{"id":2621,"date":"2011-02-11T22:09:28","date_gmt":"2011-02-12T03:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=2621"},"modified":"2011-05-27T08:54:30","modified_gmt":"2011-05-27T13:54:30","slug":"more-thoughts-on-egypt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/02\/11\/more-thoughts-on-egypt\/","title":{"rendered":"More thoughts on Egypt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Max Forte at Zero Anthropology<\/a>* has a perceptive assessment of what he takes to be a (Hillary) “Clinton doctrine,” which he describes as the U.S.<\/p>\n

hedging [its] bets by keeping a foot in almost all camps, by maintaining contact with diverse sectors in a society critical to U.S. national security interests, emphasizing \u201cstability\u201d when regime survival seems possible, and then emphasizing \u201corderly transition\u201d when change seems probable. It\u00a0is a mixture of realism and opportunism and a desire to intervene without being seen to intervene, a low cost foreign policy that builds on established bases of military aid and support for civil society groups. By maintaining open and positive channels of communication (with Mubarak, the military, the April 6 Movement<\/a>, El Baradei, and even the Muslim Brotherhood [long a working ally of the U.S.<\/a>]) the U.S. made sure that no matter what resulted, it would remain in the picture as a continued player of importance. Viewed in this light, there is nothing contradictory about U.S. statements on Egypt.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The penultimate paragraph of his piece includes some very interesting links pointing to the role of the U.S. State Department-connected Alliance for Youth Movements<\/a> and of executives at Google in helping orchestrate the “revolution.” (And given their size relative to certain nations, why shouldn’t corporations like Google have a foreign policy?)<\/p>\n

Other accounts, however, like Charles Hirschkind’s “The Road to Tahrir”<\/a> or Gilbert Achcar’s “Whither Egypt?<\/a>” paint a more diverse and complex picture of the lengthy lead-up to this moment.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, I’m convinced that the face (and feel, and texture, and rhythm) of successful revolution is infectious, and that no matter what forces contributed to making it happen, what they unleashed is larger than they would be able to contain.<\/p>\n

In “Power, normality, revolution<\/a>,” Samule Schilke argues that “In reversal of Foucault\u2019s thesis, the Egyptian revolution shows that every form of resistance produces its own particular form of power.” To what extent that’s true we will see. But the following lines of Schilke’s clearly capture the point my last paragraph was intended to make. They are also, incidentally, a very good definition of what I mean by “anthropomorphism<\/a>,” in the (reclaimed) sense of an open-ended becoming-human, a change in the scope of “what a body can do”:<\/p>\n

Their experience of acting and changing their condition, the success of going out to the streets at all on January 25, of throwing back the police on January 28, of establishing law and order in the absence of the police after the lootings of January 29, of organizing mass peaceful demonstrations and putting the entire political system under pressure, has changed the way they understand their scope of possible action. Any attempt to govern them, be it by a democratic government or by the authoritarian system consolidating itself again, has to take this into account.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dialogic also provides a very good set of links here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

*originally incorrectly identified as “Next Anthropology.” Apologies to Max for getting the name wrong.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Max Forte at Zero Anthropology* has a perceptive assessment of what he takes to be a (Hillary) “Clinton doctrine,” which he describes as the U.S. hedging [its] bets by keeping a foot in almost all camps, by maintaining contact with diverse sectors in a society critical to U.S. national security interests, emphasizing \u201cstability\u201d when regime […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[691215],"tags":[17808,16891,17809,17810],"class_list":["post-2621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics_postpolitics","tag-egypt","tag-eventology","tag-revolutions","tag-social-change"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-Gh","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1065,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/04\/29\/obama-as-the-green-fdr-in-the-age-of-swine-flu\/","url_meta":{"origin":2621,"position":0},"title":"Obama as the “green FDR” in the age of Swine Flu","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 29, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"WorldChanging shares Joe Romm's \"The Green FDR: Obama's First 100 Days Make - and May Remake - History,\" which compiles a nice account from Climate Progress of the good things the Obama administration has done on the environmental front. According to Romm, \"three game-changing accomplishments stand out:\" \"1. Green Stimulus:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Swine-flu-outbreak-in-Mex-001.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2009\/04\/Swine-flu-outbreak-in-Mex-001.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2478,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/02\/01\/egypt-everywhere\/","url_meta":{"origin":2621,"position":1},"title":"Egypt & everywhere","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Uprisings, revolutions, and sudden political realignments are perfect subjects for process-relational philosophical reflection. Their causes are always somewhat mysterious; historians may reconstruct the events that led up to them, and may come up with theories to account for them, but these almost always remain highly contestable. They are moments when\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2011\/02\/tahrirsquareprotestonfacebook-275x151.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2649,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/02\/15\/spreading-revolution\/","url_meta":{"origin":2621,"position":2},"title":"Spreading revolution","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The New York Times has a couple of nice pieces on the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions: an interactive account of the key events and a more detailed piece outlining the role of the different protest groups, bloggers and Facebook-ites, nonviolent resistance tactics, and the Obama administration. A few quick thoughts:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media ecology"","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1371,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/11\/15\/slouching-toward-the-cancun-bar\/","url_meta":{"origin":2621,"position":3},"title":"slouching toward the Cancun bar","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Peaksurfer's Albert Bates has a very good article up called The Great Change: Slouching towards Cancun. A few tidbits: Because of the huge outpouring of non-profit energy, money and effort at Copenhagen last year, and the subsequent meltdown of the Copenhagen round, the approach to this year\u2019s COP (Conference of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-culture"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2715,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/02\/27\/revolutionary-democracy\/","url_meta":{"origin":2621,"position":4},"title":"Revolutionary democracy","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Here are a few thoughts after watching Frontline's Revolution in Cairo, which is a very good 24-minute summary of how this particular democratic moment occurred, and after reading Badiou's, Hardt & Negri's, Hallward's, Amit Rai's, and some other takes on the events. (1) The recipe: Tools + Techniques + Events\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media ecology"","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10471,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/04\/11\/process-relational-ecologies-querying-some-terms\/","url_meta":{"origin":2621,"position":5},"title":"Process-relational ecologies: querying some terms","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 11, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"It's wonderful to see that process-relational theory is getting noticed in the study of social-ecological systems. A new article in Ecology and Society, Garcia et al's \"Adopting process-relational perspectives to tackle the challenges of social-ecological systems research,\" argues that a process-relational perspective, \"which focuses on nonequilibrium dynamics and relations between\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/04\/paradigm-event.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/04\/paradigm-event.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/04\/paradigm-event.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/04\/paradigm-event.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2621"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4280,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2621\/revisions\/4280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}