The rich energy, higher morality and subversive solidarity, almost a new way of being, which the movement has become shows that the particular demand for the removal of Mubarak became a trigger for the unfolding of a wider democratic and radical, even revolutionary sentiment and aspiration among the people. This aspiration could not have unfolded without the break with normalcy, the negation and suspension of the given social order which Tahrir square has come to stand for entailed. Not just the demand for the removal of Mubarak but this new way of being, reverberations of the new, of the not-yet and beyond – isn't this what is precious, radical and universalisable and above all, inappropriable by this or that tweaking of liberal democracy and capitalism. But why emphasise on the protests as marking the break with normalcy and the suspension of the given social order? At the risk of sounding alarmist and cynical about the Tahrir square protests let me raise certain disconcerting questions – and I know that these questions are a bit premature since the protests have ebbed but not over yet. Is the Tahrir square (protests) already getting readied for its fetishisation into a one-of-its-kind spectacle? Is it soon going to get a colour – pink, orange, velvet? Is it already an image a la Che, now in circulation in the global market of anti-establishment images and memorabilia? Is some company already printing Tahrir square T-shirts and mugs to sell and earn more for the market to capitalize on yet another youth sub-culture? Is business already waiting for the deluge of tourists who are soon going to descend in flocks at Tahrir square? When everyone from Obama and Hillary Clinton to Omar Suleiman to Thomas Friedman and Fareed Zakaria are welcoming these protests (we must listen to the protestors!), such questions might not be entirely misplaced to ask, even if slightly untimely. Against this possible celebration of the protests as a spectacle, as yet another disembodied image, we must immediately point out to what in it resists this, what in it opens the way to its intensification and further radicalization. How can we sour Tahrir square's impending honeymoon with counter-cultural capitalism, including the counter-cultural left. What in its further unfolding can lead to events that would make it unpalatable to this appropriation so that it does not become just another ‘pro-democracy' protest. Perhaps one way to achieve this is to place Tahrir square not really in the sequence of Tehran 1979, Berlin 1989 or Tiananmen Square 1989 but to place it in something less global and more concrete: say, the 1977 bread uprising in Egypt mostly led by workers and the popular classes or the social basis of the ongoing movement, its class composition, or what is happening in smaller towns and the countryside. Break with normalcy The specific demand for the removal of Mubarak apart, what stands out is the tremendous political charge and dynamic energy which the protests in Tahrir square have displayed. Roger Cohen of the New York Times called Tahrir square ‘a tolerant mini-republic' which displays ‘serendipitous order' instead of sterile chaos (Feb 6, 2011). Indeed it felt like the protests were reaching for a much better society than what just the removal of Mubarak and reinstating a routine multi-party democracy would mean. The signs, the sights and sounds from Tahrir square are ominous to any ruling group, be it Mubarak or Obama or Merkel. In bringing Cairo to a ‘standstill' the protests revealed the ‘still and dead', petrified nature of existing scheme of things and social order. The ‘chaos' and ‘break with normalcy' pointed to new ways and means of doing things, that a return to normalcy even with the sops that Mubarak has now offered cannot but look like such a compromise. It went beyond merely registering an opposition to Mubarak and prefigured something more – more than what for example Michael Rubin of the New York Times suggests: removal of Mubarak, “establishment of a technocratic transitional government” opening the way for “a new democratic order” (New York Times, Feb 7, 2011). Beyond Egypt, beyond any specific country, democratic or not, it has stirred our finer aspirations and hopes of a society beyond what the present order can accommodate, so that it is not the ‘break from normalcy' but normalcy itself which feels out of place and not right. The best way to kill ‘a republic called Tahrir' turns out to be simple – restoration of law and order, return to normalcy and so on. Let us look at the statement from the Office of the Vice-President, Omar Suleiman released on Feb 6, 2011 following negotiations with opposition groups. The statement recognises the ‘legitimate demands of the youth of Jan 25 (protests) and society's political forces”. It does not address the issue of removal of Mubarak and his regime but focuses attention on the breakdown of normalcy: “the lack of security for the populace; disturbances to daily life; the paralysis of public services; the suspension of education in universities and schools; the logistical delays in the delivery of essential goods; the damages to and the losses of the Egyptian economy”. It is clear that for the authorities, the best way to defuse the political character of the mass protests is to touch base, state some home truths: normalcy, routine life, business as usual (kids must go to school!) and so on. Post-ideological? This emphasis on return to normalcy and law and order answers some of the questions raised about these protests, regarding the vacuum of a post-Mubarak order. Much has been talked about the inability to put our fingers in defining what exactly these protests meant apart from the ‘negative' agenda of ‘remove those in power', remove Mubarak. The US insisted that the main demand for removal of