Egyptian Revolutions

Conflict, Repetition and Identification

Amal Treacher Kabesh

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781783481897
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Geografía humana

The socio-political context of Egypt is full of the affectual burdens of history. The revolutions of both 1952 and 2011 proclaimed that the oppressive, colonial past had been overthrown decisively. So why has the oppression perpetrated by previous regimes been repeated? What impact has this had on the lives of ‘ordinary’ citizens? Egyptian Revolutions looks at the impact of the current events in Egypt on citizens in relation to matters of belonging, identification and repetition. It contests the tendency within postcolonial theory to understand these events as resistance to Western imperialism and the positioning of activists as agents of sustainable change. Instead, it pays close attention to the continuities from the past and the contradictions at work in relation to identification, repetition and conflict. Combining postcolonial theory with a psychosocial studies framework it explores the complexities of inhabiting a society in a state of conflict and offers a careful analysis of current theories of gender, religion and secularism, agency, resistance and compliance, in a society riven with divisions and conflicts.

Chapter 1

Conflict, Repetition and Identification

The Egyptian people are tense and apprehensive – this statement is at risk of being an overly assertive declaration; yet, events since January 2011 have caused schismatic socio-political-emotional shifts. It has been a turbulent and sensitive time. Families have been divided and friendships fractured because of differing opinions, beliefs and allegiances. It is unclear whether these splits and ruptures will ever be repaired or, indeed, healed. Egypt remains socially, politically and emotionally precarious and the future profoundly uncertain. Egyptians feel pride, loyalty and love for Egypt, and this remains constant and is well captured in the following fragment: ‘And I would like to ask you in these few lines I write, to take the trouble to kiss her for me – her lotus and palm trees, her waters and her evenings – kiss all of her – kiss Egypt on the mouth’ (Marangou 2001: 19).

These affectionate, if not erotic, lines embody how Egypt seizes the Egyptian people and it holds us in its grasp. This reach is generous, warm, loving and simultaneously troublesome and troubling. Egypt ensnares us through its sensuality, familial and national history, its chaos and the fun of everyday living where everything is full of noise, taste and smell (although, at times, challenging). Tangibly and intangibly we are touched and, as Ahdaf Soueif (2012: 6) writes, Cairo ‘puts her lips to our ears, she tucks her arm into ours and draws us close’. Those of us who live part of the time elsewhere still gain our breath and ‘aliveness’ through our deep attachment to Egypt and to other Egyptians.

Our lives have been disrupted by the political events of January 2011; whether or not we agreed with the fervent demonstrations and socio-political demands, we have all been profoundly affected by them. In any case, all Egyptians were caught up in the events, watched and listened to the media endlessly, had strong opinions that were continually shared and were emotionally stirred – whether by excitement, optimism or anxiety. We could not believe what was taking place. Events unfolded at speed as the then president Mubarak resigned, the Supreme Council of Armed Forces took temporary charge, preparations for presidential and parliamentary elections were put in place and new political parties found their voice and presence in Egypt.

We miss it when we are away from Cairo; however, recently – over the past 15 years or so – we have missed Egypt even when we are on its soil. Oppression, corruption and the relentless daily grind have taken away Egypt and left in its place yearnings for ‘bread, freedom, social justice’ – though, at times, human dignity is used instead of social justice. These redolent phrases – freedom, bread, social justice, human dignity – are the demands that arose so loudly and importantly in January 2011 and were chanted with passion by protestors all over Egypt. The demand for bread (standing for an adequate material standard of living) lies alongside the necessary requirement for a society based on social justice. We were convinced, with optimism and excitement, that our lives were going to change for the best, forever. We were quickly proved wrong.

