Theoretical Clarity and Revolutionary Change: The Arab Spring in Fiction
Alaa Al-Aswany’s fictional engagement with the events known as the Arab Spring may easily seem pointless, cliché or commonsensical given the tons of films, novels and studies on the topic. But it is exactly what the title underscores for English reading audiences in his recently translated novel, The Republic of False Truths (2021) that raises his work above the waters of cliché and commonsensical. Unlike its Arabic title which connotes the farcical element in the quasi-republic, the English title zooms on the false omnipresent that applies uninterruptedly on everyone in that republic, irrespective of class or gender. Known internationally for The Yacoubian Building (2002), the recent addition explains (and never justifies) the existential need to grapple with precisely that which most people uphold as unmistakably self-evident. Indeed, when presumably unbiased research articles, speak less of private blogs or contents in either heavy or social media outlets, find the social uprisings that led to the decapitation of the likes of Mubarak “decisively deprived of traditional narratives and are haunted by the theme of death…”[1], then the self-evident is no longer that self-evident. More often than not, resorting to abstractions—as with this presumable research piece—is triggered by this authorless for exploring the essence of the experience and more to evaporate that experience from the radar of the social field. Indeed, this academic facilitates the expulsion of reality from history by borrowing from a preexisting pool of vocabulary and set of thinking structures that masturbates endlessly on death, the limits of narrative’s agency or the Kantian sublime.
In this connection, Al-Aswany’s The
Republic of False Truths serves in reversing similar masturbations and
lies. Lest they fall to collective amnesia, the novel recreates the events
leading to the euphoria of Tahrir Square in 2011 and 2012, the decapitation of
the dictatorship’s head and a few swirling events afterwards. In answer to
anyone doubting the relevance from synthesizing those events in a story, just
ask that person: where is Tahrir Square today in the map of Cario? Of all seventy-three
chapters comprising the novel, chapter thirty-one explicitly answers: “Tahrir
Square has been transformed into a small independent republic—the first parcel of
Egyptian land to be liberated from the dictator’s rule.” (184) Little wonder then
how now it has become an interminable construction site with the specific
objective of eradicating from collective memory the very possibility of massive
gathering which may or may not propagate into a revolt. If a physical space has
garnered such a monumental level of hatred and revenge, then unbiased rationalizations
of historical reality, let alone activists’ narratives of the popular uprising,
remains an unaffordable indulgence. Not for nothing, the early twentieth-century French philosopher/ activist Simone Weil (1909-1943) finds: “Official
history is a matter of believing murderers on their own words…”[2] For if
events that unfolded in most readers’ own lifetime, that is, only the other
day, are decreed disconcerting and are now being falsified, there is more reason
to distrust official reporting of incidents that happened where we were less
aware or not on this planet yet. It is never a tautology to underscore that history
writing is thus no joke.
In this context, Al-Aswany’s novel does
not shy from the task of setting things, events and people in their correct historical
order. It measures these actors as variables in the scale of the experienced
unfolding, not mythical or ideological unravelling. There will be people who may
find that measurement missing in the scale of revolutionary ardour and passion,
but what can be more radical and subversive than an honest elucidation of that
which actually happened and happens. Understandably, there exist vested
interests to report on that which took place in Tahrir from bourgeois’
perspective, and to justify the counterrevolutionary status quo of the present.
Hence, the explanatory (never the justificatory) demand for a methodological
axis serving also an existential matrix whereby falsity (false truths in the
title) can be distinguished from truth. Al Aswany’s theoretical coordinates have
been history’s inevitable ‘class struggle’.
The term ‘class struggle’ comes from a
glossary that for better or for worse has been antinomic vi-à-vis the current
counterrevolutionary climate of post-2011 Arab World. Let us recall that
several Arab cities and capitals witnessed exhilarating agitations and marches
in millions against dictators only to be disappointed in the following months
and years. The term ‘class struggle’ is not just an ideological milestone for
those activists of social movements on the left; it is a methodological
eye-opener for registering and thus seizing the real movement of the world,
according to the nineteenth-century German philosopher Karl Marx[3]. The
concept expresses a historical continuity with uprisings and revolutions of the
oppressed from all over the world and from times both past and to come, and if enough
oppressed people embrace the class struggle as a milestone for consciousness,
the current world order will be not just shaken but redefined. Hence why the
powers that be have always had a vested interest in sweeping the term ‘class
struggle’, speak less of the concept, under the rug.
