Politics and Popular Culture in Egypt: Contested Narratives of the 25 January Revolution and its Aftermath

尽管“阿拉伯之春”一词在英语学术和媒体中仍然随处可见，但在中东地区却引起了激烈的争论。这些争论的广度和深度并不比埃及这个最大、人口最多的阿拉伯国家的流行文化产品和社交媒体评论的爆炸性增长更明显。从流行音乐到涂鸦，这些消息来源在极大扩大的公共领域中发挥了至关重要的作用，在表达政治意义方面发挥了自下而上的作用。然而，令人惊讶的是，几乎没有持续的分析来分析埃及人是如何讲述自己的1月25日革命历史的。在埃及官方试图书写一部仍在酝酿中的历史，并抹去对2011年以来发生的事件的另类叙述时，这个项目将把“人民”重新置于学术理解的中心，以了解埃及的动荡过渡。它将揭示关于埃及国家身份定义的斗争如何在这一过程中处于核心地位，并依赖于“自我”和“他者”的可塑性结构。更广泛地说，它将调查国内政治危机的时刻如何代表着重新创造“东方”和“西方”概念的机会，这些概念对我们如何理解地缘政治具有更广泛的影响。我们的调查将包括两个方面：1)我们将检查各种流行文化文本，以揭示1月25日革命的流行叙事，并分析这些叙事自2011年以来是如何演变的。随着时间的推移，我们将特别关注“埃及人民”是如何被代表的，以及这告诉我们埃及人如何看待“西方”，勾勒出这些身份在叙述和质疑政治动态中所扮演的角色。2)同时，我们将研究2011年起义的官方叙述，以及掌管国家的各个利益攸关方如何试图证明他们对权力的主张是合理的，并诋毁反对派的声誉，包括试图通过审查和文化治安。探索与流行叙事的分歧和趋同的领域，我们也将分析流行文化如何颠覆、辞职、强化或重组关于国家、民族认同和国内外“他者”的霸权话语。民众和官方都将关注四个开创性的时刻：一)2011年2月前总统穆巴拉克下台；二)2012年穆斯林兄弟会在选举中获胜；三)2013年推翻前总统穆尔西；四)2014年阿卜杜勒·法塔赫·塞西赢得总统大选。该项目将在审查埃及大众文化文本和利用社交媒体收集新的数字资源方面雄心勃勃，并在相对缺乏审查的中东文化研究领域提供实质性创新。华威大学、雷丁大学和曼彻斯特大学之间的合作将融合国际关系、历史和文化研究方面的专业知识，以开发一种跨学科的方法，研究主要是关于阿拉伯民主化和威权主义的自上而下辩论的流行观点。通过对资料的后殖民解读，我们将推进一直在努力去中心化西方作为分析对象的后东方主义学术，突出埃及人的声音，这些声音已经被边缘化，越来越多地受到国家的压制。该项目将提供实实在在的政策好处，揭示自2011年以来一直框定埃及政治的复杂文化战场，并阐明埃及代表“西方”的形象如何卷入1月25日后的过渡。在英国政策制定者努力应对中东持续动荡之际，从一开始就让这些听众参与进来，将加强跨文化对话和理解。

Though still ubiquitous in English-language scholarship and media, the term 'Arab Spring' is heavily contested in the Middle East. The breadth and depth of these contestations is no more apparent than in the explosion of popular cultural products and social media commentary in the largest and most populous Arab country, Egypt. From pop music to grafitti, these sources have played a vital role in articulating political meaning 'from below' in a vastly expanded public sphere. Yet there has been surprisingly little sustained analysis of how Egyptians have narrated their own history/ies of the 25 January Revolution. This project will put 'the people' back at the centre of scholarly understanding of Egypt's tumultuous transition amidst official attempts to script a history-still-in-the-making and erase alternative narratives of events unfolding since 2011. It will reveal how struggles over the definition of Egyptian national identity have been central to this process and dependent upon malleable constructions of 'self' and 'other'. More broadly, it will investigate how moments of domestic political crisis represent opportunities to recreate notions of 'East' and 'West' with wider implications for how we understand the geopolitical. Our investigation will consist of two strands:1) We will examine a diversity of popular cultural texts to uncover popular narratives of the 25 January revolution and analyse how these have evolved since 2011. Particular attention will be paid to how 'the Egyptian people' are represented over time and what this tells us about how Egyptians see 'the West', delineating the role these identities have played in narrating and contesting political dynamics. 2) In parallel, we will examine official narratives of the 2011 uprising and how various stakeholders at the helm of the state have sought to justify their claim to power and discredit opposition, including through attempts at censorship and cultural policing. Exploring areas of divergence and convergence with popular narratives, we will also analyse how popular culture has subverted, resignified, reinforced or reconstituted hegemonic discourses of the nation, national identity and domestic or foreign 'others.'. Both popular and official strands will focus on four seminal moments: i) the removal of former President Mubarak in February 2011, ii) the electoral victory of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2012, iii) the overthrow of former President Morsi in 2013, iv) the presidential victory of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in 2014. This project will be ambitious in the scope of Egyptian popular cultural texts examined and the use of social media to gather new digital sources and provide substantial innovation in the relatively underexamined field of Middle East cultural studies. Collaboration between the universities of Warwick, Reading and Manchester will merge expertise in international relations, history and cultural studies to develop an interdisciplinary methodology for the study of popular perspectives on predominantly top-down debates concerning Arab democratisation and authoritarianism. Through a postcolonial reading of sources, we will advance post-Orientalism scholarship that has struggled to de-center the West as the subject of analysis, bringing to the fore Egyptian voices that have been marginalized and increasingly subject to suppression by the state. The project will provide real policy benefits, revealing the complex cultural battleground that has framed politics in Egypt since 2011 and illuminating how Egyptian representations of the 'West' have been implicated in the post-25 January transition. Engaging this audience from the outset will strengthen inter-cultural dialogue and understanding at a time when UK policy-makers are struggling to respond to ongoing upheavals in the Middle East.