The demands for bread, freedom and social justice persist, as life in Egypt has seen no improvement whatsoever since the revolutionary activity that took place in 2011 and beyond, despite the fall of the Mubarak regime and the election of the Muslim Brotherhood as the governing party, with Mohammed Morsi as the president of Egypt (June 2012–July 2013). These socio-political demands arose from profound disaffection, anger at the persistent exploitation of and lack of opportunity for the majority of the population and, importantly, frustration at the decline of Egypt as a nation that can take its place as an international power. Egypt is a society marked by intense national pride especially in its pharaonic history and civilisation. This history fuels a commonplace passion for the nation and reinforces an insistent demand that Egypt should return to its former place of glory.

Although the above is a snapshot of the atmosphere in the country since the fervent events that occurred during January and February 2011, it cannot, perhaps, convey the insecurity and divisions within Egyptian society that have led to fractures within families and friendship groups and the breakdown of civil society. Civility that was a feature of Egyptian society is little in evidence. Fears for personal safety are high, as there are numerous accounts of robbery and theft, whether of cars or homes, and of attacks on people – especially women – and an escalation in drug and alcohol abuse. We have also had to make personal adjustments to these aspects of Egyptian society as, previously, we gave little, if any, thought to our safety as we walked in all confidence through the streets, no matter what time of the day or night.

Since January 2011 we have been thrown out of our usual rhythms of living and inhabiting our lives, as we have been thrown off balance subsequent to the revolutionary activity that has taken place since 2011. Especially in the aftermath of the election of the Muslim Brotherhood to power, many Egyptians lost their ordinary capacity to think and respond sensibly and carefully. I wrote the afterword of my previous book (Treacher Kabesh 2013a) quickly in 2012. To this day I remain troubled about what I had written as I was confused and overwhelmed by the events that were taking place, so that an ordinary and thoughtful state of mind was absent. Paranoia dominated during this time of civil uncertainty and dreadful insecurity. To illustrate this state of mind, I will draw on a personal example. Early one morning I was walking down the street where I live; there were very few people around and it was very quiet. The silence was unsettling rather than a welcome calm that can descend on noisy cities. I passed a car and noticed a middle-aged man buying bread from a cart. As he turned behind him, I imagined that he was reaching for his gun in order to shoot me. I provide this example to illustrate how charged the atmosphere was and how ordinary activity was laden with emotion and fantasy. The difficulty is that these burdened states of mind lead to troubling emotional and socio-political consequences. The afterword was written at a highly charged, emotional and troubling time, when many Egyptian people were protesting against the Muslim Brotherhood rule, leading to Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood being ousted from power by the military under the leadership of Abdul Fattah Al-Sisi. Following this period of violence, oppression and fury (by the Muslim Brotherhood) and relief (many of the Egyptian population), were relieved that the occupation by the Muslim Brotherhood in squares across Egypt was over.

In the afterword I gave little thought to the Muslim Brotherhood, relieved that they were no longer in power. I took the stance too easily and too quickly of erring on the side of the status quo. I was not impartial, as I overly identified with those who wanted the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood. I do not agree with the ideologies and belief system of the Muslim Brotherhood and think that they made many mistakes when in power. However, I now regret that I did not reach out to try to understand the members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Disappointed in my one-sided commitment, I now feel some remorse. I did not take up a position advocated by Edward Said of humanism as a ‘useable praxis for intellectuals and academics who want to know what they are doing, what they are committed to as scholars, and who want also to connect these principles to the world in which they live as citizens’ (Said 2004a: 6). I am attempting in this book to think anew my previous viewpoints and to move towards explicating a framework for thinking through the material and socio-political conditions that are required for social justice to be established. As Achille Mbembe (2015) powerfully points out, we must demythologise so as to ‘dry up the mythic, symbolic resources’ in order that we do not ‘die hating somebody else’. This impassioned essay by Mbembe is a cri de cœur – an appeal for thinking to take place alongside different emotional responses. Revolutions, as Hazim Kandil (2012: 1) points out, ‘break our hearts whether they fail or succeed’; I would add that they also fracture the human spirit.

