Finding the Commons in Tahrir Square: Agonistic Commons and Egyptian Democracy

Finding the Commons in Tahrir Square: Agonistic Commons and Egyptian Democracy Nadia Elokdah Democracy: A Common Struggle At the beginning of 2011, burgeoning digital discontent emerged through the physical and political occupation of Tahrir Square by Cairo’s activists and youth. While the initial events leading to the ouster of Former President Hosni Mubarak lasted eighteen days, from 25 January to 11 February, the conflict continues through the present day. Within this research, the lens is cast around the first year of the struggle for democracy, 2011. Throughout this time period many spheres of public space were utilized to allow for confrontation of socio-political ideas and principles, sometimes amongst adversaries, but more often between polarized factions.1 From the beginnings of the occupation of Tahrir Square through the fall of the Mubarak Regime to the inauguration of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), Egypt underwent vast shifts in public opinion and social discourse, as explained through the series of stakeholder diagrams on the following page. This dynamic and contentious atmosphere led to confusion and disorder within the public realm. How do these shifts relate to the notions of publicity and privacy within these contemporary, newly democratic societies? How is engagement within the public discourse facilitated and understood as intrinsically common? As well, within this practice, who is included and excluded from participating?

Of great significance to this discourse is the struggle of one particular subset: highly targeted, politically engaged, and commonly marginalized young women within public space. Widely accepted cultural practices of harassment toward and even violence against women run rampant throughout the public domain of Cairo, often limiting their ability to participate within the public space of Egyptian politics. How can a society claim democratic practices when differences cannot be confronted and the overall culture is not committed to collective, agonistic existence?

Leading to the Square The ‘public sphere’ as Habermas defines, is “a domain of our social life in which such a thing as public opinion can be formed.”2 His understanding of the public sphere provides a critical frame through which to comprehend the collective understanding and discontent of Egyptians across the country, which ultimately led to the Mubarak Revolution. Stewing under the surface of the diverse Egyptian citizenry was a burgeoning restlessness with the state of affairs and the impact on daily lives.

A boy holds a sign telling Egyptians ‘demand your rights’ via Messages from Tahrir: Signs from Egypt’s Revolution.

Under the 30 year reign of Hosni Mubarak, spirits were broken and

1 Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox. (London: Verso, 2005), 13.

2 Jurgen Habermas. “The Public Sphere,” in Jurgen Habermas on Society and Politics: A Reader. Edited by Steven Seidman (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1989), 231.

systems were subverted to suit the interests of those in power. A taxi driver summarized the public’s common defeat, “Human beings in this country are scattered dust, with no value…no one gets his rights in the country.”3 The Egyptian Movement for Change was growing louder with “its slogan kefaya – ‘enough’ – [giving] voice to something long inside the hearts of Egyptians who chafed under the repressive rule,” attracting revolutionaries who could no longer allow corruption to rule the public domain.4 Common public opinion was suppressed within standard forms of expression: television and print news media, public gatherings and protests, conversations on the street or in a taxi, even within the formal education system. Everyone feared association with messages of discontent in the public sphere would easily find the speaker. The public space of the city was carved into one of exclusive ownership, only the powerful opinion could remain. This led many to turn to anonymous expression through the new tools of the common public domain, the Internet. Traffic grew on several websites calling for change. With enough anonymous participation, these isolated individuals formed camaraderie of shared public opinion calling for a culmination of critical mass: the Jan25 Occupation.

This gathering would be the start of a new chapter for the Egyptian people in Tahrir Square, reinstated as a collective public space, illuminating the sequestered truths of the public sphere.

Inside the Square: The Public Sphere Converges upon a Public Space Protestors occupied the Square on January 25 and systematically re-appropriated the space.

Throughout the three weeks of protesting, a sophisticated level of physical and social organization became markedly discernible.

Timeline of the Occupation of Tahrir Square and image of violent confrontation between Activists

Manifesting in Tahrir Square was

and the Military via Messages from Tahrir: Signs from Egypt’s Revolution.

the discursive production of urban

space through material, human, 5

and social infrastructures.” As Torre defines, “public space is produced through public discourse, and its representation is not the exclusive territory of architecture, but is the product of the inextricable relationship between social action and physical space.”6 In other words, the occupation was a convergence of citizens committed to creating a discursive commons.