Mubarak was fraught with creating a situation which would enable the Muslim Brotherhood to establish control. Those opposing this position, emphasise instead the secular, democratic character of the protest and the marginality of the Brotherhood. However, most commentators (including pro-protest ones) seem to agree on the absence of any clearly left-wing or right-wing character of the protestors. Nawal el-Saadawi the 80-year old pre-eminent Egyptian feminist said this from Tahrir square: “The protestors don't belong to the right or the left, or Muslim. There was not a single Islamic religious slogan in the streets. Not one. They were shouting for justice, equality, freedom, and that Mubarak and his regime should go, and we need to change the system and bring people who are honest.” Arab commentator Amr Hamzawy writes, “activists from small leftist organisations have attended, but the usual denunciations of global imperialism, colonialism, and Zionism were absent”. And yes, “the Muslim Brotherhood youth and some of their leaders participated in the protests, but there were no signs saying, ‘Islam is the solution'.” Does this make the protests a post-political, post-ideological phenomenon? Such a reading finds its perfect ally and expression in the characterization of the protests as a social media revolution of facebooking blogger-citizens – middle class, blackberry urban youth. An eerie word is now coined: webolution! Detaching the protest from any substantive or concrete demands being made apart from ‘freedom' or ‘liberty', with their default liberal meanings, it is sometimes unwittingly presented as the effect of social media technology. It is almost as if social media is the cause of, and not the tool of communication for, the protests. The actions of the regime in cutting off the internet made the internet appear more important than it is. So no left, no right, and the protests are not just dispersed, direction-less and leaderless, but an effect of social media: does this ‘lack of content' not mean that it is the liberals again who must come and take the cake. Some writers have already called upon the US to dump Mubarak and reinstate liberal democracy. The liberals just need to put in place a democracy, do away with the despotism of Mubarak, allow opposition political parties to flourish, freedom of speech and assembly, regular multi-party elections – so you are back to liberal democracy as the end point again. The protests, we are told, are just asking for a true liberal liberal democracy! US realpolitik interests are running counter to the tenets of liberal democracy, but liberal democracy is what is being indicated by the protests, liberalism as the understated subconscious of the Tahrir protests! Suspending the social order It is here, precisely when liberal appropriation is knocking at the doors that what is inappropriable about the protests must be foregrounded to cut the flab of spectacle and ubiquitous praise. Recall therefore the vice-president's anxious and desperate emphasis on order, return to normalcy and routine business. Indeed, large parts of Cairo and other towns like Alexandria had ‘come to a standstill', meaning it hindered the routine operation of the economy and the ritual practices that keep the existing social and economic order in place. People were no longer carrying out routine tasks doing the bidding for the well-heeled and those in control but came to assert their subjectivity and agency. Moreover people were not withdrawing from work, refusing to be pushed around by the system, being a cog in reproducing the status quo, only to then slide into private life, say taking a holiday, or withdraw into a new age commune and so on. Rather this withdrawal was from work and business into something really public, more public than work and business – the realm of politics. Individuals in the protests were saying that now they know that they are not alone in thinking. The realm of work and business (‘private labour' in Marx, or ‘private use of reason' in Kant) now suddenly appears for what it really is – where ultimately we are suckered in as isolated, private individuals without a sense of collectivity and solidarity. Against this, the protestors in Egypt assumed their really public role, engaging in politics and challenging the very social order which tries to subsume and repress them. This moment of politics, of breaking with their prescribed roles and suspending the present order and demanding its reconfiguration – wasn't this what was involved in the protests? So it was not just the rejection of the regime or demand for Mubarak's ouster but what is important is the modality of this rejection, the manner in which people organised themselves or refused to carry on with normal business and redefined the terms in which they related to each other as fellow citizens, as fellow protestors and formed themselves into the ‘movement of the people'. Such modality of the protests thus meant that from the overt rejection of the Mubarak regime, it has indeed been a small but crucial step to questioning the very social divides and economic inequalities that constitute Egypt today. The rant against the chaos, disruption of normal life, the call for a ‘peaceful and orderly transition' by the US – all of this shows that the fear for those in power is clearly not about the formal violation of law and the constitution but about the questions that might be raised about the inequalities and injustice of the very social order on which the present regime is parasitic. Thanks to the nature of the protests the discussion has today gone beyond just lack of ‘democracy' or political rights, even for mainstream commentators. Salwa Ismail writes in the Guardian that the intransigence of the Mubarak regime is not just about politics. In her ‘A private