The defeat of the 2010-2011 Arab Spring uprising in Egypt changed political activists’ lives as well as their political behavior. In recent years, Egyptian activists have been forced into exile in Europe and the United States as the country’s authoritarian regime reconsolidates. While the defeat of the Arab Spring galvanized activists to continue contesting status quo politics, the form of contestation has necessarily changed due to being physically located outside of Egypt. In spaces of exile, activists continue to mobilize but utilize new approaches in support of intersectional causes, diverse ideologies, and transnational movements. This paper lays out a theory and provides evidence of activism in exile, drawing on ethnographic research of Egyptian communities in New York City and Berlin. In doing so, it conceptualizes political hope and disappointment as politically relevant emotions that help to explain mobilizational continuation and innovation in exile. The paper seeks to explore the dynamics of defeated revolution, a topic neglected in the study of contested politics, and humanize the experience of political change in documenting activists’ life trajectories of activists and first-hand accounts.

How did the politics of disappointment unfold among female activists after the 2011 Egyptian uprising that has led to the ousting of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak? And what were the effects of the strong sense of emotional disappointment on women’s activism and collective action? The paper highlights how feminist scholars are using the language of emotion, affect, and affective encounter to capture the experiences of female activists in the uprising. The analysis is situated within the literature on emotions, affects, and contentious politics. Utilizing the rich theoretical tools found in this literature, I argue that disappointment did not mark the end of politics and activism among women’s groups in Egypt. The data for this paper is gathered from semi-structured interviews with scholars, female activists, protestors, and leaders of women's rights groups. The data gathered is analyzed within the prism of critical discourse analysis in an attempt to investigate how past experiences of affective intensity influence future activism. A focus on affect places the experiences of activists squarely in our analysis. It is apt to capture the complexity of the topic while retaining the authenticity of the subject--and I would also argue the researcher. It allows researchers to reclaim the voices of female activists in explaining the challenges and opportunities that developed during and following the uprising and how these developments influenced and shaped their experience, movement, and mobilization.

The upheavals of revolution, war, and mass displacement have transformed Syria as a nation-state. Along with it, they have and continue to transform what it means to be Syrian. How are displaced oppositionists — forced both from their homeland and the dream of creating a new homeland — defining who they are individually and collectively? What can their experiences teach us about identity at large? Social scientists conventionally view identity in terms of attributes that distinguish one’s self and/or membership in a group. Looking at Syria, many analysts assume that the most salient attributes are sect, religion, ethnicity, region, or family. This approach is flawed not only because it reifies static, essentialist categories. In addition, it is void of the emotions that give power and urgency to the questions “who am I” and “who are we.” Toward an alternative, I argue for reconceptualizing identity as a feeling of belonging. I adapt interdisciplinary definitions of belonging as the emotional attachments to social, material, or ideational worlds that ground people’s sense of meaning. I then use this concept as a lens through which to interpret open-ended interviews that I have conducted with more than 400 displaced Syrians across the Middle East and Europe from 2012 to the present. I propose that these narratives show how many who championed revolution uncritically assumed, but did not necessarily feel, belonging before 2011. The uprising was a turning point in part because it produced new emotional experiences of dignity and solidarity, which in turn gave rise to a novel sense of belonging to Syria, to Syrians, and to a larger movement for freedom. As the revolution has been incrementally crushed, those displaced outside Syria now confront questions of belonging in varied ways and places. Some find it in new networks of friends or in novel political, professional, or creative projects. Others find it in memories, communities of mourning, or dogged commitment to revolution. Others have not found it, and do or do not continue to search. Interpretive analysis of these life narratives sheds light not only on how individuals experience the aftermath of revolution emotionally, but also how those emotions infuse their very sense of self. In so doing, it illustrates the value of viewing identity not as a property that people possess or a classification in which they fit, but rather than a process that they continually undergo.