How does a society that has been colonised recover? This ambitious question is the driving challenge of this book. In this monograph, I endeavour to trace through the damage done to Egyptian subjectivity. In so doing, I take full account of the economic, political, psychic and social effects of inhabiting postcolonialism. I argue that repetition of the past persists inexorably in the present. Alongside this theoretical and methodological stance, emphasis is placed on understanding how public life is lived and experienced at the level of the ‘everyday’, as I attempt to trace through the emotions, fantasies and narratives of public events and argue that this triad of ‘emotions, fantasies, narratives’ are inextricably linked into the way in which ‘events’ are experienced.

Three terms – conflict, repetition and identification – frame my concerns and drive my preoccupations. Egypt has a troubled history, and the central focus of this book is to explore how this troubling past lives on and is perpetuated in the present. History is repeated due to identification (loving and, at times, adhesive); consciously and unconsciously, it can lead to repetition. Repetition, however, is never without conflict, as the wish to make something anew lies alongside the fear and insecurity of the unknown. Conflict arises for a variety of reasons: in attempts to break away from that which is known and internalised; in the negotiations required to navigate the bonds that provide us with love and sustenance but that can also bind us; in the concern, if not anxiety, that can occur when there is divergence of opinions – even if mild – and certainly if the disagreement/s are so intense that they lead to divisions within social networks; and in the emotions that arise when divergent and irreconcilable narratives and discourses lead to conflicts that may or may not be tolerated. These conflicts operate at individual, family and community levels and occur, needless to say, between the state and individuals. The state in Egypt is extremely powerful and omnipresent and, to draw upon a commonplace depiction, can rightly be described as ‘the Deep State’.

I am preoccupied with the role of emotions and fantasy in public life, and, following Jacqueline Rose (1998), I understand them not as antagonistic but, rather, as the glue of social life. This statement is, perhaps, and especially for those of us reliant on psychoanalysis, incontestable as, after all, evidence of emotions and their role in human interactions, relationships with self and other, and acting on the world we inhabit, is omnipresent. This book is about the complexities, contradictions, push-and-pull factors, messiness and challenges of everyday life.

I engage here with tracing through the effects of socio-political events on ordinary life – which, as Kathleen Stewart (2007) describes it,

is a shifting assemblage of practices and practical knowledges, a scene of both liveness and exhaustion, a dream of escape or of the simple life. Ordinary affects are the varied, surging capacities to affect and be affected that give everyday life the quality of a continual motion of relations, scenes, contingencies, and emergences. They’re things that happen. They happen in impulses, sensations, expectations, daydreams, encounters, and habits of relating, in strategies and their failures, in forms of persuasion, contagion, and compulsion, in modes of attention, attachment, and agency, and in public and social worlds of all kinds that catch people in something that feels like something. (2007: 4–5)

Emotions have histories that are both private and, simultaneously, socially culturally-politically formed. The problem for me, and this is a perpetual difficulty, is how to elucidate emotions through holding together psychoanalysis and social-cultural theory (in my case, postcolonial theory) in order to provide depth of understanding? Furthermore, how can I hold together an analysis that unites psychoanalysis and social theory in a way that is fruitful and does not obfuscate complexity? The intricacy involved in tracing through emotions is that they are elusive and slippery and simultaneously provoke intensity of feeling. Ordinary affects are ‘at once abstract and concrete, ordinary affects are more directly compelling than ideologies, as well as more fractious, multiplicitous, and unpredictable than symbolic meanings’ (Stewart 2007: 4). The vexed question – How do emotions hinder or foster social justice? – underpins my concerns. For example, how do the emotions of fear, vulnerability, anger, hope and betrayal impede at best and paralyse at worst the making of a different and better society?

