It borders on a Sisyphean undertaking to revolutionize rotted and fossilized power relations. Even the thought of it terrifies the fearless of all. As it is so often in times of revolutionary upheavals, masks are torn, villains are driven out, but the legacy of dehumanizing circumstances remains. The non-violent revolutions of few years ago seem light years away from the current Nakba (millions have been killed and displaced in recent yearsâthis is the worst disaster since the violent displacement of the Palestinian in 1948) in the Middle East.
And, yet, todayâs global revolts and revolutions against neoliberal imperialism are nothing but the metamorphosis of the Intifada of the Palestinian youth of the 1980s against the murderous Israeli occupation regime and the revolts of the Mexican Zapatistas of the 1990s against the neoliberal occupation regime, so-called NAFTA. The Israeli occupation regime is the role model in an economic-dispossessive, security-industrial, political-oppressive, and racist sense for the neoliberal-imperialist intervention in the Middle East: permanent war, drones, sophisticated bombs, rubber bullets, tear gas, systematic oppression, expropriation, violent seizure of resources, intensive exploitation, and settler-colonialist housing, real estate in their naked, non-monetary mystified form. In this violent scenario, neither humans nor nature has any rights.
Flash forward to the self-immolation of the economically marginalized Tunisian street-vendor, Mohamad Bouazizi, on 17 December 2010. The tragic death of this figure was the spark that set the whole Middle East on fire and inaugurated the beginning of a revolutionary calendar end of which is still far from sight.
Multiple Crises
Shortly before 17 December 2010, multiple crises were operating in tandem and ultimately served as the starting points for the Arab Revolutions. The first was an economic crisis in the form of chronic unemployment, extreme poverty, and unjust distribution of income and resources, which were exacerbated by the global economic crisis (cf. Habibi 2009; Haddad 2012; Lesaca and Orozco 2009; Jebnoun and Zarrouk 2012; Alnasseri 2011; Schwartz 2011; Shanna and Stacher 2012). The second was a political crisis in the form of ailing legitimacy, poor and/or under-representation of large segments of society, a lack of separation of powers, and a lack of the rule of law (cf. Amin 2011; Kandil 2011; Mezran and Alunni 2012; Shehata 2011; Toensing 2012; Veltmeyer 2011; Van der pijl 2011). The third was a cultural crisis in the form of restricted freedoms of movement, assembly, and speech; restricted and controlled civil society; and increasing violence against dissenters (cf. Altan-Olcay and Icduygu 2012; Mohamadieh 2011; Cavatorta and Durac 2011). These crises were exacerbated not only by the global economic crisis in 2007/2008, but by the genocidal US and Israeli war of interventions and occupation.
Contrary to a myopic and arrogant interpretation of history, before, beneath, and during the crisis, other real histories were in the making. Although the significance of those other real histories was not recognized and/or fully appreciated at the time, it can only now be adequately assessed because of the benefits afforded through retrospection. These other real histories refer to the various revolutionary waves and related politics that emerged in various contexts in the post-Soviet era leading to the present. It is precisely through these other real histories that popular politics in the twenty-first century can be theorized, interpreted, and understood.
The latter refers to an effective process of defying moments as articulated through forms of resistance of epochal significance that have condensed into the current revolutionary situation. This situation denotes a structural, temporal, and spatial shift that signifies the inauguration of a global constellation of popular power.
It seems that revolts and revolutions are the only effective way to raise the demands of the popular classes. As the events of the recent two decades have shown, revolts are the dominant form of popular politics. This is not a coincidence, however, but a result of the structural limitation of the current structure of power: crisis of post-cold war liberal democracy and neoliberal imperialism insofar as they have proven themselves incapable of presenting and serving the demands of the popular classes.
A Project in the Making
In 2011 preparations for an international conference on the âArab Revolutions and Beyondâ were under way. The contributions to this edited volume are a product of the papers presented at the âArab Revolutions and Beyondâ conference, which was held in March 2013 at York University, Toronto. Although the editor of this volume envisioned a larger work that engaged with the reverberations of the Arab Revolutions in Europe, this dimension of the text could not be included due to the unforeseen circumstances that routinely arise when completing this type of project. As a result, the editor was forced to reduce the scope of this volume to the influence of the Arab Revolutions on the Americas.
The contributions were largely and consciously kept in their original version for the following (self) critical, epistemological reasons: firstly, to demonstrate the limits of our analysis in times of upheaval (2 years of a gorgeous, revolutionary calendar cannot be measured by a metric or standardized time of capital); secondly, to warn against any premature and hasty conclusions regarding the nature, the dynamic, and the intrinsic temporality of the revolutionary processes. Revolutions and revolts do not simply fail or succeed, nor is there a template or a set of criteria according to which we can measure their conceived outcomes. Rather, radical changes that deserve the attribute Revolution are historical events (Badiou 2013) that elude the benchmarks of yesteryears.