In the initial days the struggle for defining commonality despite pluralism seemed effortless in this microcosm: men and women protested side-by-side, young and old, Muslim and Christian, privileged

3 Khaled Alkhamissi. Taxi, trans. Jonathan Wright. (Doha: Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation, 2011) 139-140.

4 Esraa Abdel Fattah, et al. “After the Arab Spring, Mobilizing for Change in Egypt,” in The Unfinished Revolution: voices from the global fight for women’s rights. Edited by Minky Worden (New York: Seven Stories, 2012), 73.

5 Henri Lefebvre. The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Maiden, MA: Blackwell, 1991), 16-17.

6 Susana Torre, “Claiming the Public Space: the mothers of Plaza de Mayo,” in: The Sex of Architecture, edited by Diana Agrest, et. al. (New York: Abrams, 1996), 249.

and poor. Ahmed Hassan, revolutionary and lead actor in The Square, describes the powerful sense of unity within Tahrir, “We were all equal. Reflections of each other. We were all present. All one hand.

One Hand!”7 The physical realm of the occupied square was achieving something not often found in Cairo’s streets, unity and understanding. “[A]s a result, demonstrators also reveal themselves to each other. Egyptians described this phenomenon at Tahrir Square…Protesters don’t just show the world a mass of people. They discover their own numbers — people with similar, if not identical, concerns.”8 The discourse within the square was spreading quickly, bringing together a public searching for commonality.

In the days that followed, however, Tahrir Square was thrust back into the reality of a country in uprising dominated by a police state. The protestors were faced with the veracity of continually occupying public space; the idea of fear as a social construct of physical space began to infiltrate.

Combined with proponents of limited rights to public space, certain realities were engendered in Tahrir Square. Despite the vocal objection of some, women became targets for exclusion and abused for participating in the protest. Police violence increased to brutal levels while the female voice was stifled through a systematic marginalization of women by a traditional patriarchal representation of power.

[T]here has also been a more violent deterrent to female political participation, namely a sharp increase in sexual assaults, especially in Tahrir Square. These attacks are never by individual assailants but are perpetuated by mobs, which, according to eyewitnesses, appear to be carefully organized. The tactic is often to separate a woman, ranging in age from teenager to pensioner, from her companions. The woman is then stripped and assaulted.9 Outside the Square: Public Sphere without Public Space As the discursive production of space continues within the boundaries of Tahrir Square, through struggle and conflict, a very different public realm still existed on the other side of the protestor barricades. Much of this can be attributed to the immediate and extensive shut down of the Internet and social media and news outlets. Throughout the protests, most of the information reaching the average Egyptian was government propaganda, reinforcing the police state ideology and demonizing the revolutionaries. Combined with the pre-existing notions of the socio-cultural gridlock, a people trapped between modernity and tradition, the pursuit of a common and democratic public sphere beyond the walls of Tahrir Square is much more challenging.

Many women felt the pervasive issue of harassment elevated within Cairo’s streets just as it had within Tahrir Square. The targeted harassment of women around Cairo is a well-documented issue, as

7 Ahmed Hassan, The Square, directed by Jehane Noujaim (2013; Cairo: Independent Release, 2013.), Film Screening.

8 Michael Kimmleman, “In Protest, the Power of Place,” The New York Times, October 15, 2011.

9 Mirette F.Mabrouk, “The Case For Women’s Rights In Post-Uprising Egypt.” Midan Masr. September 18, 2013.

exemplified through participatory, non-governmental organizations such as Harass Map.10 Public discourse around the problem is beginning to bring these deeply embedded, social practices into question; however, the transition is slow in dissolving the long-seeded gender discrimination issues within the public spaces and public sphere of contemporary Cairo. Many of the contributions, by women, to the introduction of democracy went overshadowed by the violence and exclusion within the same socio-political discourse and physical space.

