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The Making and Unmaking of a Heterotopic Space: Reflections on Midan al-Tahrir
Abstract
Centrally located in Cairo’s hectic landscape, strategically positioned near several national and global attractions, a busy hub that allows the mixing of different social groups, and an embodiment of the modern history of the Egyptian capital, Midan al-Tahrir became the site of massive political protests that have shaped the country’s political and social landscape. Between January 25 and February 2011, the square, a space of in-betweens, became the center of national and global attention when millions of Egyptians protested daily until President Mubarak stepped down after 30 years of ruling the country. Drawing on media representations, memories, and ethnographic research, I explore how al-Tahrir during these 18 days became a “heterotopic space” that mediated the here and there, real and imagined, opened and enclosed, concrete and mythical. It became an actualized utopia, a “counter arrangement,” which forcefully articulated an alternative understanding of order, citizenship, and civic responsibility that sharply contrasted with the corruption and injustice the protestors sought to transform. Al-Tahrir shifted from being a site for national liberation into a liberated space that offered a modality for the type of society the protestors aspired to materialize in the future. I argue that it this redefinition of Tahrir that contributed to its effective status as a site of legitimate resistance and a focal point in a moral geography that connected different spaces and social groups in multiple locations into the same political and ethical project. These meanings, however, have shifted over the past three years and the square, its meanings, and uses have become contested by multiple groups. This paper traces these changes and how different groups competed to appropriate, used, and redefine al-Tahrir and its location in the national imagination.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
Urban Studies