David Harvey in Tahrir Square: the dispossessed, the discontented and the Egyptian revolution

Abstract

Starting from the empirical distinction between ‘discontented’ and ‘dispossessed’ created by processes of accumulation by dispossession necessary for neoliberalism to succeed, this paper suggests how the broader historical–geographical framework developed by David Harvey helps us make sense of the 2011 Egyptian revolution. The paper focuses on the underlying tension between the ever more frequent encroachments of ‘the molecular processes of capital accumulation in space and time’ within the political sphere and the persisting relevance of forms of territorial government and governance for the success of capital accumulation itself. This seeming contradiction allows us to account both for the penetration of neoliberalism in Egypt and for the different forms of hybridisation and domestication that accompanied it. It suggests that, by looking at the social consequences of neoliberalism, one can see a sharp class polarisation, with the emergence of both a private capitalist oligarchy and embryonic forms of alliance between the dispossessed and the discontented, which had a central role in the 2011 revolution. This perspective also permits us to go beyond the dominant liberal narrative of the Arab Spring focusing on demands for freedom (horreya) and democracy (dimuqratya), recovering the neglected yet vital dimension of social justice (‘adala igtimaya).