INTRODUCTION: PERFORMING SPACE IN URBAN AFRICA

Abstract

January–February 2011, Tahrir Square, Cairo. Hundreds of thousands gathered on a square that had been named tahrir (liberation) in commemoration of previous Egyptian revolutions. History was made in a place that already marked earlier histories. The square was, again, transformed into a space of historical importance and was, again, signified as a revolutionary site of liberation. Closer to the ground, however, the unfolding experiences were not as straightforward as the post factum story renders them. The square was transformed into a focal point of political, urban, historical, national, symbolic and global importance by people having backgrounds and aspirations of their own. They wrote key pages of their own life histories as much as they wrote world history, urban or national history. The square enabled the emergence of a particular social space signified through practices that can be understood as performative: the square was occupied, speeches were staged, drama and intimacy were shared on Facebook and Al-Jazeera, and people slept, cooked, cared – in short, lived – on a square that gained political importance by becoming part of daily life, part of the city and the nation, drawing on history and global connections, and at the same time shaping a more promising place in which to live their lives.2 Over 6,000 km to the south, 35 years earlier, the Soweto uprising intensified the confrontation between the apartheid regime and its opponents. For more than a