Yale University
From the SelectedWorks of Roberta L. Dougherty
December, 2011
MESA 2011: Expressive culture of the Egyptian revolution Roberta L Dougherty, Yale University
Available at: https://works.bepress.com/bintalbalad/30/ “Smiling and waving witty banners: the expressive culture of the Egyptian revolution.”
[slide: Tahrir Square 2011]
This paper will examine the expressive culture of the Egyptian "revolution"--an event that began with a public demonstration called to coincide with the national “Police
Day” holiday of 25 January 2011, and that reached a climax on 11 February 2011 with the resignation of Egyptian president Husni Mubarak. The outcome is still unknown, however it is possible even at this early stage to examine the role of the demonstrators’ expressive culture in communicating the movement's goals and ultimately mobilizing the Egyptian people. By “expressive culture” I mean not only products or artifacts such as songs, poetry, posters, photographs, and video, but also *behavior,* as you will see.
The movement completely blind-sided all academic experts and even international intelligence (in spite of their recent claims to the contrary!). While the self-immolation of
Tunisian fruit-seller Muhammad Buazizi [CHECK], followed by the so-called "Jasmine
Revolution" of Tunisia in early 2011 is credited as providing an impetus, [slide] many look further back to see the brutal murder of Egyptian blogger Khalid Said in June 2010 as a catalyst. [slide] Others find inspiration in the movement of workers in the Egyptian town of al-Mahallah al-Kubra in 2008, and others point to the Egyptian “Kifayah!” movement of 2004 as providing the first rumblings of discontent.
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[slide]
Western media have been eager to give credit to the Internet, especially the social media platforms Twitter and Facebook, for agency in the events of early 2011, but I think we can all agree that these media were tools just like the cassette tape for the Iranian revolution and perhaps even Paul Revere’s horse for the American. However there is no doubt that new media gave 24-hour access to riveting testimonials, photographs, and video that attracted international attention to the Egyptian anti-government movement.
(A comment I heard at this conference on Thursday evening was that the events of
Tahrir Square “seduced” the Western media, particularly in the United States.) These media also allowed me, and everyone else who was also interested in these events, to keep up with what was going on, to see for ourselves via live streaming video from Al
Jazeera what was happening in the square at that very moment, to see on-the-scene photographs taken only minutes before and uploaded to platforms like Twitpic and flickr, and to have an appreciation, if only in a voyeuristic way, for what the Egyptians in the square were going through.
As the revolution unfolded, it has also become clear that the "Facebook kids" (as they came to be called in Egyptian media) orchestrated a meticulous plan to ensure that their revolution appeared to come from Egypt's grass roots.
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The title of my paper comes from a Time magazine article written on 3 February 2011 by Bobby Ghosh, “The Young Revolutionaries of Egypt.” The article begins,
You think you know what Arab rage looks like: wild-eyed young men shouting bellicose verses from the Koran as they hurl themselves against authority, armed with anything from rocks to bomb vests. So who were these impostors gathered in Cairo's Tahrir ... Square to call for the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak? They were smiling and laughing, waving witty banners, organizing spontaneous soccer tournaments and thrusting cigarettes and flowers into the hands of Mubarak's soldiers.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2046047,00.html#ixzz1fEX5 O6tU
The article was published the day after the infamous “Battle of the Camel” in Tahrir
Square, when thugs paid off by the government and riding horses and camels swooped down on the unarmed protesters. In his article Ghosh asserted that in the aftermath of this event, that Mubarak’s departure was inevitable, and indeed, the protesters’ euphoria quickly returned as they realized this was true.
[slide]
Before going on to discuss some examples of the expressive culture of the protesters in
Tahrir Square, let’s pause for a moment to consider the square itself. Tahrir Square came into existence 140 years ago during the time of another ruler who was considered ruthless, Ismail. He had lived in the Paris redesigned by [NAME] Haussmann [DATE]
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and saw the changes that came about in France under Napoleon III, and wanted to remake Cairo in the image of Paris. If George Bush was the decider, Ismail was the modernizer. So an area that was all pretty much vegetation adjacent to the Nile, that was flooded from time to time, was redesigned into a Paris-like circle with urban boulevards flowing into it, and was named Ismailia Square.
