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AN ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVE of the ARAB UPRISINGS a Thesis THE PEOPLE WANT TO TOPPLE THE SYSTEM: AN ALTERNATIVE NARRATIVE OF THE ARAB UPRISINGS A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Arab Studies By Sarah Mousa, B.A. Washington, D.C. April 14, 2014 Copyright 2014 by Sarah Mousa All Rights Reserved ii Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude to Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies for providing the funding to support my research in Tunisia and Egypt. I would also like to thank my thesis committee: Professor Elliott Colla, Professor Rochelle Davis, and Professor Joseph Sassoon for their comments and suggestions throughout the process. This thesis would not have been possible without the activists who generously lent me their time and patience during interviews and demonstrations. Finally, I am grateful to the many family, friends and classmates who provided me with input throughout the research and writing process. iii Table of Contents Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter I: Literature and Methodology ...............................................................................7 I.A: Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 7 I.B: “Strategic Narratives” and Popular Terminology ................................................................. 7 I.C: Political and Economic Analysis ........................................................................................ 13 I.D: The Arab Uprisings as a Social Movement ........................................................................ 22 I.E: Thesis Questions and Methodology .................................................................................... 26 Chapter II: Tunisian Student Protest ..................................................................................30 II.A: Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 30 II.B: Background: Overview of the General Union of Tunisian Students ................................. 30 II.C: Case: General Union of Tunisian Students 2013 Protest ................................................... 33 II.D: Analysis ............................................................................................................................. 41 II.E: Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 47 Chapter III: Nakba Commemoration .................................................................................49 III.A: Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 49 III.B: Background: Palestinian Activism in Egypt .................................................................... 49 III.C: Case: 2013 Nakba Commemoration ................................................................................. 54 III.D: Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 61 III.E: Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 65 Chapter IV: Downtown Cairo Street Art ...........................................................................67 IV.A: Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 67 IV.B: Background I: Art and Politics ......................................................................................... 68 IV.C: Background II: Ammar Abo Bakr .................................................................................... 73 IV.D: Background III: Mohamed Mahmoud Street ................................................................... 74 IV.E: Case: Downtown Cairo Street Art .................................................................................... 77 IV.F: Analysis ............................................................................................................................ 88 IV.G: Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 95 Conclusion .........................................................................................................................98 Appendix ..........................................................................................................................101 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................102 iv Introduction Since the toppling of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, a one-dimensional narrative of the Arab Uprisings has become axiomatic in both foreign and Arab spheres. This mainstream account paints the movement as one for Western-style democracy and discursively associated economic neoliberalism. The explanation has dominated the representation of the events of the Uprisings in many academic fields (especially political science), in the publications of policy research institutions as well as in the coverage of corporate media. The narrative is thoroughly modernist in ideology, by which I mean that it sets for the Arab world a teleological path to a kind of progress that emulates that of Western industrialized nations. In challenging this mainstream narrative, I have found it useful to employ the term imperial continuity as developed by Edward Said.1 By this, I seek to point out how, this narrative of the 2011 Uprisings depicts Western states and agencies as if they were “at a distance” rather than intimately involved in the governance of the regimes targeted by protest. In this way, the narrative sought to portray Arab regimes as autonomous rather than client states, and to suggest that protesters rose neither against the West (the United States and Israel especially) nor Western-allied Arab foreign policy, but rather against localized forms of brutality and corruption that had no clear connection to Western 1 In describing the state of the region, Edward Said points to an imperial continuity “that begins with Ottoman rule over the Arabs in the 16th century until our own time.” He explicitly points to the United States and Israel as contemporary imperialist forces. Said, Edward. “The Arab Condition.” Al-Ahram Weekly Online. Issue No. 639: May 22-28 2003. < http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/639/op2.htm> The imperialist foot-print on the Arab world is well-documented elsewhere: 1 states.2 By narrating the events in this way—and by conceptually severing the ties between imperial powers and local clients—analysts could then suggest that global powers, like the United States, could play a helpful role during a transition process.3 The problem of this narrative, of course, is that it effectively argues for continuing the same old system of governance, though now in the name of change, transition, and solidarity with the revolutions that sought to overturn the very system. This one-dimensional narrative on the Uprisings not only obfuscates but also undermines the account that was put forth by activists themselves and that resonated so widely with diverse sectors of Arab populations. My thesis will explore a narrative of the Arab Uprisings as put forth by activists. Through their demonstrations and protest materials, activists build a contentious identity.4 This constructed identity points to an overarching movement goal that has been largely overlooked: to unravel a historically- rooted system of power relations that spans global and local scales, with intertwined political, economic and socio-cultural facets. In elaborating on imperial continuity, Edward Said argues that in its most basic form, it is a system that occurs at the global scale and holds at the core a socio-cultural imagining of native backwardness.5 Foreign political actors transfer this notion of native 2 See, for example: “Anderson Cooper 360: Egypt in Crisis” Transcripts: CNN. January 31, 2011. < http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1101/31/acd.01.html> 3 See, for example: Hanieh, Adam. “Egypt’s Orderly Transition: International Aid and the Rush to Structural Adjustment.” Jadaliyya. May 29, 2011. < http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/1711/egypts- ‘orderly-transition’-international-aid-and-> 4 As Charles Tilly and Sidney Tarrow develop the concept, briefly: Contentious actors’ self-identification formed relationally against their perception of the attributes that constitute the identity of the target power source. (See: Tilly, Charles and Sidney Tarrow. “How Political Identities Work.” December 2005. <http://government.arts.cornell.edu/assets/faculty/docs/tarrow/identity_work.pdf>) 5 Said, Edward. “Jane Austen and Empire.” Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books. 1993. 2 inadequacy to the population itself, by means of cultural hegemony.6 These actors use the notion of native inadequacy as a tool to justify political and economic intervention. They use economic intervention as a means for exploitation, and facilitate the process by coopting a stratum of local political elite, which benefits from the process and is socio- economically set apart from the rest of
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