The methodological downside of this approach is obvious: all possible developments, above all their extremely violent nature (military putsch in Egypt in 2013, the murderous proxy war in Syria, the civil and regional war of intervention in Yemen, the civil war in Libya, the recent Israeli massacres in Palestine, and the formation of the Islamic state in Syria and Iraq), could not be accounted for in this volume. The reasons are twofold. First, some novel contributions on these developments have been published in recent years (Prashad 2012; Amar and Prashad 2013; Cockburn 2014; Falk 2015 a. o.). And, second, I deeply believe that these developments still deserve a volume on their own, which would provide an extensive, in-depth, and empirically informed analysis that exposes the bloody machinations of all counter-revolutionary forces that desire to turn back the historical clock to the times when dehumanization, oppression, and impoverishment were the benchmarks of the self-realization of iron-gated communities of the untouchables. Above all, external interventions, counter-revolutions, and violence are significant ingredients in the un-making of any revolution. Thus, multiple perspectives and inter-disciplinary approaches to the problematic will contribute immensely to not only the development of a more comprehensive understanding of the processes and forces deeply entangled within moments of revolution, but also demonstrate the limit of current knowledge and analysis and of the capacity to predict the outcomes of ongoing processes of radical change.
Now, it is in the nature of an editor of a volume of collected essays that emerge from the conference process to identify a unifying principle, a coherent order, and a red thread that gives an edited volume its expressive totality. Indeed, this is a task that is not always easy to accomplish. Nevertheless, the editor of this volume has identified three levels and methods of analysis through which this volume has been organized: a general (global) perspective, a miso (comparative) perspective, and a micro (single, in-depth analysis) perspective. Over and above these perspectives, what unites all the critical contributions of this volume is the belief that struggles for radical change represent neither an isolated act of despair nor mere coincidence. Rather, these struggles represent a historical and logical reaction by the Fanonian wretched of the earth to dehumanization and its attendant depredations of violence.
The Project
Despite the connections that do exist between the global economic crisis since 2007 and the Arab Revolutions and Beyond, it is short-sighted to claim the global economic crisis is the direct cause of these revolutionary events. This simply negates and ignores all the possible mediations, the uneven and non-simultaneous developments and delays, as well as the role of the people who made their own history (Alnasseri 2011). Hence, this and similar, mono-causal assumptions ultimately conceal more than they reveal about the political, social, and economic forces and crisis tendencies that made the Arab Revolutions and Beyond possible. Thus, they do not adequately explain how these same forces are not only currently shaping societies across the Middle East but influencing popular struggles of this region and beyond. As such, the book comes at an important juncture of time and provides a critical scholarly intervention that highlights the multifaceted, complex, and contradictory dimensions of the unprecedented political, social, and economic changes that are transforming the Middle East and Beyond.
The importance of this volume is that it will serve as a venue for incisive, critical, and multi-disciplinary scholarly discussion and debate on the dynamics actively shaping this region and other regions around the world. The contributors engage in an exploration and analysis of a variety of themes, including the following: social movements; cultures of resistance; geo-political economy; capital, state, and internationalization; reverberations beyond the Middle East, especially in the Americas; and foreign economic and political influence. The central preoccupations are to address the following questions that to date remain largely unanswered: What is the historical significance of the Arab Revolutions? How has the global political economy and that of the Middle East changed in the recent years, and what do these changes mean for the region as a whole both now and in the future? What are the implications of the Arab Revolutions beyond the Middle East, and how are other struggles in other regions of the world being influenced by these events?
The knowledge generated from this edited book will be of significant interest not only for academic, graduate, and advanced undergraduate students, but equally important to social movements themselves. First, the audience will be exposed to methods of critique, advanced and informed theoretical and conceptual frameworks of interpretation, and an array of empirical evidence used to illustrate the arguments presented. Second, the book will help to facilitate an understanding of the historical trajectories of the revolutions in the Middle East and Beyond. As a result, academics and activists will be able to productively engage with changes taking place not only in the Middle East, but also in other parts of the world where shifts towards projects of democratic self-determination are emerging. It is precisely the endeavour to theoretically, methodologically, and politically link the Arab Revolutions to resistance and protests movements in other part of the world, the spatial notion of Beyond, that makes this project different, original, and potentially appealing to a wider, international audience beyond the Middle East. The contributions by authors from different parts of the world and the thematic diversity of the volume are a testimony of how programmatically the linkages in the global research question are addressed here. 1
It is time to briefly outline the theoretical and/or empirical contribution of each chapter to the problematic of the Arab Revolutions, their novel contribution, and the intervention this volume makes.
From the perspective of a geo-political economy, Radhika Desai looks at one of the least appreciated aspects of the Arab Revolutions: how the non-violent revolutions toppled the most enduring dictatorships sponsored by the USA in the Middle East. The spatial notion of a multipolar world and the concept of uneven and combined development figure prominently in the argument she puts forward to reveal this overlooked dimension of the Arab Revolutions.
From a discourse-theoretical perspective, which is further enriched with philosophical and anthropological insights, F. the chapter by Tsibiridou and M. Bartsidis deals with the most prominent concept of the Arab Revolutions and Beyond: dignity. The concept plays a significant role in redefining democracy, forms of protest, and activism in an era of neoliberal governmentality, thereby paying attention to peopleâs voices and demands coming from âbelow.â This perspective leads them to focus on social movements and the âpeopleâs withdrawal of their consent to power and elites in a local context but with global content.â
Using a historical-comparative app...