[slide]
One of the things that has fascinated me about the uprising in Egypt is the square’s transformation. During the years I lived in Egypt it seemed it was almost always being torn up for one reason or another, its various islands and roads being relandscaped or even completely removed during the construction of the Cairo Metro when the square resembled the ninth circle of Hell, a bus station in front of the Nile Hilton demolished, the area in front of the Mugamma building transforming from filthy parking lot reeking with the smell of urine, to bus station crowded with waiting passengers, to a landscaped area with flower beds, guard rails and bollards (presumably put there to prevent car-bomb attacks). It always seemed that sidewalks were always being torn up and replaced. Getting across the square on foot was always a nightmare, and at certain times of the day it could be hard to get a taxi to go there.
[slide]
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But the Egyptian demonstrators transformed the square from urban hellhole to a place they began to feel was almost like heaven on earth. This urban omphalos became a place where Egyptians felt free to experiment with new ways of thinking and behaving, to begin to think about the possibility of a different future for their country, to express their desires and aspirations in a great variety of ways, a 24-hour carnival—a space that also saw violence and death during the 18 days the square was occupied. While I am going to show you some examples of Egyptians’ creative response to their predicament,
I’d like to emphasize that the most creative action taken by the protesters was the occupation itself. The people took this urban space, much maligned and neglected and repeatedly redesigned to improve security for some of the state institutions located there—and redesigned, of course, to *deter* the space from being anything but a hub through which traffic more or less flowed, and *never* to serve as a public gathering place—they took this space and remade it as their own, a city within a city, and the headquarters from which tremendous change was to spring.
[slide: How to protest intelligently]
So let’s get right to what I’ve come here to show you and talk about. This image is from a handbook entitled “How to protest intelligently” [CHECK]. In the United States, with our long history of public demonstrations, we have some experience with the practical aspects of civil disobedience, but Egyptians who had initially been called to the square 5
by a Facebook “event” post for a 100K-strong march on 25 January did not have much experience with the basics. Somebody came to the rescue with this document, a 26-page guide explaining what kind of clothing was best to wear, what kinds of things to say, to suggest that demonstrators carry a white rose to signify their peaceful intent, and even (as shown here) how best to defend oneself with simple household items against a well-armed policeman. The booklet included the warning, “Please, distribute through e-mail, printing, and photocopies ONLY!” –however this did not prevent it from being uploaded to a website around 28 January (whoops!). This artifact displays another characteristic of much of the written or printed material that was seen in the square, the fact that it is in both
Arabic and English (I’ll say a little more about that in a moment).
[slide: kiss!]
I mentioned at the beginning that I’m including *behavior* in my definition of expressive culture, and the well-known image on the slide you’re seeing right now is one example of some of the truly remarkable responses of the demonstrators in the square to the challenges they faced from state powers. At one point in the early days of the demonstrations, the Central Security Forces were lined up in a face-off with the demonstrators and this woman--and apparently an older man as well--walked along the lines of policemen, kissing each one in a parental way and saying, “You won’t hurt us, you are all our sons!”
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[slide: Asmaa Mahfouz]
Among the famous products of the square were the slogans chanted by the protesters.
This video is of the vlogger (i.e. video blogger) Asmaa Mahfouz, who was one of the influential young people who organized the initial call for the demonstrations on 25
January. In this video (titled “The Bravest Woman in Egypt”) you will hear her leading a group of demonstrators in rather virulent anti-government chants. (this version, w/ subtitles, uploaded to YouTube on 30 January, but the original video is a day or two older than that) Notice the poetical pattern that each of Asmaa’s chants takes, with her supplying a rhythmic phrase that is repeated by fellow protesters, then the call-and- response is repeated, with a rhyming phrase added by Asmaa to the last repetition.
[slide: “one hand”]
Asmaa’s pithy phrases did not have the lasting power and impact of some of the simpler chants of the demonstrators, among which were “Irhal!” and “al-Shab yurid isqat al-nizam,” and when the army showed up in Tahrir Square with their tanks another commonly repeated phrase was “’id wahdah,” to indicate that the army and the people were as one hand. The young musician Ramy Esam combined these in the song
“Id wahdah,” which to me sounds rather like a Gogol Bordello tune. [take 1 minute to play video] He gave this performance from one of the stages that came to be set up in
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the square for musical performances, speeches, and poetry readings, turning Tahrir into a space for artistic expression, another one of its new roles created by the demonstrators.
[slide]
This transition from political chants & slogans, to rhythmic chants accompanied by percussion instruments, to the new songs of the revolution was described by Aly
Metwaly in the English-language blog Ahram Online.1 This musical expression was not limited to genres like the folksy guitar strumming of Ramy Esam but included songs in a more classic Arabic music style, however it’s possible that the most influential genres were rap and hip-hop.
