The Question of Defeat

19 November 2020

On the anniversary of the events of Mohamed Mahmoud, a November 2011 street battle and major milestone of the continuing Egyptian revolution after Mubarak’s ouster, the first session of Al Salon welcomed Syrian writer Yassin al-Haj Saleh and Egyptian historian Khaled Fahmy to reflect on the concept of defeat, both historically and in relation to the current situations in Syria and Egypt. Yassin differentiated between the concept of loss and defeat and discussed the need to engage with history differently from the position of the defeated. Khaled, meanwhile, reflected on the need to write our own histories and stories, to critically engage with available historical sources in order to understand our stories differently than how they have been narrated by political regimes.

Yassin Al Haj Saleh is a Syrian writer, critic, and activist based in Berlin. His work revolves around cultural and political issues — ranging from secularism and democracy and Islamic affairs to the Syrian Revolution, among many others. For more information about his writings, press here. 

عن الخسارة والهزيمة

تعدد وتشابك الهزائم

نقد ل-حتمية الهزيمة

Khaled Fahmy is the His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said Professor of Modern Arabic Studies at the University of Cambridge. His research interests include the social and cultural history of the modern Middle East, with an emphasis on the history of law, medicine, the army and the police in nineteenth-century Egypt. For more information about his writings, press here.

عن هزيمة يونيو | حزيران ١٩٦٧ 

عن كتابة التاريخ 

مدخل لكتابة تاريخ الهزيمة

Suggested Readings and Other Media

1. Article: Defeat and the state: June 1967 and Hafez al-Assad’s Syria
2. Podcast: Fatal Friends, National Trauma, Accountability
3. Article: الهزيمة والدولة، حزيران 67 ودولة حافظ الأسد
4. Article: في الهزيمة والخسارة، بين الأمس واليوم
5. Article: الانقلاب المديد: تحولات سورية طويلة الأمد
6. Article: سورية والعالمية الحربية الأولى
7. Book Chapter: “الفصل السادس: هزيمة 67 الهيكلية والمستمرة” في كتاب “في تشريح الهزيمة

Political Mobilization between the First and Second Waves of Revolution

3 December 2020

In the second session of Al Salon, scholar-activists Naouel Belakhder from Algeria and Sara Abbas from Sudan reflected on political mobilization and organization in the recent “second wave” of NAWA revolutions since 2018 in comparison to the “first wave” in 2010/11. They contextualized their perspectives within the previous session’s theme of “defeat” and asked critical questions about the lessons learned and patterns that have been repeated between the NAWA revolutions’ first and second waves.

Naoual Belakhdar is a political scientist affiliated to the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Politics (Freie Universität Berlin). Her research and teaching interests focus on social movements and statehood in the post-colonial Maghreb and Mashreq, with a particular focus on political participation, protest and resistance movements as well as on collective memory, film and politics. In her dissertation, she works on the transformation of state-society relations in post-civil-war Algeria in light of social protests.

Sara Abbas is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at Freie Universität Berlin. She is a member of the Berlin activist platform SudanUprising Germany. Her writing most recently appeared in the edited volume “A region in revolt: Mapping the recent uprisings in North Africa and West Asia” (2020- Daraja Press and Transnational Institute).

Suggested Readings and Other Media

1. Article: Algeria in revolt: “We woke up and you will pay!”
2. Book Chapter: We Are Not Swallows (Algeria)
3. Article: Beyond failure and success Revolutions and the politics of endurance
4. Article: Direct democracy and the passion for political participation
5. Article (Spanish): Fernandez Siles: It Was Not Depression, It was Capitalism!
6. Article: Lessons from Sudan’s December revolution
7. Video: Hossam el-Hamalawy: Lessons from the Arab Spring
8. Article: Revolution is a process, and it’s far from over
9. Video (Arabic): Socialist Interviews: Muzan Alneel | لقاءات الاشتراكي: مُزن النيل
10. Video: Bella Ciao à la sauce «hirak» par Raja & Said Kateb
11. Video:TiMoh – Echa3b Yourid – الشعب يريد
12. Video: La casa del mouradia LIVE
13. Article (French): Appel de Djamila Bouhired à la jeunesse algérienne en lutte : Ne les laissez pas voler votre victoire !
14. Article (French): « L’Indépendance, c’est maintenant ! » Réflexion sur le soulèvement populaire en Algérie

Commemorating Bouazizi: Urban Poor Politics and Masculinities

17 December 2020

Tarek el-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi was a Tunisian street vendor who set himself on fire on 17  December 2010, sparking the Tunisian revolution. The third session of Al Salon commemorated his memory and posed questions about the struggles of urban poor youth ten years after the wave of 2010/11 NAWA revolts. Leyla Dakhli and Omnia Khalil delved into the intersections of urban poor politics and political movements in Egypt and Tunisia , respectively. Omnia, an architect-turned-social-scientist, and Leyla, a historian, shared their thoughts on the “affect” of the political climate during and in the wake of both countries’ revolutions and their influence on “the city” and urban living conditions, particularly for the urban poor. Some of the questions raised were: How has the situation changed for the urban poor in the past ten years? What kind of political avenues and opportunities, if any, have arisen as a result of the revolutions? How does gender and class intersect to produce subjectivities of the urban poor?

