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The Mnemonic Battles of the 2011 Arab Uprisings University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2016 Communicating History: The Mnemonic Battles of the 2011 Arab Uprisings Omar Al-Ghazzi University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Communication Commons, Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons, and the Other International and Area Studies Commons Recommended Citation Al-Ghazzi, Omar, "Communicating History: The Mnemonic Battles of the 2011 Arab Uprisings" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1584. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1584 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1584 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Communicating History: The Mnemonic Battles of the 2011 Arab Uprisings Abstract This dissertation explores how history has been communicated during the 2011 Arab uprisings and their aftermath (2011-2015). It is a study about the struggle for finding a historically-grounded revolutionary narrative for an assumed Arab body politic that is torn apart by multiple political forces. I analyze popular communicative practices that invoke history and argue that they have played a crucial role in propagating a narrative that portrayed the uprisings as a collective Arab revolution and awakening. The strategic claim that protestors were making history, I suggest, paved the way for expressing hopes about the future through invoking past history. From 2011 to 2015 in the Arab world, contentious debates about politics were often expressed through a language and a symbolism about history. These controversies were projected towards specific symbols and tropes, which evoked condensed cultural meanings, and which became subsequently used to communicate political aspirations and to assert power in the present and onto the future. In this dissertation, I analyze four case-studies that demonstrate the centrality of collective memory in articulations of identity and politics in the contemporary Arab world. Through a historically-cognizant approach, I suggest that many of the political controversies in the period under study in the Arab world represent mnemonic battles about the past and the future, which echo a political repertoire from the era of the Arab Nahda (awakening), the cultural and political movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when ideas about modernity and nationalism were first theorized and popularized in the Arab region. I contend that since the Nahda, a desire to make a new future history has been contrasted with a forked past history, one to be discarded as deviant, and another to be resurrected as originary. This conceptualization of history has dominated modern political and cultural expressions of collective aspirations in the Arab world. My dissertation explores how communicative practices during the 2011 uprisings and their aftermath echoed and provided new iterations of this conception of history and how that exploded in battles, literally and metaphorically. Through a historically-cognizant approach, I suggest that many of the political controversies in the period under study in the Arab world represent mnemonic battles about the past and the future, which echo a political repertoire from the era of the Arab Nahda (awakening), the cultural and political movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when ideas about modernity and nationalism were first theorized and popularized in the Arab region. I contend that since the Nahda, a desire to make a new future history has been contrasted with a forked past history, one to be discarded as deviant, and another to be resurrected as originary. This conceptualization of history has dominated modern political and cultural expressions of collective aspirations in the Arab world. My dissertation explores how communicative practices during the 2011 uprisings and their aftermath echoed and provided new iterations of this conception of history and how that exploded in battles, literally and metaphorically. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Communication First Advisor Marwan M. Kraidy Keywords Activism, Arab Politics, Arab Spring, Collective Memory Subject Categories Communication | Near Eastern Languages and Societies | Other International and Area Studies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1584 COMMUNICATING HISTORY: THE MNEMONIC BATTLES OF THE 2011 ARAB UPRISINGS Omar Al-Ghazzi A DISSERTATION in Communication Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Supervisor of Dissertation __________________________ Marwan Kraidy The Anthony Shadid Chair in Global Media, Politics & Culture Graduate Group Chairperson __________________________ Joseph Turow, Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Communication, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies Dissertation Committee Dr. Barbie Zelizer, Raymond Williams Professor of Communication Dr. Guobin Yang, Associate Professor of Communication and Sociology ABSTRACT COMMUNICATING HISTORY: THE