The Ends of Revolution: Rethinking Ideology and Time in the Arab Uprisings

TY - JOUR

T1 - The Ends of Revolution

T2 - Rethinking Ideology and Time in the Arab Uprisings

AU - Haugbolle, Sune

AU - Bandak, Andreas

PY - 2017/7/3

Y1 - 2017/7/3

N2 - It is difficult to believe the level of disruption and despair that we are witnessing in the Middle East, from a broken Gaza, to a ruined Syria, a Yemen being bombed, a Libya in disintegration, and an Egypt on the slide toward state-centric fascism. These developments seem to be distantly removed from the days of Tahrir Square in early 2011, when people with elated spirits poured into the streets to demand a better political future. If the large-scale social mobilization back then provided the best refutation of Francis Fukuyama’s the end of history thesis then the failure to translate mobilization into structural change has made the current moment a liminal, open-ended situation lingering between hope and despair, action and inaction, exhaustion and revolutionary belief. Was this the end of revolution, a stillborn moment that caught fire but transformed and today has lost its radical potential? Or does the end goal of revolution still call forth actions to establish a new and different world, a better one? What, in other words, are the ends of revolution?

AB - It is difficult to believe the level of disruption and despair that we are witnessing in the Middle East, from a broken Gaza, to a ruined Syria, a Yemen being bombed, a Libya in disintegration, and an Egypt on the slide toward state-centric fascism. These developments seem to be distantly removed from the days of Tahrir Square in early 2011, when people with elated spirits poured into the streets to demand a better political future. If the large-scale social mobilization back then provided the best refutation of Francis Fukuyama’s the end of history thesis then the failure to translate mobilization into structural change has made the current moment a liminal, open-ended situation lingering between hope and despair, action and inaction, exhaustion and revolutionary belief. Was this the end of revolution, a stillborn moment that caught fire but transformed and today has lost its radical potential? Or does the end goal of revolution still call forth actions to establish a new and different world, a better one? What, in other words, are the ends of revolution?

U2 - 10.1080/19436149.2017.1334304

DO - 10.1080/19436149.2017.1334304

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1943-6149

VL - 26

SP - 191

EP - 204

JO - Middle East Critique

JF - Middle East Critique

IS - 3

ER -