estate called Egypt' she points to “a tiny economic elite controlling consumption-geared production and imports has accumulated great wealth”. Further, “it is estimated that around a thousand families maintain control of vast areas of the economy. This business class sought to consolidate itself and protect its wealth through political office”(Guardian, Feb 6, 2011). So here we have: socio-economic divides, business interests in the regime and so on, all questioned and contested now. Interestingly, some of the readers comments to this Guardian piece ask the writer whether such economic inequalities are specific to Egypt and do not for example apply to the UK or the US. The chain of ideas triggered off by the Tahrir protests takes us beyond any specific country and beings in its train the question of the socio-economic order, of global capitalism itself. The politics here is not just multi-party democracy, elections and freedom of expression nor is it therefore about the West and non-West divide. Beyond cultural specificity of the Egyptians or even of ‘cultural translation' this moment of politics puts them in immediate solidarity with similar struggles elsewhere, not just in the Middle East. Some of us are asking in India: where is India's Tahrir square protests? The point is not: can we export some democracy from India to help out the Egyptians? Rather, since the protests and what they stand for are beyond mere ‘democracy' (multiparty elections, free markets, privatisation etc), it is apt that each country today can today look for their own Tahrir square which will challenge the global consensus of the rule of capital and ‘democracy'. The suspension of false social and cultural divides and the emergence of a common, universal space is attested to by pictures coming from the site of protest at Tahrir square. A newly-wed couple pose for a photo, Christians guard fellow Muslim protestors as they pray, men and women share the same space, ‘foreigners' are welcomed to join them, placards are written in Hebrew, anti-regime doctors treat wounded soldiers, Western reporters get a free ride in local cabs and so on. Tahrir protests as emblematic of the suspension of the social order and its false divides provide for us today a vantage point, an engaging standpoint from which to view things. It allows us to see how in spite of appearing congealed and hard to dislodge, the established order is not really impervious to the ‘movement of the masses' and how precariously it feigns that the divides and inequalities are natural and here to stay. Tahrir square clarifies, clears the immobilizing haze. We now see that there is no necessary necessity to the present global capitalist order and US dominance: this necessity is merely contingent. The recent student protests in the UK showed this, as did the workers strikes in France, and now you have Tunisia and Egypt. Where is it next: India, China? Tahrir as image I started by pointing out how if Tahrir is not to be reduced (or, actually, inflated) to a spectacle, an image circulating in the global counter-cultural market, then we must ground it in the concrete conditions of Egypt – flesh out what Slavoj Zizek called the ‘Arab revolutionary spirit'. As Lenin would have said, we need ‘concrete analysis of concrete conditions'. A good start would be to look at the role of the capitalist class and workers in the protests. A top capitalist joins the protests: “On Monday, 31 January 2011, we saw Naguib Sawiris, perhaps Egypt's richest businessman and the iconic leader of the developmentalist “nationalist capital” faction in Egypt, joining the protesters and demanding the exit of Mubarak. During the past decade, Sawiris and his allies had become threatened by Mubarak-and-son's extreme neoliberalism and their favoring of Western, European and Chinese investors over national businessmen. Because their investments overlap with those of the military, these prominent Egyptian businessmen have interests literally embedded in the land, resources and development projects of the nation. They have become exasperated by the corruption of Mubarak's inner circle” (Paul Amar, ‘Why Mubarak is Out?', Feb 1, 2011, http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/516/why-mubarak-is-out-). The same report draws attention to the recent labour unrest providing a backdrop to the ongoing protests: “2009 and 2010 were marked by mass national strikes, nation-wide sit-ins, and visible labor protests often in the same locations that spawned this 2011 uprising.” Apart from the class and societal basis of the movement, any attempt to preclude it from becoming another pink tide counter-cultural image, might involve displacing the focus from Tahrir square and seeing it as part of demonstrations and protests in other parts of Egypt. Consider this report by Mohammed Bamyeh : “While much of the media focus was on Tahrir Square in central Cairo, to which I went every day, the large presence there was itself a manifestation of a possibility that suddenly became evident on January 25, when large demonstrations broke out in 12 of Egypt's provinces. The revolution would never have been perceived as possible had it been confined to Cairo, and in fact its most intense moment in its earlier days, when it really looked that a revolution was happening, were in more marginal sites like Suez” (Feb 5, 2011, http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/561/the-egyptian-revolution_first-impressions-from-the-field-). Perhaps we need more of such probing if an appreciation (and why not, celebration) of the deep political import of Tahrir square is not to slip into its iconisation into a global marketable image and spectacle, or a social media creation. It is only as such that we can think of Repeating Tahrir. ** Giri is an Indian writer based in Delhi BM
