Eighteen Days in Tahrir Protests: The Perfomatives of Civic Action in Egypt’s 2011 Revolution

Abstract

Abstract On January 25, 2011, a spontaneous mobilization of masses of Egyptian folks congregated in Tahrir Square calling for change in Egypt. ‘Bread, freedom and social justice’ is what Egyptian demonstrators chanted throughout their encampment in the Midan. Shortly after Tahrir Square had turned into a community of protestors congregating and setting up camp day and night in the large plaza, random protestors and performers started devising means of entertainment imbued with political satire with which to engage and incite the crowds. Songs and dances as well as lengthy dramatic monologues, verbatim testimonies, poetry recitations and various styles of storytelling emerged. Those performative acts of protest are similar in nature to renowned Egyptian dramatist Yusuf Idris’s recounting of the Egyptian village al-samir performance tradition, which was also performative and unruly in nature. This interdisciplinary study compares that indigenous dramatic art form, al-samir, with the revolutionary performatives of protest that sprang up extemporaneously in the Midan during the Egyptian revolution in 2011. The paper raises questions about the nature of protest and community formation, democracy, performativity and focuses only on the first 18 days of the January uprising, that specific historical moment only and its transformative effect on theatrical performances, performers and protestors at the time. The paper proposes that the Tahrir performatives of protest were an ephemeral phenomenon that appeared as embodiments and celebrations of political freedom in a specific time and place, and they ended when the call for democracy and the euphoria of the uprising of 2011 gradually faded away.