Everyone is talking about and thinking about Tahrir Square. Gautam Bhan's brilliant think-aloud/ramble on Kafila touches upon some of the issues I am most interested in. Do leave related links in the comments: I'd love to read more such thoughts.
(Some extracts pasted below. Click on the title to read the entire article on Kafila, because extracts will not do this justice)
The protests in Tunisia and Egypt have won the first of what will have to be many victories. Mubarak and Ben Ali have fled and dictators have fallen to people’s uprisings – the street and the public square have, at least for the moment, reclaimed their voice from the boulevards and corridors of power. Globally, these have been reported and rightly hailed as victories over entrenched dictatorships. Yet the uprisings have much to teach those of us who live in “democracies” – we must not lose the opportunity to ask what Egypt and Tunisia can teach us, no matter where we are.
It is worth remembering what began and catapulted the first set of protests in Tunisia and what has been the resounding cry throughout the uprisings. Mohammad Bouazizi, an unemployed man, immolated himself alleging police harassment. It’s a story that could and does belong to any village, town and city in India. Within it, lie two strands of injustice – economic inequality and the indignities and injustices of everyday life in the deeply hierarchical and stratified societies we inhabit. The question lies in the spark that tips them off and the moment than then takes sparks and turns them into organized and unorganized fires. The story of how the uprisings were organized, in a way, is slowly coming to light now – but I doubt we’ll ever fully know or that there is any “one” story of what tipped the scale now as opposed to other moments in Egypt’s history.
...How the protestors and the new regimes can fight the structural economic roots of their discontent is more difficult to ascertain than how they will demand more political freedom – but in the relationship between the two lies the challenge for both them and us. It poses a question to us: how do we wed our own economic resistances to political ones?
...Is the changed political management, imagination and narrative of inequality that we so often lament on this site and in many of our writings also an opportunity we must take? Movements across the country, of course, are doing this in different ways – but is there a meta-narrative that could be told? or even a meso one? Is such an aggregation a value-add?
(Some extracts pasted below. Click on the title to read the entire article on Kafila, because extracts will not do this justice)
What can Egypt and Tunisia teach us?
The protests in Tunisia and Egypt have won the first of what will have to be many victories. Mubarak and Ben Ali have fled and dictators have fallen to people’s uprisings – the street and the public square have, at least for the moment, reclaimed their voice from the boulevards and corridors of power. Globally, these have been reported and rightly hailed as victories over entrenched dictatorships. Yet the uprisings have much to teach those of us who live in “democracies” – we must not lose the opportunity to ask what Egypt and Tunisia can teach us, no matter where we are.
It is worth remembering what began and catapulted the first set of protests in Tunisia and what has been the resounding cry throughout the uprisings. Mohammad Bouazizi, an unemployed man, immolated himself alleging police harassment. It’s a story that could and does belong to any village, town and city in India. Within it, lie two strands of injustice – economic inequality and the indignities and injustices of everyday life in the deeply hierarchical and stratified societies we inhabit. The question lies in the spark that tips them off and the moment than then takes sparks and turns them into organized and unorganized fires. The story of how the uprisings were organized, in a way, is slowly coming to light now – but I doubt we’ll ever fully know or that there is any “one” story of what tipped the scale now as opposed to other moments in Egypt’s history.
...How the protestors and the new regimes can fight the structural economic roots of their discontent is more difficult to ascertain than how they will demand more political freedom – but in the relationship between the two lies the challenge for both them and us. It poses a question to us: how do we wed our own economic resistances to political ones?
...Is the changed political management, imagination and narrative of inequality that we so often lament on this site and in many of our writings also an opportunity we must take? Movements across the country, of course, are doing this in different ways – but is there a meta-narrative that could be told? or even a meso one? Is such an aggregation a value-add?
