Cairo’s Comix Store
Oh my gosh, I wish this place had existed when I was writing Connected in Cairo. Superheroes constitute such a modernist mythology that this would have been a great site for participant observation (not to mention appealing to my inner geek).
Kryptonite is a comic book and figurines/toys located on El Sobky St., off of El Dahaby Sq. in Heliopolis, across from the Alfa Market. It opened a week after Hosni Mubarak stepped down, and so far seems to be weathering the economic mess that’s current in Egypt.
If one can believe the reports in Egypt Daily News and other media, the owners, Ahmed Abbas and Kareem Awny, have some clear notions of how comic books and graphic novels can change society.
Egypt in Transition: Special Issue Of Social Research
There’s a special issue of the journal Social Research on “Egypt In Transition” that I just discovered. It has some great articles:
- Introduction by Arien Mack.
- Fear and the Ruptured State: Reflections on Egypt after Mubarak by Talal Asad.
- Young Egyptians: Their Society and Their Future by Tarek Osman
- Egyptian Workers and January 25th: A Social Movement in Historical Context by Joel Beinin
- An Initial Perspective on “The Winter of Discontent”: The Root Causes of the Egyptian Revolution by Hazem Fahmy
- Society in Cinema: Anticipating the Revolution in Egyptian Fiction and Movies by Mohammed Tabishat
- The Paradox of Transition to “Democracy” under Military Rule by Atef Said
- The Egyptian Revolution against the Police by Salwa Ismail
- Egypt: Human Rights in Transition by Joe Stork
- Egypt’s New Left versus the Military Junta by Juan Cole
- The Copts and the Egyptian Revolution: Various Attitudes and Dreams by Magdi Guirguis
- Contention in Religion and State in Postrevolutionary Egypt by Nathan J. Brown
The journal is edited and published by the New School for Social Research.
Abstracts:
Arien Mack’s Introduction
The authors in this issue attempt to illuminate the history behind the Tahrir Square uprisings and the events that followed. Though the situation is very much in flux, I think that together these articles provide the reader with a way to understand what happened and what may happen in Egypt.
Photo Credit: Kodak Agfa via Compfight cc
The journal Television & New Media has published a special issue on “New Media Geographies and the Middle East” edited by Miyasa Christensen. The papers are couched in terms of the broader “Arab Spring” but four have either specific Egyptian content or are particularly relevant to Egypt. There are also articles offering specific examples from Lebanon and Iraq.
The Arab Spring was “a meta-event” because its “significance and discursive scope well exceeds the time–space specific components that constitute it (as well as the question of whether it will lead to democratic social change). It was beyond religious or secular, left or right politics, and its consequences, on a global scale, are irreversible regardless of the direction of due change,” writes Miyase Christensen in her introduction, “New Media Geographies and the Middle East.” She offers five reasons why the aftermath of the Arab Spring has opened up a unique discursive space of intense debates: Read more…
What happens when liminality–that state of uncertainty and transformation–doesn’t settle into a new normalcy but goes on and on? That’s the topic of two chapters I’ve written for new forthcoming books.
My participation in the Tahrir Square: One Year On conference led to a number of interesting outcomes, including not one but two papers.
The first is entitled “Re-Envisioning Tahrir: The Changing Meanings of Tahrir Square in Egypt’s Ongoing Revolution.” It follows the original paper I gave at the conference closely but expands it and “thickens” the analysis. I also add a brief assessment of my methodology (such as it is) in deference to Dr. Mustapha Kamel As-Sayyid’s question at the conference. The paper is included as a chapter in a volume based on the conference currently under review by Routledge.
The second is entitled “In Search of Antistructure: The Meaning of Tahrir Square in Egypt’s Ongoing Social Drama.” While the title is closer to the original paper, the content departs considerably. This is a much more theoretical consideration of the role of liminality as a frame for understanding revolutionary transformation. And that’s as it should be, as it is headed for a book entitled Breaking Boundaries: Varieties of Liminality to be published by my old friends at Berghahn. In other words, this is not a book about the Egyptian Revolution, it’s a book about liminality as a tool for understanding political action, and the Egyptian Revolution is the story I use to analyze it.
Here’s the introduction to “Re-Envisioning Tahrir: The Changing Meanings of Tahrir Square in Egypt’s Ongoing Revolution”
Egyptian Comic Magazine Drawing Increased Attention
In January 2011, just a few weeks before the revolution began, a group of Egyptian artists launched a comics magazine called Tok-Tok .
Although financed almost entirely by the artists who draw/write for it, it has been apparently been thriving in–and because of–the ongoing revolution. And lately its picked up some international press. There was a video segment about it on Al-Arabiya news, mention of it and interview with one of the artists in a recent article on the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation’s web site, and an account of one of the features was the subject of a short feature released by Common Ground News Service.
It’s revolutionary in that it’s not a kids magazine, as are most collections of comics in Egypt; it’s a collection of illustrated stories, some gritty, some funny, some quite dark. Tok Tok is described on the cover as a medicine “to be kept out of the reach of children”.
This is a significant departure from the cartoons I describe in the children’s magazines in Connected in Cairo.
In an interview with Swiss Broadacasting , TokTok”s originator, Mohamed Shennawy explained why it was named after the motorized tricycle that negotiates Cairo’s jammed streets by weaving in and out around bigger cars but which in doing so adds adds to the traffic problems. The little vehicles are gritty and streetwise and urban, which is a tone the magazine wants to capture. Moreover:
“Our magazine is like this tricycle: efficient but annoying thanks to its ironic tone,” he said. “Laughing and satire are characteristic traits of the Egyptian spirit – they let us get across what we’re trying to say.”
“Thriving” is a relative term, of course. TokTok sells 1500 copies per issue, at five pounds per. This means it’s probably in the black, but nobody’s making a living out of it. But its fans are loyal enough to show up at special venues to buy the latest editions and get them signed by the artists.
A story in the Egypt Independent when Toktok was launched described the new magazine in this way:
Performing Revolution in Egypt
Binary oppositions serve as part of the cultural repertoire through which revolutionary struggles are performed, says Jeffrey Alexander..
What allowed the Egyptian revolution to succeed? Why didn’t the Egyptian army fire on the protestors and end the whole thing in the first three days?
In Performative Revolution in Egypt (2011), Jeffrey Alexander analyzes the fall of President Hosni Mubarak using a “performance” approach, arguing that successful social performances allowed the anti-Mubarak movement to enact—and so become–the country’s collective representation.
Symbolic Versus Materialist
Most political scientists offer the usual sets of material factors as explanations for the revolution. Egypt had
- high unemployment, especially among young, prime-age working men
- rising literacy rates
- increased Internet usage, supposedly enabling the wider spread of democratic ideals
- lower cost coordination among those committed to democratic ideals
All in all, they say (in retrospect), a perfect storm for the revolution.
Alexander challenges the idea that revolutions depend primarily on such things as
- the economic conditions of the people,
- demographic changes, and
- the capacity of opposition groups to mobilize support for their revolution.
Instead, he argues, economic conditions have to be interpreted and made meaningful.
“Without being mediated by cultural representations material causes would not have effect” (Alexander 2011: ix).
In a political struggle, the agents who can frame the material conditions in charged symbolic terms within civil discourse will be the likely victors, he claims.
New Review of Connected in Cairo
A review of Connected in Cairo appeared in the Journal of African History 53(3): 412-413.
The review is by Anouk de Koning of the University of Amsterdam, author of Global Dreams: Class, Gender, and Public Space in Cosmopolitan Cairo (American University in Cairo Press, 2009).
She summarizes the book thus:
Peterson explores how mostly elite children, students, and entrepreneurs socially position themselves by drawing on consumption patterns, styles and discourses that signify a familiarity and connection with the West. These different protagonists walk a tightrope of social positioning in a landscape in which class, culture and forms of connectedness to the outside, particularly the West, are intimately related. In this context, cosmopolitanism can signify elite status but also inauthenticity, while the local can be read as both as lack of sophistication and as authentic. Peterson admirably combines these explorations with accessible theoretical discussions of media and globalization.
…which is a pretty good brief summary. She has, however several criticisms.
Is Muslim to England as Coptic is to Egypt?
“To Be Muslim in England” is a brilliant little essay by the Egyptian novelist Alaa al-Aswany that appeared in al-Masri al-Yom 8 January 2013. The following translation comes from Oasis, a Roman Catholic interfaith web journal. It is worth reprinting here in full, even if I am violating someone’s copyright (yeah, write to me and I’ll take it down).
CAUTION: Do not read this unless you read it in full, to the last paragraph. Trust me on this.
To be Muslim in England means to perceive from when you are little that you are different, when you leave the class for the hour of religion, with your small classmates looking at you curious and bewildered, and you go to another classroom with a handful of Muslim pupils like you. From that moment you will prefer to stay with the other Muslim pupils and you will seek refuge in their company because nobody makes fun of your faith or treats you badly.
Writing Ethnography in Post-Mubarak Egypt
Photo by Emily Crane. Used by permission.
How does one write ethnography of an unfolding revolution?
“For decades,” writes Julia Elyachar, “Cairo has been the default location for anthropologists as well as journalists and development workers: it was unquestionably stable, open to Americans and Europeans, and home to the best Arabic language program in the world.”
Now this has changed, Elyachar continues in an introductory essay entitled “The Politics of Writing in Revolutionary Times: Dilemmas of Ethnographic Writing about the January 25th revolution in Egypt and its Aftermath.” In it, she lays out a litany of the ways Egypt has changed as a field area for anthropologists:
Some of the challenges of writing from Egypt this past year are obvious. Too many voices–of friends, relatives, acquaintances—were silenced forever, shot dead by Mubarak thugs, or run over by SCAF (the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) tanks. Some of the voices we longed to hear from were in jail, could possibly be back in jail, or might end up there soon. Some were locked inside at home, depressed by the course of events, unable to go outside other than to Tahrir and back again each day. Others were busy with the piled-up tasks of junior faculty anywhere: classes to be taught, grades to be filed, tenure files to be assembled, bills to be paid, children to be raised, and parents’ health crises to be attended to—all this fit into days otherwise occupied with organizing strikes at the University, volunteering at clinics for victims of SCAF violence in Tahrir, and testifying at hearings.
and
In the new Egypt, anthropologists who felt impelled to document the revolution rather than write a planned book faced new risks. Research permits violated were more likely to be revoked; residence permits once taken for granted were not being renewed.
Elyachar is the author of a brilliant book called Markets of Dispossession (Duke, 2005) which I’ve reviewed elsewhere.
Being There
“Being there” is critical for ethnography. Some anthropologists were there, and brilliant writing may proceed from their work (I’m looking forward to seeing great things from Jessica Winegar, Walter Armbrust, Sherine Hamzy and many others in the near future…).
Some social scientists, however, went to Egypt because of the revolution. Some came to check on their networks of hosts and colleagues and friends, and just to be part of something those friends were experiencing.
New Review of Connected In Cairo
My first two years of graduate school were basically funded by an editorial assistanceship at Anthropological Quarterly, so I am thrilled to find a review of Connected In Cairo in its pages.
I am even more thrilled because the review, by Dan Gilman (University of Mississippi) is so positive. In four pages, Gilman carefully describes the argument of my book, chapter by chapter, in elegantly parsimonious language.
I wish I could reprint the whole thing here because he summarizes the book far better than I ever could. Instead I’ll just quote his last paragraph:
CONNECTED in CAIRO 