Questions on Egyptian revolt
Upon the release of his new book, Working Out Egypt: Effendi Masculinity and Subject Formation in Colonial Modernity, 1870–1940 (Duke University Press), Wilson Chacko Jacob was asked to share his insight on recent Egyptian protests that have had a domino effect in the Middle East.
Jacob, who is graduate program director for Concordia’s Department of History, says Egypt has once again demonstrated its capacity to overthrow unwanted rulers.
Q: What connections do you see between your book and the uprising in Egypt?
A: Working Out Egypt sought to demonstrate some of the conditions in which people emerged as political subjects within the newly forged space of the nation state between 1870 and 1940. I showed how traditional forms of political power were eclipsed by new notions of sovereignty, representation and legal citizenship.
However, the persistence of colonial relations undermined the possibility of genuine democratic politics even as the new political subjects took to the streets to lay claim to a future free of all repression. The special relationship between Hosni Mubarak’s regime and the United States, questioned by the people who took part in the popular protests, echoes some of this history in its broad outlines.
Q: Are there similarities between the colonialist view of Egypt during British rule and the West’s view of Egypt today?
A: I suppose it depends on which “West” we are talking about. There have always been economic and political affinities and alliances between groups that traverse the imagined geographies of East and West. This is true both in terms of progressive trajectories targeting universal principles such as freedom and in terms of reactionary trajectories aiming for equally universal principles such as “might makes right.”
Colonialism’s racist division of the world into peoples who were civilized and uncivilized was contingent on obscuring relations of domination. Some of this racist rhetoric (and its attendant politics) has returned in the form of the “Arab Mind” and the bogeyman of the Muslim terrorist, but it is becoming much harder to disguise and to sustain.
Q: Are there parallels between Egypt’s reaction to President Hosni Mubarak and its reaction to British colonial rule?
A: Sure. At both times there was a deep sense of anger at external power brokers propping up regimes not constituted by the people to serve the people. The raison d’être of these regimes was clear to all but the most naive or corrupt: To serve themselves, their cronies and foreign interests.
Q: What are your impressions of media coverage of the Egyptian revolution?
A: Over the course of the January 25th Revolution, as it is being called, the power of Egyptian people coming together in increasingly larger numbers to lay claim to a better life – social and political – overwhelmed even the tendency in the corporate media to mouth the party line for which they’ve become notorious for in the last few decades.
That said, coverage in Arabic by Al Jazeera, despite outright attacks by the state on its ability to report from Egypt, was significantly better than most of what the English-language media (including Al Jazeera English) provided.
Q: What does the West need to understand about Egypt and what might it learn from the uprising?
A: Dispensers of neoliberal political and economic projects should understand – whether in Washington, London or Paris – that people around the world are unhappy with the current state of affairs. This is true whether in Egypt or in the United States.
Along with bleak indicators of our future, new communications technology spread models of desirable futures, raising expectations of a consumerist paradise that is further and further beyond the reach of ordinary folks. This is a dangerous mix for which current politics everywhere seems inadequate. Current politics are just barely keeping up with the recursive fallout: uprisings in the Arab world, downsizing, unemployment, homegrown terrorism, endless wars.
Q: What is Egypt’s biggest challenge?
A: The country’s biggest challenge is to create a viable political society in which as many voices as possible receive genuine representation. This is a challenge that’s not particular to the Arab world but is universal. Surely, there are many obstacles on the road ahead that are specific to Egypt.
This challenge, if met, however, promises a new vision of the future for people everywhere. It is a vision that Egyptians strived for with their genuine and courageous political act of coming together in the January 25th Revolution.
Related links:
• Wilson Chacko Jacob
• Concordia Department of History
• Duke University Press
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