To mark five years since Egyptians took to the streets demanding bread, freedom, and social justice, Jadaliyya offers its readers a set of articles examining the state of some of the struggles that the January 25 Revolution came to embody.
We begin with a look back at earlier struggles for social justice and political change in 1970s Egypt and beyond. Nicola Pratt examines the ways in which western support for regime crackdowns on political dissent compounded the constraints on women’s political participation, yet also re-energized their struggle for enfranchisement. She discusses, with a focus on Egypt, How the West Undermined Women’s Rights in the Arab World.
We then move to 2011 and revisit the iconic Tahrir Square, which became synonymous with the hopes of Egyptians for change, as Farha Ghannam examines the Rise and Decline of a Heterotopic Space: Views from Midan al-Tahrir. She engages concepts from the work of Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre to argue that rather than a permanent quality or a fixed feature, it is the use of a particular space that makes it heterotopic.
A competing voice at the time was that of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose political elite came to power in Egypt in 2012, and whose fortunes since the ouster of Muhammad Morsi in 2013 are examined by Victor J. Willi in Phoenix Rising from the Ashes? The Internal State of Affairs of the Muslim Brotherhood at the Start of 2016.
Today the restoration overseen by counter-revolutionary coalitions appears to endure, despite extensive precautionary measures taken against potential protest on the eve of 25 January 2016. The economic underpinnings of the Egyptian military’s current political power in particular are examined in "This Land is their Land”: Egypt’s Military and the Economy." The same article can be read in Arabic here.
Looking at the movements and Global Conversations Inspired by Egypt’s January 25 Uprising, Jadaliyya hosts Democracy Dialogue’s interview with former Egyptian Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei, a voice long silent on the political scene yet once representative of a wide constituency, some committed to political reform, others to revolution.
Five years on, a nuanced understanding of what happened in Egypt necessitates that we delve into the historic, revisit the spaces of revolution, expose Western cooption of gendered discourses, uncover the mechanics of the country`s military-industrial complex, examine factional dynamics, and explore global intersections of solidarity. The articles on this anniversary speak to the spirit and urgency of this pursuit of nuance.
تقدم جدلية بعد مرور ٥ سنوات على اندلاع ثورة 25 يناير مقالتين بالعربية تتناولان أبعاد الحكم الحالي في مصر، من ناحية فيما يتعلق بإقتصاد المؤسسة العسكرية وذلك في مقال (ممنوع الاقتراب أو التصوير: الجيش والاقتصاد في مصر) ومن ناحية أخرى سياسات النظام الحالي تجاه قضية الوعي الديني وذلك في المقال: عن الانتصار العسكري والهزيمة الإيديولوجية