Through mostly written entries and
dynamic interactions between a set of characters and via reading mostly their
entries: Ashraf Wissa, General Alwany, Seikh Shamil, Asma Zanaty, Mazen Saqqa,
Madam Nourhan and Essam Shaalan along with others readers will gain a solid
understanding of what took place in Tahrir. Each character emerges from
diametrically opposing backgrounds, and the novel reflects the class dimension
of the uprising. Only when considered from the point of view of the class
struggle, readers unveil how the counterrevolution justifies the present status
quo in effusive abstractions and unabashed crusades for chasing smokescreens:
death and the presumed wisdom of/in extinction!
Given this connection, The Republic
of False Truths (2021) resuscitates the concept of the ‘class-struggle’ for
purposes of underlying needed, if not urgent, theoretical clarity. Part of
Al-Aswany’s demystification showcases that well before the restoration (July
2013) formally triumphed, most rank-and-file Egyptians expressed varying levels
of exasperations at revolutionaries. Perhaps, apart from the heady eighteen
days leading to the abdication of President Mubarak and which were marked by euphoria and spectacle, the following weeks and months witnessed a steady
decline in the supply of people living in impoverished and destitute
neighbourhoods since most of these people become disenchanted from the
revolutionary project. Ironically, those people beset by black misery themselves
turned hostile of the very process that promises the breaking of their chains. Counting
as the evidence for this state of affairs is how the oppressed accuse the
revolutionary youth of jeopardizing their security by conspiring against the
country.
When Ashraf Wissa and his team display
the atrocities of the military through a moving cinema project across
impoverished Cairo neighbourhoods, he and his tiny group of activists were
attacked, their gadgets broken and themselves are accused of bringing disaster.
Instead of despair, Al-Aswany’s unorthodox conclusion zooms on a needful
theoretical clarity, the one that attributes the failure of the revolution less
to coercion by the repressive forces and more to the oppressed own conservatism,
nihilistic resignation and detachment from revolutionary agitation. In the
interest of fairness, Al-Aswany shows that the military intervened only when the
majority was fed up; repression came to formalize what the oppressed
themselves desired to restore: security. Without a precise reading regarding
the role of various actors, revolutionaries will remain befogged with myths and
self-pity. Even if repression has been behind the resignation of the oppressed,
and not the other way around, a legalistic and procedural response will be
still inconsequential. By pushing for an unsubstantiated narrative (confusing
cause with effect), Al-Aswany unveils the plans of counterrevolution. Once activists’
attention is sidetracked toward the legalistic, as when denouncing human rights
abuses, the revolutionaries pronounced their own death sentence. No one else
did.
Still, mounting criticism in regard to
the ways in which the revolutionaries responded does not mean that Al-Aswany
favours the culturalist approach, whereby the oppressed are blamed for their own
misery. The Republic of False Truths hinges its revolutionary project on
a deeply entrenched historicist approach. The narrative has been careful with
its vocabulary and plot details lest it embarks on blaming the victims, and
thus falls into justification, not an explanation. Little wonder how this
revolutionary-counterrevolutionary arch spells the fortunes and misfortunes of not
only the Egyptian revolution but nearly of all Arab socialist uprisings. Certainly,
Al-Aswany’s remarks connect directly with the Egyptian scenario, but in essence, his remarks mirror most, if not all, Arab revolutions post 2011.
