Revolutions in language … a Cairo street scene two days after Hosni Mubarak was ousted from power in 2011. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images What do words such as 'freedom' or 'coup' mean in Egypt today? One artist is collecting definitions from across a divided nation Patrick Kingsley Cairo
Friday 18 July 2014
as it a coup? Was it a revolution? The overthrow of Mohamed Morsi last July spawned unending debate in Egypt about how the president's removal should be defined.
BY MLYNXQUALEY on FEBRUARY 4, 2015
On January 31st, A Dictionary of the Revolution launched a kickstarter to boost the project toward its final phase:
This fund-raising campaign is focused on building the dictionary a digital text and sound archive for the material that Amira Hanafi and her team have collected in the past year. Through one-on-one interviews, leaping off from particular hot-button words, “A Dictionary of the Revolution makes space for viewpoints that are no longer represented in the media or in the Egyptian public.
[Late graffiti artist Hisham Rizq, killed in July 2014, painted by Ammar Abu Bakr. Captured 12 September 2014]By Mona Abaza, 25 January 2015 Clearly Cairene graffiti has lost momentum during this year. Having been the faithful barometer of the revolution over the past three years, graffiti has recently faced transmutations and drawbacks that run parallel with the political process of restoring “order” in the street. The heartbreaking story of the recent death of a cheerful and bright young graffiti artist, nineteen-year-old Hisham Rizq, completes this sad picture.
Asef Bayat Sunday, January 25, 2015 Things in the Middle East usually appear far worse than they really are when looked at from the outside. But on my recent visit to Egypt — as I talked and listened to people, watched local television, read daily papers and made observations — it became clear that revolutionaries were going through painful times. A deep disenchantment seemed to color the sentiments of many who once held high hopes for their remarkable revolution, but now have to face the vulgar triumphalism of the counter-revolution airing from what looked, not long ago, like an independent media.
An anti-Mubarak protester in Tahrir Square, in November 2014 (Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters) THANASSIS CAMBANIS, JAN 16 2015 CAIRO—Four years after the revolution he helped lead, Basem Kamel has noticeably scaled back his ambitions. The regime he and his friends thought they overthrew after storming Tahrir Square has returned. In the face of relentless pressure and violence from the authorities, most of the revolutionary movements have been sidelined or snuffed out. Egypt’s new strongman, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has injected new zeal and energy into the military establishment.
Graffiti in Cairo depicting a television with the text "Go down to the streets" Sep 05 2014 The 2011 revolutionary uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa abruptly captured global attention as the world was drawn breathlessly into the tumult with a profusion of media content, from Tweets to amateur video footage. Amidst the media blitz, analyses yielded two conflated and reactionary narratives of events. One contended that the popular protests of the so-called “Arab Spring” were wholly unexpected, a shocking diversion from the familiar politics of the Middle East in a seeming contravention of the reigning global political apathy at the turn of the millennium.