Leyla Dakhli is a full-time historian in the French Center for National Research (CNRS) and currently at the Marc Bloch Center in Berlin. Dakhli studies Arab intellectuals and social history of the South Mediterranean region, with a particular focus on the history of women and the question of exiled intellectuals and activists. She is the principal investigator of the ERC-founded program DREAM (Drafting and Enacting the Revolution in the Arab Mediterranean). She is a member of the editorial committee of the International Review of Social History (Amsterdam) and Le Mouvement social (Paris), both prominent journals of social history. She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the MuCem (Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée, Marseilles). Her last publications include “Histoire du Proche-Orient contemporain,” Paris, La Découverte, 2015, and “Le Moyen-Orient  (fin XIXe-XXe siècle),” Éditions du Seuil “Points Histoire,” November 2016.

Omnia Khalil, is a PhD candidate in cultural anthropology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY), and a Teaching Assistant at Hunter College in New York City. She is an urban researcher and co-founder of 10 Tooba, an interdisciplinary group of built environment professionals with developed expertise in participatory planning and policy analysis, working closely with communities in Egypt. Given her extensive experience in participatory urban action in Cairo, she sees the debates, promises and expectations concerning social injustice and inequality that accompanied the 2011 Egyptian revolution as demanding direct engagement with and defense of participatory community and urban planning against a history of forced evictions and resettlement as official government policy in Egypt.

Suggested Readings and Other Media

1. Book Chapter: Eric Dennis, “Cairo as Neoliberal Capital? From Walled City to Gated Communities” in “Cairo Cosmopolitan” Edited by Diane Singerman and Paul Amar
2. Article: The State as an Urban Broker: Subjectivity Formation, Securitization, and Place-Making in Post-Revolutionary Cairo
3. Article (Arabic): الدولة كسمسار عمراني: 1 -العمران ما بين خطابات التنمية والأمن والاقتصاد 
4. Article (Arabic): الدولة كسمسار عمراني: 2- العاصمة القديمة والتطوير بالإخلاء
5. Article (Arabic): الدولة كسمسار عمراني: 3- تشكيل الفهلوة والبلطجة والسمسرة داخل المدينة

Healing and Restoration in Times of Revolution

 28 January 2021

Inspired by feminist movements, this session raises the question of how healing and restoration are essential aspects of any revolutionary struggle. Alongside Egyptian feminist Yara Sallam and Berlin-based activist Ahmad Awadalla, this session of Al Salon shines a light on the question of sustainability in activism and different approaches to self and community-based care. Participants reflect on what healing and restoration might look like for them and discuss the potential as well as limitations of such practices. The session will be anchored in important works of several women human rights defenders such as the book What’s the Point of Revolution If We Can’t Dance? by Jane Barry and Jelena Djordjevic, and Even the Finest of Warriors written by Yara Sallam herself.

Ahmed Awadalla is a writer, activist, sex educator, psychosocial worker, and retired pharmacist based in Berlin. For the last decade, Awadalla’s work has focused on the intersections between health, gender, sexuality, and (forced) migration across Egypt and Germany.

Yara Sallam is an Egyptian feminist and a legal researcher based in Cairo. Yara has worked at various organizations, including the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), Nazra for Feminist Studies, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR). She has worked on diverse issues, including criminal justice, regional and international human rights mechanisms, transitional justice, freedom of religion and belief, and women human rights defenders. Yara holds a law degree (LLB) from Cairo University in Egypt and Maîtrise of Commercial Law from Paris I University Pantheon Sorbonne in France, as well as a Master’s degree (LLM) in International Human Rights Law from the Law School of Notre Dame University in the United States.

Readings and Other Materials

1. Article: ‘But I forgive’: Sarah Hegazi and the Message of Forgiveness
2. Book: Even the Finest of Warriors 
3. Book: حتى أقوى المقاتلات 
4. Book: “What’s the Point of Revolution If We Can’t Dance?”
5. Article: COVID-19 Pandemic: A Crisis of Care

Role of Diaspora After 10 Years of Revolutions 

11 February 2021

In the aftermath of the 2010/11 NAWA revolutions, many people who took part in them fled to other countries because they were either personally in danger and/or life had become impossible to live as it was. Today, we are witnessing growing NAWA  diasporas in many European countries, made up particularly of activists, artists and academics who were involved in the region’s 2010/11 revolts. The last session of Al Salon will tackle the question of the role of different NAWA diasporas in supporting ongoing struggles in the region. This also entails critically reflecting on our capacities to act from abroad and questions of security. The session addresses these topics with the input of two Berlin-based activists, Wafa Mustafa and Ahmed Isam Aldin.

Ahmed Isamaldin is a visual artist-designer, a blogger from Khartoum, studied physics at the University of Khartoum, graphic design and photography in Cairo, participated in different exhibitions between Khartoum, Cairo, and Amsterdam, Brussels, Bologna and Berlin, his work published in Shwules museum in Berlin. He is dealing with the topic of immigration and psychology, and the process of the revolution, de-colonial design, and technology. Currently, he is studying Visual Communication at Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin.

Wafa Mustafa is a Syrian journalist and activist based in Berlin Germany. After fleeing Syria due to her activism and due to her father’s detention by the Assad regime, Mustafa began working and reporting on Syria’s political and field situation for various media outlets. In her advocacy, Mustafa covers the impact of detention on young girls and women and families. She has worked as a research assistant with the Global Public Policy Institute, in Berlin, conducting and analyzing witness testimonies on the usage of chemical weapons in Syria. In addition, Mustafa is a BA graduate in Humanities, Arts, and Social Thought at Bard College Berlin.