Pushing for a culturalist approximation
of events counts among the reactionaries’ toolkit in a preexisting arsenal to
regain hegemony. Given the brutal violence that marked the Egyptian revolution,
the one which many activists fail to register as the formalization of the
subaltern’s dissatisfaction with the revolution, it is not surprising to
mistake The Republic of False Truths as an exercise in oriental
despotism. Female activists, like Asma, and after experiencing beatings and
sexual abuse, utters statements that read more like self-pity. For her, it is
hopeless to count on ordinary people as Egyptians are submissive by nature. Other
characters too do not restrain themselves from drawing similar generalizations
outside space and time as they express doubts vis-à-vis revolutionary change in
a country where large sways of the populations are doubtful in the betterment
of their lot. Asma’s letter to Mazen, sent from London after the former’s exile
is probably the type of ranting that every revolutionary succumbs to in the
face of adverse situations. Such despair risks eternalizing oriental despotism
because it overlooks the dynamic of history. Despaired readings find the cliché
of Oriental despotism comforting.
Al Aswany, not only rejects timeless generalizations.
His spokesperson is Mazen who from beginning to end underlines a historicist
approximation as to why ordinary Egyptians—even well before instantiations of
violence—traded security for freedom. Nevertheless, the heavy investment in
media and the latter capacity for brainwashing rank-and-file Egyptian and
demonizing the revolutionary youth—as specified by General Alwany’s explicit
instructions—have simply born its fruits. In an exchange with the Interior
Minister, General Alwany explicitly outlines his strategy: “Our goal is to tell
the ordinary citizen, ‘Either you side with the demonstrations and lose your
security, or you side with the state, in which case, it will protect you.” (142)
Readers find that the business tycoon and media mogul, Hag Muhammad Shanawany,
as per request of the Security Apparatus, have invested enormous funds and
resources to ‘redirect Egyptians towards ‘the right path’: family values and
the wisdom of the tested and tried’. His media prodigies go as far as uncovering
imagined CIA plots of destabilizing the country and creating chaos! Readers registers
how Madam Nourhan, the celebrity broadcaster, has been hailed by Apparatus not
only for literally abiding by the instructions set by the supervising army
officer (set in the premises of every TV and radio station), but for her ‘innovative’
ways and quasi-effortless commitment in defaming revolutionaries, presenting
fabricated testimonies that cast democracy activists as spies on the pay roll
of foreign secret services. Through no fault of their own, the revolutionary
committee realizes never without a cost that exclusive campaigning through Facebook
and Twitter has its limits as large sways of Egyptians remain hooked up
to newspapers and TV. By the time revolutionaries such as Ashraf started
touring neighbourhoods and featuring human rights abuses committed by the
military, it has become crystal clear that it was too late. Therefore, any
sensible reading cannot overlook that the triumph of the counterrevolution has
been the result of a steady and deliberate effort to rewrite history in favour of
the counterrevolutionaries since they can afford this rewriting.
In the final scene Madany (literally
signifying passivism in Arabic) or Khaled father’s, takes revenge from the
police officer who killed Khaled. Al-Aswany through that scene kills two birds
with one stone. On the first level, he breaks away with the liberal stance of situating
revolutionary work entirely in passivist forms of agitation. His stance corroborates,
however, with the inevitability of the class struggle, demonstrating an affinity
with Frantz Fanon’s ideas on the necessity of violence: where history simply
takes its own course and classes become involved in a dynamic of cancelling
each other. On the second, a milestone of theoretical clarity is gained from
the failure of the legalistic and procedural path and where justice fails to see
the day of light. The crooked justice system in Egypt facilitates regaining
that incendiary form of clarity. Not only the bereaved father refuses religious
authority personified in Sheikh Shamil’s mediation as when the Sheikh visits Madany
with a sack of cash in exchange for closing the case in court. Madany similarly
indulges Khaled’s university colleagues for a while, agreeing with their plan
of taking the murder case to court. Danaya, General Alwany’s daughter and
Khaled’s close classmate and eye witness to the murder, asks Madany to relieve
her from witnessing in court. Despite enamoured admiration of and attachment to
Khaled and his ideals, in the end, her admiration and attachment could not expand
toward a revolutionary consciousness in the sense of a rupture with undeserved
social status and privilege. That is how we read in the ultimate scene that the
father hires thugs to kill the police officer. And that is how readers are not
surprised as Madany successfully reverses the crooked justice system by taking
justice (not just trying to) into his own hands.