[slide: “didd al-hukumah” & graffiti]
One example of a revolutionary rap song is “Into the Fire” by Ramy DoNjEwan. This song was originally uploaded on 13 January, therefore it predates the demonstrations
(unlike my other examples), however during the days of the demonstrations video was added to it (along with a very helpful transcription of the lyrics!) and it took on new life.
[play one minute]
1 Aly Metwaly, “The Egyptian Revolution’s rhythms,” http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/5/33/8101/Arts-- Culture/Music/The-Egyptian-Revolutions-rhythms.aspx, 19 March 2011.
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On this slide I’ve also provided an example of the kind of street art that began to appear during the days of the demonstrations (and again, ever since)—spray-painted images, sometimes of very sophisticated design and iconography, expressing the people’s one demand: that Mubarak step down.
[slide: “here come the Egyptians!”]
To return briefly to the chants: as many of us recall, the demonstrators set up their own system of security within the square, with checkpoints at every entrance, to ensure that their activities weren’t undermined by plainclothes policeman or thugs. After passing through the checkpoint, a visitor might be greeted in the manner shown in this video
(posted by Al Jazeera on 7 February, entitled “The Welcome”): [play 1 minute]
[slide: “we’ll be here tomorrow!”]
And on your way out, you might be saluted in this manner: [play] –In addition to the chant, this video documents that behavioral element that I contend is part of the expressive culture of those heady 18 days: at the end you saw that the film had been made by what I’ve been calling “revolution tourists,” people who went down to the square for the evening or to spend just a few hours, who didn’t remain encamped but came to pay their respects, perhaps to bring supplies, to listen to some of the music, and
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to have a chance to experience the spirit of Tahrir for a little while, before returning to their normal lives outside of the square.
[slide: cute demonstrator]
The protesters also expressed how they felt about the demonstrations and what they wanted them to be about in what they chose to wear. This image is from the cover of the women’s weekly magazine “Hawwa,” which normally displayed fashionable women’s dress women—during the revolution, and for a few weeks after, the covers routinely featured images of female protesters doing things in Tahrir Square, including this rather adorable young lady who went down to the square dressed as an ancient Egyptian waving the flag of modern Egypt. Another example of “dressing for revolution” was the image I used at the beginning of this presentation, in which, if you recall, the young woman had draped her hijab in layers to match the colors of the flag, and there is video on YouTube that instructs you in how to create this look.
[slide: memes!]
The famous Egyptian sense of humor also found fertile ground in the events of the demonstrations. The video I’m going to show you is like something that could have come from the video channel of the humor publication “The Onion,” and needs a little set-up. Rumors had gone around amongst the demonstrators that the police had been
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bribed with 50 EGP and a chicken dinner in order to give them an incentive to beat and attack the peaceful protesters. Somehow the story became turned around, and some amongst those who supported the regime began spreading a counterstory that the demonstrators had been bribed by some unspecified agent with 50 GBP and a KFC chicken dinner (or a “Kentucky”). So a waggish fellow went down to the square with a video camera and asked the demonstrators to confirm or deny this rumor, and this was how they responded: [play 1 minute video]
[slide: “10 February”]
The last song I’m going to talk about is “Sawt al-hurriyah,” featuring Hany Adel (lead singer of the pop band Wust al-Balad). The film was made in the last days of the 18-day demonstrations that lead to the resignation of Husni Mubarak, and captures brilliantly that heady optimism with which Egyptians were beginning to regard their future. As
Rose Aslan commented on her Facebook page a few days ago, revolutionary songs
“position al-midan (Tahrir Square) at the center of a new Egyptian consciousness and desire for change.”2 [play 1 minute]
2 Rose Aslan, commenting on the music video “Ya El Midan” when posting it to her Facebook page on 30 November 2011, “following up on the success of "Sawt al-Huriya" (Voice of Freedom), young and hip Egyptian band Cairokee and Egyptian singer Aida el Ayouby offer a reflection and hope for the revolution, positioning al-midan (Tahrir Square) at the center of the new Egyptian consciousness and desire for change...”
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I’d like to add that in addition to earning over a million “views” on YouTube, this song has been taught to and performed by students in Arabic language classes around the
United States. The message of optimism and hope that it carries is not lost on anyone.
[slide: thank you!]
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