The Tahrir Effect: History, Space, and Protest in the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.

Abstract

In this dissertation, I approach Cairo’s famed Tahrir Square as both a political space and a lens for understanding the successes and failures of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. Building upon and expanding the sociological literature on repertoires of contention, spaces in contention and revolutions as a processes, I argue that a diverse but specific set of historical conditions constituted Tahrir as the center of the revolution and relegated mobilization efforts beyond the square to the margins. These conditions included the media obsession with Tahrir, the regime’s attempts to limit mobilization to Tahrir and the regime’s own paradoxical endorsement of Tahrir as its central counterpart. They also included the historical significance of Tahrir itself, which made it an idealized location for protest, the reliance on a sit-in as the central mode of action, and the history of coalition building in and around Tahrir. Together, these conditions created a conjuncture of processes that made Tahrir the most powerful center of gravity of the Egyptian Revolution, the pivot point around which a “revolutionary boundary” was established. I develop a spatio-historical analysis in which I link the square’s historical constitution as a political space to the long history of political protest in Egypt. I then examine how it was that Tahrir Square emerged as the central space and voice of the revolution, the point at which multiple repertoires of revolution converged. I study not only how the Tahrir sit-in became the central repertoire of the revolution, but also its relation to important modes of action such as labor strikes and popular committees in other urban centers in Egypt. Through a close analysis of the interconnected forces of space, class, and social media, I show how the goals and demands of the revolution were distilled and, ultimately, defanged. The dissertation is based on extensive ethnographic work, historical research, and 106 interviews conducted over the course of two research trips—one from February 4, 2011, to April 16, 2011, which overlapped with the revolution itself, and another from July 16, 2012, to January 5, 2013.