Professor of International Relations, Laurie Brand, discusses the political significance of claiming the term "revolution"—what it means to those with power and those who contest it.
As autocrats in the Middle East and North Africa began to tremble and tumble with the diffusion of regional protests in spring 2011, the question of how to classify these momentous events was of increasing interest to scholars. According to social science criteria, were they uprisings, revolts, or revolutions? As time has passed, the debate has continued, particularly over the ouster of Egyptian president Husni Mubarak: did this constitute a revolution, did it set in motion what might prove to be a revolution, or would it soon demonstrate itself to have been little more than a coup against a part of the ruling elite?
However important the scholarly classification of such events, the struggles over naming them by those directly contesting power have more critical implications for the future of the societies involved. Indeed, a central contested element in these transitions concerns the struggle over scripting the unfolding story. Not only is it the victors who write the history, but it is also they who oversee the incorporation of it into the narrative about the regime, a narrative which then serves to further legitimate and reinforce its power.
Since the initiation of indigenous struggles against European colonialism, the designation of an event as a “revolution” has had a strongly positive connotation because it implies the battle against an oppressive order and the promise of a new, more just system. As a result, leaders of anti-status quo initiatives have generally sought to call their movements revolutions, regardless of their proportions or intent. The modern history of the MENA region is filled with a range of events that have been called revolutions by their victorious initiators, in some cases less for the dramatic changes unleashed by them, than for the legitimacy a new leadership hopes to derive from appropriating this designation to their efforts.
The official narrative of post-1952 Egypt boasts a number of “revolutions,” including the ultimately unsuccessful ‘Urabi revolt/revolution of 1879-1882—presented as Egypt’s first anti-colonial nationalist movement—and the 1919 Revolution, which ended the British protectorate over Egypt.
However, the most influential “revolution” for Egypt’s twentieth century history was that of the Free Officers in July 1952. In its wake, power relations among the officers themselves took some months to stabilize, but the new leadership nonetheless moved ahead swiftly to consolidate its rule. As part of that process, one key instrument was the propagation of a narrative of their overthrow of the king which sought to justify its designation as a revolution. Presenting their overthrow of the king, not as a mere coup, but as the only truly successful, revolution in a line of noble nationalist uprisings going back to ‘Urabi, was key in garnering support for the new leadership.
The next example of a discursive claim to revolution came in the early days of Anwar al-Sadat’s presidency. Sadat had been a member of the same Free Officer group that overthrew the monarchy, and hence could claim a degree of revolutionary legitimacy, yet his initial assumption of power was challenged within the ruling group. In response, in May 1971 he purged several high-level opponents in what was originally termed a “corrective movement.” Sadat had neither the profile nor the power to attempt to minimize the importance of the iconic revolution of 1952. However, in short order, May 1971 was rechristened a “corrective revolution”, as the suppression of his opponents was constructed as constituting not a departure from, but a “righting” of, aspects of the 1952 revolution that had gone awry.
As Sadat’s successor, Husni Mubarak made no attempt to script a new revolutionary story. Instead, not until the extended protests of January and February 2011 that forced him to relinquish the presidency do we have the emergence of a new episode of revolution, that of 25 January.
Until the end of June of 2013, it seemed unimaginable that yet another episode of popular anti-government mobilization might be termed as a revolution so soon after 2011. Yet that is what has happened, although at present the narrative retains multiple strands. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood and their supporters have continued to refer to what happened—the ousting of President Muhammad Mursi—as a coup, but given the state’s heavy-handed repression of them, their voices currently have little effect on the official narrative. On the other hand, on the anti-Ikhwan side of the spectrum there are variations in applying the term “revolution” to June 30 and its fallout. Some have sought to portray the massive demonstrations as a continuation or resumption of the 25 January revolution; others script 30 June as a separate revolution; while a smaller group has attempted to narrate 30 June as the real revolution, with the events of January-February 2011 presented as an externally supported movement behind which the now criminalized Muslim Brotherhood was the moving force.
The stakes involved in the battles over such terms are far from merely semantic in import. Such competing narratives are manifestations at the discursive level of the ongoing, at times violent, struggle over the direction of post-Mubarak Egypt. They will continue both to shape and be shaped by the political contestation that is forging the legacies of 25 January and 30 June, regardless of whether as analysts we call them revolutions, uprisings or coups.
Photos are courtesy of Professor Jessica Winegar—see her guest post on the symbols of the Egyptian uprising.
Laurie A. Brand is the Robert Grandford Wright Professor and professor of international relations at the University of Southern California. She is also author of the forthcoming book, Official Stories: Politics and National Narratives in Egypt and Algeria (Stanford, 2014).
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