I endeavour to think through a theoretical framework based on the psychopolitical (Hook 2012), and I draw on psychoanalysis and postcolonial theory because, as Stuart Hall asserts, structural matters are connected to psychic life and cannot be separated out as we live through and identify with these structures (Schwarz 2000). Our very subjectivity, our ways of being, our emotions, fantasies and beliefs – the very stuff of who we are and how we live – are gained through these socio-political structures. Ideologies are lived, experienced, perpetuated and, unfortunately, go to the heart of subjectivities and cannot be sloughed off. This theoretical frame does not dismiss or sideline socio-political-historical factors – anything but – instead, it pays close attention to the interpenetration of these structures into subjectivities. Frantz Fanon’s understandings of colonisation and colonised subjectivities are inspirational because he ‘does not prescribe a hierarchy of relations between material reality and mental or corporeal experience’ (Hook 2012: 102).

In one way this book is based on a particular version of humanism influenced by Edward Said, who writes (and it is worth quoting him in full):

Humanism is not about withdrawal and exclusion. Quite the reverse: its purpose is to make more things available to critical scrutiny as the produce of human labour, human energies for emancipation and enlightenment, and, just as importantly, human misreadings and misinterpretations of the collective past and present. There was never a misinterpretation that could not be revised, improved, or overturned. There was never a history that could not to some degree be recovered and compassionately understood in all its suffering and accomplishment. Conversely, there was never a shameful secret injustice or a cruel collective punishment or a manifestly imperial plan for domination that could not be exposed, explained, and criticized. (2004a: 22)

Postcolonialism, along with Western imperialism, causes untold damage and reproduces conditions that obstruct societies from recovery. My preoccupation is with how these material structures forged from postcolonialism and imperialism impact on and form subjectivities that are not injured due to private and personal biography and conditions but, rather, are profoundly social injuries. We need to politicise these injuries (Howe 1991) and our wounded attachments (Brown 1995). Postcolonial subjectivity is dense and so overdetermined that it eludes simplistic theorisation. We have no hope of understanding its complex formation unless we ‘understand adequately what it sustains, what lends it potent affective qualities, what supports its most visceral aspects’ (Hook 2012: 49). Repetition, conflict and identification are, I insist, central aspects of subjectivity, and these mechanisms are continually in operation in inhabiting a life and in subjection.

For my preoccupations to make sense, some context is required. The next brief section therefore summarises the pertinent events that have occurred in Egypt, while a more elaborate account is given throughout the book.

From the Present to the Past and Back Again

Adhaf Soueif pertinently points out that a ‘revolution is a process, not an event. And, as you know, our Egyptian revolution is ongoing. And its path has not been smooth. How could it have been when the interests we are seeking to break free of are so powerful and so pervasive?’ (2012: xiv). These persistent national and international interests have profoundly impeded the outcome of the political activity that has taken place in recent years in Egypt. On 25 January 2011, Egypt erupted in political activity. Midan Tahrir (Liberation Square) was taken over by protestors, who cut across lines of class, gender, age and religious faith, all demanding the resignation of the then president Hosni Mubarak and his government. This regime was widely perceived, with good reason, as motivated by self-interest and corruption. Mubarak and his government were perceived as severely inadequate due to their failure to tackle the acute and harsh problems from which the Egyptian population was suffering. Unemployment was soaring and the majority of young men under the age of 30 were unemployed. Inflation was high, and manufacturing was in severe decline, leading to the closure of many factories and businesses. In addition, education and health provision were in dire straits: for example, the decay of public hospitals was staggering and shocking, illustrating the inefficiency and corruption of governmental administration.

Above all, the corruption of central government, exemplified by the decision to install Gamal Mubarak (Hosni Mubarak’s son) as the next president, led to public outrage that had no impact whatsoever on the decision. It was clear that the Mubarak family and their supporters could do what they wanted without consideration of the consequences for or impact on the Egyptian population. When Hosni Mubarak was interviewed on television about the increase of public political activity taking place, he contemptuously replied, ‘Let them play’, little imagining that the political demands would increase immensely and lead to his resignation in February 2011. In a state of excitement, optimism and disbelief, we (that is, the Egyptian population) witnessed t...