“The fact was that Egyptian women played a key role during the 18 days of revolution, and were always present and active in Tahrir Square; being present in the square's centre with their families and children, providing medical care for the injured and supplies for the protesters at the sit-in, protesting and being beaten harshly by the security forces, choking on tear gas - and even dying to live in a free, democratic country.”11 For decades, women in Egypt have been closely involved in democratic reform movements. “But after playing a vital role in the [Mubarak] revolution, women are being actively excluded from the reform process.”12 “Major human rights violations occurred, on the scale of international concern, in front of the Egyptian Museum in the middle of downtown Cairo. Hundreds of women were rounded up during a peaceful Women’s Day demonstration in late 2011, by the order of the SCAF leadership, unlawfully detained and subjected to enormous and cruel violations of their person for no reason other than as punishment for being in Tahrir with the intention of demanding rights for women.” They were specifically targeted as threats to the Military Council’s stability, which was structured upon denying the expansion and acceptance of pluralism within the democratic process of this new Egypt.13 These frequent, yet often isolated experiences of harassment led to a much larger, systematic attack on politically active women across Cairo. By simply participating in the sphere of public opinion and agonistic conflict amongst adversaries, these women became targets for social, as well as, institutionalized aggression within the public spaces of the city. In a statement from Amnesty International, global awareness was brought to these institutionalized attacks on a vulnerable subset of the Egyptian population, "Forcing women to have 'virginity tests' is utterly unacceptable. Its purpose is to degrade women because they are women. Women and girls must be able to express their views on the future of Egypt without being detained, tortured, or subjected to profoundly degrading and discriminatory treatment."14 Beyond the Square: Future of Democracy in Egypt

10 “Harass Map,”accessed October 30, 2013. http://harassmap.org/en/what-we-do/the-map/ 11 Habiba Mohsen. “What made her go there? Samira Ibrahim and Egypt's virginity test trial.” Aljazeera.

12 Hon. Melanne Verveer, Ambassador at Large for Global Women’s Issues, U.S. Department of State. “Women and The Arab Spring” (lecture presented at the Joint Hearing of the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate, 112th Congress, Washington, D.C., November 2, 2011).

13 Public Lecture and interview with author. New York City. November 12, 2013.

14 “Egypt Women Protestors Forced to take ‘Virginity Tests’,” accessed November 24, 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12854391

Through the reading and understanding of the publicity in Cairo and in Tahrir Square preceding and during the 2011 Mubarak Revolution, this complex socio-political struggle for dominance in the public realm can be distilled. The evolution of these significant events leading to the successful removal of a dictator and the intended implementation of a democratic government, speaks volumes exemplifying the strength of the people and their ability to produce and employ new visions of the common public domain.

The digital sphere allowed for the creation of an engaged public within the space of Tahrir Square; without the inherent tools of anonymity captured by social media, it seems unlikely that such a powerful display of public opinion could have been collected and catalyzed into the realm of physical public space. However, it seems necessary to recognize the vital role Tahrir Square played in unfolding this unprecedented democratic process. While the digital public realm allowed the free exchange of ideas, the tangible physicality and publicity of occupying the Square as a tool for expressing political public opinion was undeniably the largest factor of success in the exposure of ideas and acknowledging a renewed conception of the democratic commons.

Accepting this hypothesis, it can be understood that without the publicity, without the ability to participate in the political arena of the public realm, democracy can never truly be achieved. As Chantal Mouffe proposes, the pursuit of an alternative, even more inclusive, understanding of democracy catalyzes the discursive nature of public space seen through the evolution of Tahrir Square. While antagonism occurs between enemies – individuals with no common symbolic space – ‘agonism’ is the relation between adversaries “that is, persons who are friends because they share a common symbolic space but also enemies because they want to organize this common symbolic space in a different way.”15 As long as the people in Cairo can remain engaged in the struggle for common democracy, the public space shall remain a symbolic commonality. This discourse begs, how does a society seeking democracy define its common public when a particular group is viewed as marginal, unwanted participants in public discourse and the public domain? “No country can get ahead if it leaves half of its population behind…Democracy without the participation of women is a contradiction in terms, and economies without the inclusion of women will not prosper.”16

15 Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox. (London: Verso, 2005), 13.

16 Hon. Melanne Verveer, Ambassador at Large for Global Women’s Issues, U.S. Department of State. “Women and The Arab Spring” (lecture presented at the Joint Hearing of the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate, 112th Congress, Washington, D.C., November 2, 2011).