The privilege of revolution: Gender, class, space, and affect in Egypt

Abstract

In this commentary, I challenge assumptions about political transformation by contrasting women's experiences at home during the Egyptian revolution with the image of the iconic male revolutionary in Tahrir Square. I call attention to the way that revolution is experienced and undertaken in domestic spaces, through different forms of affect, in ways deeply inflected by gender and class. [Egypt, revolution, gender, class, space, affect, generation]

Gaming the system: Semiotic indeterminacy and political circulation in the new age of revolution

“…Spaces of indeterminacy and uncertainty are often central to revolutionary action, as are a wide range of mediated affective states fundamental to the constitution of political subjects. At the same time, protest as a socially resonant performance gives embodied shape and meaning to revolution in ways that may reinscribe social differences and hierarchies (Winegar, 2012). The specificities of mobilization and particularly their sensational, affective and material modes of communication shape horizons for what is possible and desirable after the revolution.…”

“This Is Not a Parade, It's a Protest March”: Intertextuality, Citation, and Political Action on the Streets of Bolivia and Argentina

“…Anthropologists have not usually explored street protests as rituals, per se, but have responded to the recent upsurge in street‐ and square‐based protests in multiple ways, underlining just how rich protests are as cultural products as well as political action. They have examined protests’ relation to urban space (e.g., Corsín Jiménez and Estalella ) and to the economy (Collins ), described the experience of protesting (Taussig ), discussed the democratic practices internal to the protests and their implications for democracy more broadly (Graeber ; Maeckelbergh ), highlighted the importance of the “ordinary” in moments of upheaval (Ahmad ), and considered the possibilities for participation (Winegar ). A recently published collection explores the performative aesthetics of global protests since 2011 (Werbner et al ).…”

“…The #8N cacerolazos were a media event as much as they were about the experience of being on the streets, and the TV audience was clearly one of the most important audiences for the protests (cf. Ahmad ; Winegar ). Although most of the demonstrators seemed to be protesting about insecurity and Cristina's style of government, actual demands remained weakly articulated and somewhat diffuse.…”

On Precariousness and the Ethical Imagination: The Year 2012 in Sociocultural Anthropology

“…The articles on Occupy (Juris ; Razsa and Kurnik ) and Egypt (Abu‐Lughod ; Agrama ; Ghannam ; Hafez ; Hamdy ; Hirschkind ; Mahmood ; Saad ; Winegar ) were joined by others similarly concerned with political and moral transformation, such as among communities in Costa Rica, where the establishment of transgenic‐free territories articulates itself through local and national sovereignty as well as a “defense of life itself” (Pearson :90); among a globally circulating video game that was created by a Serbian student resistance movement and that encodes a logic of nonviolent revolution (Greenberg ); among hackers for whom hacking is a technical, aesthetic, and ethical project (Coleman ); among an indigenous group that has charted an inspiring course for environmental politics in the 21st century (Cepek ); and among the “hidden,” progressive, black, mediatized counterpublic in the United States (Di Leonardo ) and among queer activists in India (Dave ). Two articles by Claire Wendland (, ) are similarly noteworthy because they detail the quiet cultivation of dissent among Malawian medical students as they articulate their own moral economies of healing through encounters with both their vastly more privileged Western counterparts and the local poor.…”