The message from that scene helps
readers seize the realization that revolutionary work cannot be a cerebral
undertaking. It is and remains a spontaneous eruption and, in his circumstances,
no one can convince Madany not to recourse to violence. He spontaneously takes that
road not because he thinks only violence brings him a satisfying closure, but
despite all rationalizations to the contrary. Readers find Madany has lived his
entire life as a slave, literally from hand to mouth. But that dreadful
experience subscribes in direct opposition to appearances. Galvanized by his
prodigy, Danya asks Khaled: “When did you read all these books?” Khaled
answers: “The credit should go to my father who noticed that I liked to read
when I was small, so he gave me a subscription to the palace of culture. I
began borrowing books, reading and returning them. Imagine that a simple,
uneducated man could value reading so much!” (83) If there exists one hero in
this novel, it is Madany because when catastrophe hits, he rationalizes light
years better than university professors! As will be developed below, Madany
deserves the title of Spartacus defying the decadent Roman empire.
Madany’s decision is different from
poetic justice in the sense that the latter is bourgeois whereas the former is
prehistoric and can only be embraced by the subaltern. Both religious and civic
authorities scold individuals from taking justice in their own hands and thus
encourage people stripped of their basic rights to aggravate servitude by seeking
institutional mitigation of justice. In line with Hegel’s reference to deep
history whereby he relativizes political and cultural time[4],
Al-Aswany shows that institutional mitigation other than being essentially pointless,
given how justice is administered under dictatorships, remains
counterrevolutionary. Not only the police officer was not arrested in
preparation for the trial, but he also wasn’t even suspended from work or put on
probation during the months leading to the final sentence which unsurprisingly finds
him not guilty. For the benefits of theoretical clarity again, Al-Aswany
illustrates that Khaled’s killer’s show trial has to be read specifically not
as a dysfunctionality of the justice system either in Egypt or elsewhere. Rather,
it has to be read as part of an immanent logic of dictatorships, and which
Khaled’s father clearly registers, acts upon and professionally executes.
Indeed, that last scene can be
disturbing because Al-Aswany masterfully positions it in gothic aesthetics. In
displaying the inevitability of violence, Al-Aswany brings a satisfying closure
from the perspective of the class struggle to that other gothic scene that
triggered the finale. In chapter forty, we read how Madany in his own hands
puts pieces of Khaled’s brain back in the hole caused by the pistol shot. Khaled
has been a principal organizer of a field hospital near Tahrir Square charged
of providing first aid to demonstrators. The officer aims to kill because Khaled
dares (note the word dare in Kant’s definition of the Enlightenment) to
reject the officer’s insult. It is a scene that comes to shake passive readers
from their reifying experience and keep these audiences forever invested. That
gothic structure generates a movement within the consciousness of individuals
of the middle class or who identify as middle class. It is a movement that
renders that consciousness receptive (hospitable) to a prehistoric form and
logic of justice, the primitive law: an eye for eye! All else becomes synthesized
by the same invested audiences as alienation, domestication and obviously, counterrevolution.
The way Fanon theorizes revolutionary
violence suggests how Al-Aswany cannot be stigmatized by calls that organically
propagate beyond the accepted perimeters of passive resistance. By raising a
credible threat over life, speaking and executing a language that truly hurts the
ruling classes, the revolutionary ardour of Tahrir Square reaches the tipping
point in the Hegelian system, whereby quantity metamorphoses to quality.
Violence, Fanon specifies, remains purifying in the sense of ridding oneself of
hesitations and doubts, thus crystallizing practical predispositions to register
false truths for what they are. What else do today’s revolutionaries hope to
gain?
[1] Walid El Khachab, (2021)
“Death of the Revolution, Death of the Event: Cinema and Politics in the
Aftermath of the Egyptian Spring.” Journal of the African Literature
Association, 15:3, p. 525.
[2] Simon
Weil, An Anthology. Penguin Modern Classics. 2005. p.105
[3] Karl
Marx, The Communist Manifesto. Trans. Samuel Moore. The Merlin Press
(2015), p. 3
[4] Hegel,
Philosophy of Right.
