I’ve been watching the Egyptian revolution, off and on since it started. There’s so much interesting stuff going on: the pragmatics of political organization, the foundations of revolutionary movement, the evolving state of American political power, and the way that Egyptians are racialized particularly in contrast to Iranians and Tunisians.
The aspect that I’m most interested is in what western analysis of “Janurary 25th” tells us about how the west has made sense of past revolutionary moments in the last ‘50 years notably the Iranian revolution and “May'68.”
Largely I fear that it is way too soon to really say anything terribly useful on the subject. That hasn’t stopped people, of course.
I’m not sure what to make of either Ken MacLeod’s or Slavoj Žižek’s articles on the subject. There are aspects of this kind of theorizing that I really like and that really appeals to me. At the same time, optimism seems foolhardy.
There’s work still to be done: both theoretical and revolutionary. But isn’t there always?