{"id":1550,"date":"2011-08-04T14:13:20","date_gmt":"2011-08-04T18:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/?p=1550"},"modified":"2011-12-18T03:48:48","modified_gmt":"2011-12-18T07:48:48","slug":"the-suspicious-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/2011\/08\/the-suspicious-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"The Suspicious Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"
What does it do to people, and to a society, to suddenly become revolutionary<\/em>?<\/p>\n I recently had the chance to speak with Talal Asad, one of the leading anthropologists alive today, about the experience of being in Cairo earlier this year as the revolution unfolded around him. Our conversation appears this week at The Immanent Frame<\/a>. What stuck out for him, and which he was still trying to find the words for, was a subtle but utterly pervasive kind of suspicion, one that often ran in direct contradiction to the facts on the ground.<\/p>\n NS: What was it like to be there in the midst of a revolution?<\/em><\/p>\n TA: Even before my wife and I went, people kept saying to us, \u201cAre you sure it\u2019s safe?\u201d Our Air France plane was actually cancelled. We were due to go on the 29th of January. We eventually left on the 12th of February, via Paris. We weren\u2019t even able to go directly to Cairo, either. We had to go through Beirut. Then, all sorts of people starting ringing, again asking, \u201cIs it safe? Are you sure you\u2019ll be safe? We\u2019ve heard all sorts of frightening things.\u201d Remember the stories circulating early in the uprising about the prisons that had been opened and the police being withdrawn from the streets? That was what the fear was about. People wouldn\u2019t believe me, but I was there for four months, almost, and I went all over town and never encountered any violence. I didn\u2019t have any friends who could attribute violence to the uprisings\u2014which isn\u2019t to say it didn\u2019t happen. Cairo contains eighteen million people, so it has always had its fair share of criminality. But ordinary life, actually, continued. Cafes were open, and shops, restaurants, and so on. You\u2019d often hear that foreigners were in danger, or that ordinary life was impossible, but that is really not true.<\/p>\n NS: Impossible, that is, without the control of the state and the police?<\/em><\/p>\n TA: Exactly. There are elements in Egypt that were quite happy to circulate stories of unrest. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces talked again and again about the fact that we must have stability, which is then linked ominously to questions about the state of the economy. Since the economy suffers from the political instability in the country, they say, we shouldn\u2019t have more demonstrations or strikes. But one of the things that emerged for me there, and which I\u2019m trying to make<\/a> sense of, was the constant flow of speculation, of suspicion, about who\u2019s saying and who\u2019s doing what.\u00a0Why are they doing this? Are they really doing it for good reasons? Is it the army? The Muslim Brothers?<\/em>Is their presence or absence significant? Do they mean what they say?<\/em>\u2014You know, that sort of thing. I can\u2019t claim to have made good sense of it yet, but, to me, this seems very important.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n We also discussed the transition from violent to nonviolent resistance, blasphemy laws, and even the end of the world. Particularly choice, too, is this passage, where he describes a conversation about colonialism with the great literary theorist Edward Said, whose successor Asad arguably has become:<\/p>\n I remember talking once a long time ago with Edward Said about empire and how it might be defeated. We were just sitting and having coffee, and at one point I responded to some of his suggestions by saying, \u201cNo, no, this won\u2019t work. You can\u2019t resist these forces.\u201d So he demanded a little irritably: \u201cWhat should one do? What would you do?\u201d So I said, \u201cWell, all one can do is to try and make them uncomfortable.\u201d Which was really a very feeble reply, but I couldn\u2019t think of anything else.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n
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