidden’ at the margins of the large cities.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries