Edwards On the Ground

New Directions in Middle East and North African Studies
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-9948-22-000-8
Verlag: Akkadia Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 112 Seiten

New book by Northwestern scholars provides deep insight into the real issues of the Arab region

Autoren/Hrsg.

Edwards, Brian T.

Leseproben

1 Fed-up and bored Affect and political action in revolutionary Egypt JESSICA WINEGAR In the years leading up to the uprising that ousted authoritarian Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from power, it was commonplace to hear outside observers and Egyptians alike blame the so-called apathy of Egyptians for the absence of revolt. Widely held views that Egyptians preferred to spend their time sipping tea at coffee shops, or watching television serials, or depending on the state for everything were immediately quashed in January and February 2011, when millions of Egyptians rose up in an effort to take down the regime that had oppressed them for decades. What do we make of this seemingly overnight reversal of affect, from so-called apathy to anger and hope? In this short piece, I suggest that closer attention to the daily expressions and experiences of emotion before, during and after a dramatic political event reveals how people come to mobilize in support of a political cause. Paying close attention to everyday affect also guards against broad characterizations of the emotions of an entire society, which, as we see in the case of the pundits imputing apathy to Egyptians, is misguided. Through analysis of the following episodes from my ethnographic fieldwork throughout particular locations in Cairo before and during the 18-day uprising, I hope to show that what observers might have characterized as apathy was, for many Egyptians, an exasperated “fed-upness” that actually held in place – in an active sense – the grand expectations of dignity, freedom and social development for when the time came to enact them. That time was the pivotal moment of the 18 days. On the eve of the Egyptian revolution, everyday speech was peppered with variations of the word zahaq. On any day, one could hear phrases such as “Ana zahqan, ihna zahqanin, zihiqt khalas!” In part because of its semantic richness in everyday Arabic speech, zahaq is more agentive and less burdened by the bourgeois associations of the English word “boredom.” Zahaq expresses the bundle of emotions of which cynicism and boredom are a part; it also implies a kind of fed-upness – a form of exasperation. For the people I knew in Egypt, the experiential aspects and expressive possibilities of zahaq made it less a “state” (or stasis) and more a processual action – one that built upon itself in crescendo fashion.1 Let us turn to two cases of extreme zahaq, of great expectations gone sour. The story begins in Cairo as it choked under the Mubarak regime. The state employees of a once internationally famous youth cultural center, located in a working-class neighborhood, sit on rusty chairs under a tree, swatting away flies as they wait for the children who rarely come. Sipping tea, with exasperated voices, they complain cynically about their low pay, lack of teaching resources and corrupt leadership. Across the city, at a newer non-governmental youth center, also in a mainly low-income neighborhood, the management cancels some children’s activities and summons employees to more and more training sessions, and requires ever more paper reports. With these new requirements, many staff members grow wary and de-energized. Across state and NGO contexts, people are fed up and cynical as they make sense of the disconnect between their material, institutional circumstances and their aspirations to develop society by making youth more “cultured.” The great expectation of cultural development seems forever stymied as the state diverts resources to the private sector, and as the private sector becomes subsumed in auditing practices. The government youth center could bring out the zahaq in anyone. The Ministry of Culture in the Mubarak era was a huge, complex experiment in modernist development, an experiment that sat in uneasy relationship with those in other government sectors (such as the Ministry of Finance) functioning to privatize and liberalize the economy. As men became the faces of economic “reform,” Suzanne Mubarak (the president’s wife) became the face of cultural development. She spearheaded the opening of a culture garden in the district of Sayyeda Zaynab in 1990, with a mission to “bring culture” to the children of the neighborhood. “Culture” was defined through the architecture of the buildings and garden itself – done in a modern Islamic style that linked the site to old mosques and other Mamluk-era monuments nearby. “Culture” was also defined through the designation of various “centers” in the garden; for example, a large open-air theater, studios for visual arts and crafts workshops, and a children’s library. This library housed some books that were published as part of Suzanne Mubarak’s “Reading for All” series of affordable titles in literature and sciences, although the delivery of these books was rarely consistent. In 1992, the garden won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. The jury noted that “the insertion of the park into this congested urban fabric has gone far beyond the original brief. It has generated a renewed sense of community by extending its presence into the surrounding streets. The residents take pride in their neighborhood as well as their park.”2 The Aga Khan prize committee seemed to agree with the Egyptian government – that the problem in “congested” working class communities was a lack of pride in the neighborhood, pride which can be inculcated by making people more “cultured.” Yet the root issue was not a lack of “pride” or “culture” among neighborhood residents. It was a conflict between the state’s paternalistic and bureaucratic approach to culture and the desires of both the residents and the architect to have the garden fully integrated into local systems of values and understandings of culture.3 By 2010, when I began fieldwork at the garden, it had fallen into utter disrepair. This once internationally famous site, a jewel in the crown of Mubarak-era cultural policy, was barely functioning. The central walk, once laden with royal palms and fountains, was now marred by broken stones, broken lights and dried-up fountains. Sewage overflowed from the bathrooms. Tall grass and weeds had overrun the playground, whose creaky, wobbly structures stood like desiccated animal carcasses. Half of the workshops and half of the library were locked up. Officially “awaiting repairs,” they were the victims of a stifling state bureaucracy, as well as a complex corruption scandal allegedly involving the National Center for Children’s Culture, a money-laundering NGO and local drug dealers. A crackly sound system with frayed wires threatened to ruin any theater or music performance. The few children who visited the garden (usually on field trips with local schools) were greeted with a bare bones puppet show and a meager amount of dried out markers or old broken crayons. The employees of the culture garden were all college graduates with specialties in the arts and/or education. They were, in large measure, committed to the state planners’ developmentalist vision. In their own youth, many of them had also been the subjects of state cultural development. Often the first educated in their families, or the first to have acquired objectified knowledge of “arts and culture,” they were indebted to the idea that cultural development promises upward mobility. Their great expectation was to create a more modern, refined and cultured society by helping youth take the same route they did – via state institutions. Yet these ideas were formed at a time before state institutions became overwhelmingly burdened by ornate bureaucracy, authoritarianism, corruption and the transfer of resources to the wealthy for private-sector projects. The employees knew this history, and in fact were cynical about the government as a result, but that did not disabuse them of their aspirations. Expressions of boredom and cynicism actually recycled these aspirations, because they were articulated within the normative framework of state developmentalism from which they had benefitted in their lifetimes. On the day I met Rashid, a teacher in the crafts section, he had just returned from one of his many visits to government offices to protest the corruption at the garden and get resources flowing again. He was very cynical about whether his attempts would amount to anything (in fact, he was later charged with insubordination). Yet at the same time, he proudly showed me the ceramics projects he had created with kids several years ago and spoke of what the art department “should” be doing. As the workday came to a close, I asked if I could speak with him some more on my next visit.“You’re welcome to come back anytime. But,” he smirked, “you’ll always find us sitting under that tree.” He pointed to the lonely tree that provided needed shade to the employees locked out of their buildings. Layla, another one of the art teachers, frequently made rounds of tea for the group as they sat there for hours, waiting for the kids, who rarely came. When we spoke on these boring mornings, she was nostalgic about her early days at the garden, when there had been adequate resources and crowds of kids to teach. She talked about being exhausted with all the art projects she managed and directed, but also how fulfilling it...