MNEMONIC BATTLES OF THE 2011 ARAB UPRISINGS This dissertation explores how history has been communicated during the 2011 Arab uprisings and their aftermath (2011-2015). It is a study about the struggle for finding a historically-grounded revolutionary narrative for an assumed Arab body politic that is torn apart by multiple political forces. I analyze popular communicative practices that invoke history and argue that they have played a crucial role in propagating a narrative that portrayed the uprisings as a collective Arab revolution and awakening. The strategic claim that protestors were making history, I suggest, paved the way for expressing hopes about the future through invoking past history. From 2011 to 2015 in the Arab world, contentious debates about politics were often expressed through a language and a symbolism about history. These controversies were projected towards specific symbols and tropes, which evoked condensed cultural meanings, and which became subsequently used to communicate political aspirations and to assert power in the present and onto the future. In this dissertation, I analyze four case-studies that demonstrate the centrality of collective memory in articulations of identity and politics in the contemporary Arab world. Through a historically-cognizant approach, I suggest that many of the political controversies in the period under study in the Arab world represent mnemonic battles about the past and the future, which echo a political repertoire from the era of the Arab Nahda (awakening), the cultural and political movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when ideas about modernity and nationalism were first theorized and ii popularized in the Arab region. I contend that since the Nahda, a desire to make a new future history has been contrasted with a forked past history, one to be discarded as deviant, and another to be resurrected as originary. This conceptualization of history has dominated modern political and cultural expressions of collective aspirations in the Arab world. My dissertation explores how communicative practices during the 2011 uprisings and their aftermath echoed and provided new iterations of this conception of history and how that exploded in battles, literally and metaphorically. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii List of illustrations vi Chapter I: Introduction 1 History and modernity in the Arab world 17 Memory: authoritarianism and postcolonialism 29 On mnemonic practices 38 Case selection and data 44 Chapter II: The battles over the “garbage dump of history” 51 What is the garbage dump of history 55 The garbage dump if history in the Arab context 60 The garage dump during and in the aftermath of 2011 64 The violence of the garbage dump trope 74 Conclusion 87 Chapter III: The battles over Syrian flags 91 Nationalism, communicative practices & postcolonial disruptions 95 Syrian history told through its flags 102 Flags: Between pedagogical and performative strategies 109 Islamic banners 131 Conclusion 136 Chapter IV: Omar Al-Mukhtar and the Libyan mnemonic battles 140 Publics of memory and revolutionary icons 144 Al-Mukhtar in Libyan history 150 Al-Mukhtar in an independent Libya 153 Al-Qadhafi’s revolution 157 Al-Mukhtar and the 2011 uprising 167 Conclusion 179 Chapter V: The mnemonic battles of Al-Andalus 183 Nostalgia and structures of feeling 188 The social media campaign and the web series: A comparison 193 A history of the modern Al-Andalus 202 Al-Andalus and the 2011 Arab uprisings 210 Conclusion 223 Chapter VI: Conclusion 226 A whirling memory 230 History in the 2011 uprisings 235 The struggle for what to remember after forgetting authoritarianism 240 iv Bibliography 253 v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Chapter II Fig. 2.1: Political cartoon by Arab comic collective Abu Mahjoub (p. 62) Fig. 2.2: Online meme signed by Phillippe Fakry (p. 69) Fig. 2.3: Online meme shared on Facebook group “Al-Sisi to the garbage dump of history” (Al-Sisi ila mazbalat al-tarikh) (p. 69) Fig. 2.4: Online meme shared on Facebook group “Egypt is not a tenement” (Masr mish I’zbah) (p.79) Fig. 2.5: Online meme shared on Facebook group “Egypt is not a tenement” (Masr mish I’zbah) (p.79) Fig. 2.6: Online meme shared on Facebook group “Egypt is not a tenement” (Masr mish I’zbah) (p. 79) Fig. 2.7: Online meme shared on Facebook group “Egypt is not a tenement” (Masr mish I’zbah) (p. 79) Fig. 2.8: Online meme shared on Facebook group “Egypt is not a tenement” (Masr mish I’zbah) (p. 81) Fig. 2.9: Online meme shared on Facebook group “The youths of the Syrian flag” (Shabab al-alam al-sury) (p. 81) Chapter III Fig. 3.1: Image of the historic Arab flag (p. 97) Fig. 3.2: Image of the Syrian opposition flag (p. 98) Fig. 3.3: Image of the Syrian national flag (p. 99) Fig. 3.4: Image of the Islamic State organization’s flag (p. 122) Chapter IV Fig. 4.1: Online meme shared by “Libya Future” Facebook group (Libya Almostaqbal) (p. 157) Fig. 4.2: Online meme share by “Libya Future” Facebook group (Libya Almostaqbal) (p.
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