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From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Wed Mar 02 2011 - 23:32:34 EST
Capitalizing on the revolution: Post-revolutionary knowledge economies
Angela Harutyunyan <http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/336838>
Wed, 02/03/2011 - 16:15
As I stand in the square, as I walk in the tense streets of downtown
Cairo, as I stare at the worn-out and silent faces on the metro, I am
haunted by the spectre of a post-revolutionary culture industry and
knowledge economy in Egypt. As the exhilarated cries and jubilation
approached their climactic finale with the Egyptian Vice President’s abrupt
and laconic announcement of Mubarak’s departure, I start envisioning greedy
hands reaching for the biggest cut of the revolutionary pie, high-pitched
moralizing attitudes and high-brow self-righteousness.
But worst of all, I anticipated the emergence of a post-revolutionary
knowledge economy based on the self-serving appropriation of the position of
the moralizing hero. Sure enough, many films have been produced using
hackneyed footage of large demonstrations and triumphant music. Scholarly
and artistic works about the revolution have emerged from institutions where
formalized knowledge is produced and circulated.
The American University in Cairo (AUC) is one notable example. The
university has announced its latest plans to develop new courses, workshops
and seminars on the revolution (as well as various on- and off-curricular
programs offered by the School of Business, The School of Humanities and
Social Sciences and The School of Global Affairs and Public Policy). These
plans raise questions about who exactly are the producers and consumers of
this knowledge and what ethical and political stances did they take during
the 18 days of the Egyptian uprising.
AUC remained conspicuously silent throughout the revolt, often seeming to
care more about the safety of its students and faculty. For years, the
university cooperated with the corrupt Mubarak regime that its now
feverishly rejects (witness the Suzanne Mubarak conference hall and the
annual commemoration of Police Day, amongst other signs). By laying claim to
the revolution, AUC now seeks to maintain, and even extend, its legitimacy
in the post-Mubarak (and, hopefully, post-authoritarian) Arab world. This
legitimacy is not merely confined to cultural and scholarly recognition. It
also has economic and political implications as AUC strives to
institutionalize and market knowledge about revolution for scholarly
consumption.
As AUC announces its new program "The University on the Square: Documenting
History in Real Time", an educational initiative set up to “capitalize on
Egypt's historic developments,” it attempts to erase the memory of its own
complicit silence.
On 17 February, I received an email from the Foundation for Arts Initiative
offering me a large research grant--for which I had not applied--to “explore
[my] own thoughts about contemporary cultural practice in Egypt's
transformed environment.” Why do I need funding to explore my thoughts? Is
this the same “economy of knowledge” AUC is trying to catch up with? How
does one deal with these attempts to appropriate local knowledge of the
revolution?
Many would ask what a sincere, non-institutionalized, non-market,
non-moralising account of the revolution and its cultural forms would look
like. What alternatives exist to the “economy of knowledge” and
instrumentalized art production? The answer is that alternatives forms of
knowledge and aesthetics emerge when there is no distinction between theory
and practice, no professionalized division of labor; and when knowledge and
creativity are not instrumentalized for narrowly defined political and
market-driven gains.
Cultural forms and modes of knowledge do not need to “catch up” with the
revolution; they can emerge from daily, non-institutionalized practices and
social relationships. This was a regular scene in Tahrir Square where people
invented slogans and came up with modes of public organization to sustain
the uprising. This lesson should not be lost upon those who seek to
document, narrate and memorialize the revolution in the future.
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