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Appendix: Interviews APPENDIX: INTERVIEWS 1 2 The Prince and the Pharaoh The Collaborative Project of Egyptian Workers and Their Intellectuals in the Face of Revolution Brecht De Smet Dissertation presented in fulfillment of the requirements for a PhD degree in Political and Social Sciences 2012 Ghent University Faculty of Political and Social Sciences Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Sami Zemni 3 4 Contents INTRODUCTION 6 LIST OF RESPONDENTS 9 CHRONOLOGY 11 INTERVIEWS 14 CONVERSATIONS 413 EVENTS 418 5 Introduction This volume contains lists of respondents, a concise chronology of my fieldwork, raw and unedited transcriptions of interviews, and summaries of informal conversations and events. Even though it does not appear to be a tradition within the department to append primary sources to a dissertation, I have chosen to do so because of two reasons: firstly, readers of the thesis are given the opportunity to ‚retextualize‛ the fragmentary voices that appear in the main volume within the narrative flow of the interview; secondly, these sources are now fully disclosed to other researchers, who may peruse them for their own studies. Obviously, this ‚open access‛ renders my personal interpretation of the sources prone to criticism and falsification. However, it is, in my opinion, exactly this ‚vulnerability‛ that improves the scientific standard of the dissertation, setting in motion a chain of reinterpretation and reappropriation of the source material. The interviews and conversations are listed alphabetically, according to last name of the respondent. Events are listed according to date. Comments, significant non-verbal activities, long pauses, interruptions, and so on, are indicated by square brackets. I have often ‚cleaned up‛ interview excerpts when I cited them in the dissertation: this mainly entailed an additional correction of the punctuation and grammar in the ‚rawly transcribed‛ text. The interviews are generally transcribed in a mildly ‚denaturalist‛ way.1 The natural speech of the respondents is not ‚directly‛ represented through detailed ethnographical annotations of pauses, stutterances, irregular grammer, dialectic idioms, interjections, ‚noise‛, and descriptions of non-verbal communication. Instead speech has been roughly streamlined, standardized, and transformed into a ‚text‛ form. At first sight, the naturalist method seems more ‚correct‛ as it represents the encounter between interviewer and respondent more in detail and more fully. This is true if the transcription is part of a study where the activity of speech and communication itself is the object of research – simply put: ‚how do people talk‛; instead of ‚what are people talking about‛. This line of reasoning is faulty, however, if one assumes that the ‚substance‛ or ‚meaning‛ of a research object can be best revealed through a thorough description of a conversation about the topic. An interview as a source of information is a chain of mediations. A conversation is a primary source, which is produced by the encounter between interviewer and respondent, both at the time of the conversation, and during the ‚post-processing‛ of the transcription activity. The act of transcription already decontextualizes the interview from its 1 See: Oliver, Daniel G., Serovich, Julianne M., and Mason Tina L. 2005. ‚Constraints and Opportunities with Interview Transcription: Towards Reflection in Qualitative Research‛, Social Forces, 84(2): 1273-1289. 6 ‚immediate‛ encounter. Subsequently, by citing and quoting respondents, this already decontextualized text is appropriated and entextualized by the author in a new meaningful whole. As most of the interviews have been recorded, should the need arise for a ‚naturalist‛ rendering of an interview, I can always listen to the sound files. Different research objects require different scientific apparatuses. With regard to my object of study, the interviews I conducted are primarily a source from which a theory of the subject matter – the relation between intellectuals and the working class – can be constructed. Most of these interviews are not spontaneous or random conversations, but deliberate dialogues that are overdetermined by my intentions and motivations. To represent these interviews as the natural and unmediated voices of my respondents would be an act of academic colonialism. These voices are appropriated from the moment they chose to participate in the shared activity of the interview, and the transcription of these conversations is but an additional phase in this process of appropriation. Even though the interviews were strongly determined by my own Subjectivity as a researcher, they were also a reciprocal dialogue, and often the respondent him/herself appropriated parts of the conversation. This reciprocity struck me most clearly when, for example in an interview with Hisham Fouad,2 my question was reflected upon myself: “what is your opinion on…?” was retorted with: “what is your opinion?” In such a moment I became immediately conscious of my own Subjectivity as a researcher and I was forced to recognize myself