Mosireen and the Battle for Political Memory

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Feb 24, 2014 Egypt
[Image of speaker Sherief Gaber. Source: YouTube.com] [Image of speaker Sherief Gaber. Source: YouTube.com]

Mosireen and the Battle for Political Memory

By : Middle East Studies Center at AUC

On 19 February 2014, the Middle East Studies Center at the American University in Cairo hosted Sherief Gaber, a member of the Mosireen film collective and researcher in housing rights and community development, for a lecture titled “Mosireen and the Battle for Political Memory.’’

Gaber discussed the mission and activities of the Mosireen film collective. Mosireen, or ”We are determined,” is a non-profit media collective dedicated to preserving and sharing images and video documenting the extraordinary events during and since the January 2011 Egyptian uprising. In the last three years, the group has established a popular YouTube channel, produced hundreds of short documentaries, amassed an enormous archive of recordings of the events of the uprising, and hosted a number of public events to screen and discuss their films.

For Gaber, the group’s purpose goes beyond simply capturing and sharing the images of the revolution. Gaber noted the influence of the philosopher Walter Benjamin on his work. Gaber recalled a poignant quote from Benjamin’s “Thesis on the Philosophy of History”: “To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize ‘how it really was.’ It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger.” In line with this critical understanding of memory, Gaber’s and Mosireen’s work disavows establishing a single historical narrative. It focuses instead on fracturing the currently-rigid binary perspectives by showcasing the diversity of experiences arising from a single event. 

This diversity, Gaber argued, is key in combating the influence of powerful state and media voices engaged in what Gaber termed “pernicious revisionism.” According to Gaber, these voices have consistently forced broad public adoption of oversimplified, sanitized narratives that attempt to erase not only the crimes and violence committed by the state during the events of the last three years, but also the individual experiences themselves.  According to Gaber, one can only view the past through the prism of the present. 

Gaber pointed to several trends in public thought that are important for making sense of the last three years. Due to the current political situation we arrive at a moment of hopelessness and even doubt over the transformative nature of the post-Jan 2011 period. Simultaneously, we see nostalgia for the early days of the uprisings in comparison to the present. Gaber noted that the fetishization of “the glory days” extends back to Egypt under Mubarak, Sadat, Nasser, and even King Farouk. This longing for the past, Gaber indicated, also shows a generational friction over meaning and memory. An attempt to control the significance of certain events is hopefully the ‘’last gasp’’ of the previous establishment. 

With the increasing level of danger for journalists reporting on protest activity in Egypt and unprecedented degrees of narrative collusion between Egyptian media organizations and the state, Mosireen’s work is more important than ever, Gaber said. The function of Mosireen’s work is not intended simply as evidence of “we were there” but to try and makes sense of what is happening now. The end-goal of preserving political memory, he noted, is to preserve political spaces and cultivate a continuous, productive dialogue over meaning. “History,” he concluded, “is dangerous when it becomes a monolith.” 

Throughout this discussion, the journey of Mosireen and the contest over meaning highlighted the struggles of Egypt’s protest movements. Sabrina, an MA student at the Middle East Studies Center, drew parallels between the lack of hierarchy within Mosireen and the Egyptian resistance movements more broadly. Gaber pointed out Egypt’s long history of surveillance over any attempts of seemingly-subversive organization. Moving away from traditional models of social change, Gaber acknowledged the place and importance of topic-based movements such as “No to Military Trials for Civilians” campaign. Gaber described the archive of Mosireen as a “subjective document” and as such Egypt’s recent history appears to be open for only one subjective narration. Yet Gaber also acknowledges hope, and a popular energy that will continue to render Egypt “ungovernable.” 

For more information on the Middle East Studies Center at the American University of Cairo and our future events please follow us on facebook here and twitter here. 
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Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412