as a participant in a dialogue. While I could cloak myself in ‚objectivity‛ – by avoiding to answer the question and thus refusing to recognize myself as a participating actor – in the context of the type of interviews I conducted, I felt that the best method was to answer directly and honestly, rendering my own Subjectivity explicit. This reinforced the dialogicity of the interview and established a relation of trust, respect, and reciprocity between the respondent and the interviewer. On the other hand, if the Subjectivity of the interviewer is fundamentally against the beliefs, values, or ideology of the respondent, this might alienate the conversation partner and even create hostility among the participants. The interviewer should always be cautious in displaying his own Subjectivity and make a quick and intuitive decision if his own opinions might endanger the extraction of information. When Said Husayni3 asked me about my political views before our interview started, I circumvented the question because I did not want him to give me the kind of answers he knew I would like to hear. This circumvention influenced the subsequent conversation as well, but not in a way that hindered my appropriation of his voice. 2 Interview with Hisham Fouad, Giza, 13 March 2011. 3 Interview with Said Husayni, Mahalla, 20 May 2009. 7 In conclusion, I believe that the mode of self-recognition often spontaneously mirrors the way in which the conversation partner is recognized. In a relation of solidarity, whereby the researcher sympathizes with the respondent’s cause, an open display of Subjectivity creates a feeling of being part of the same project, and this strengthens the dialogue. Most leftists considerally ‚warmed up‛ during the interview when they recognized me as a fellow leftist, rather than a ‚commodifying‛ researcher who considered them as just sources of information. In a commodifying relation, the researcher is honest and explicit about the teleology of the interview: the extraction of information. In this type of conversation, the Subjectivity of the respondent is but a means to an end. The respondent, for his/her part, may participate in the interview as a partner in an (un)equal exchange. The self-recognition of the interviewer is irrelevant, because it is the dialogical exchange itself that lies at the heart of the interview. Perhaps he or she enjoys the attention and the prestige that comes with the activity of being interviewed. Perhaps he or she uses the interviewer in a propagandistic way: to spread a particular point of view or agenda. In my experience this was often the case in interviews with certain political leaders, such as Rifaat Said4 and Essam al- Erian5, who used a ‚formal speech‛ as Haisam Hassan, one of my translators, ironically called it. A colonizing relation celebrates the subjectivity of the interviewer or respondent, subsuming the other conversation partner into the personal project of the researcher. This happened to me, for example, during my conversation with Hassan Hanafy,6 which turned into a discussion about my PhD project. Lastly, the non-recognition of the conversation partner makes any real dialogue impossible. The form of this interaction is not the reciprocal interview, but the unilateral questionnaire. 4 Interview with Rifaat Said, Cairo, 12 April 2009. 5 Interview with Essam al-Erian, Cairo, 10 March 2008. 6 Interview with Hassan Hanafy, Cairo, 18 February 2008. 8 List of Respondents Abbas, Kamal. Director of the Al-Sawi, Dia. Leader of the al- CTWS. Amal youth. Abbas, Muhammad. Muslim Al-Sayyid, Abd al-Rahman. Leader Brother student. in the Arab-Nasserist Party. Abd al-Azim, Muhammad. Worker Al-Sayyid, Ahmed. Leader of the and journalist in Mahalla al-Kubra. independent health technicians’ Abd al-Azim, Salah. Caricaturist. union. Abd al-Fatah, Farag. Tagammu Al-Sayyid Muhammad, Sayyida. economist. Member in the Voice of the Nurses Abd al-Hadi, Amal. Leader in the Movement and the RS. NWF. Al-Zahed, Medhat. Senior Abd al-Rady, Sayyid. Worker journalist of al-Badil. leader in Tagammu. A(nonymous), Muhammad. Abd al-Razik, Husayn. Leader in Teacher in Port Said. Tagammu. Bahey al-Din Shabeen, Ahmed. Abdu, Zaki. Al-Badil. Al-Badil Kefaya coördinator. journalist. Bakr, Sayyid. Engineer in Ghazl al- Abdul, Baho. Leader in Tadamon. Mahalla. Abu al-Eita, Kamal. Leader of the Barakat, Sabr. Labor leader. RETAU. Bassiouni, Mustafa. Leader in the Abu Zaid, Wael. Worker in Ghazl RS and journalist in al-Dostour. al-Mahalla. Belal, Ahmed. Leader in Tagammu Adly, Salah. Leader in the ECP. and UPY/UESY. Al-Aswany, Alaa. Writer and Björklund, Per. Swedish journalist Kefaya activist. doing research on social Al-Bahary, Karim. Youth activist. movements in Egypt. Al-Balshy, Khalid. Chief editor of Carr, Sarah. British journalist for al-Badil. Daily News Egypt, specialized in Al-Dhib, Ali. Leader in Tagammu. labor issues. Al-Din Hassan, Bahey. Director of Darwish, Nawla. Director of the the CIHRS. NWF. Al-Gourd, Ahmed. Youth activist. Fahmy, Talat. Tagammu leader in Al-Erian, Essam. Leader in the Giza. Muslim Brotherhood.
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