In Revolution Squared Atef Shahat Said examines the 2011 Egyptian Revolution to trace the expansive range of liberatory possibilities and containment at the heart of every revolution. Drawing on historical analysis and his own participation in the revolution, Said outlines the importance of Tahrir Square and other physical spaces as well as the role of social media and digital spaces. He develops the notion of lived contingency—the ways revolutionary actors practice and experience the revolution in terms of the actions they do or do not take—to show how Egyptians made sense of what was possible during the revolution. Said charts the lived contingencies of Egyptian revolutionaries from the decade prior to the revolution’s outbreak to its peak and the so-called transition to democracy to the 2013 military coup into the present. Contrary to retrospective accounts and counterrevolutionary thought, Said argues that the Egyptian Revolution was not doomed to defeat. Rather, he demonstrates that Egyptians did not fully grasp their immense clout and that limited reformist demands reduced the revolution’s potential for transformation.

Atef Shahat Said is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of two books in Arabic.

Note on Transliteration  xii
Acknowledgments  xv
Introduction. Revolution as Lived Contingency  1
1. Prelude to Revolutionary Possibilities: Tahrir and Political Protest in Egypt  31
2. Peak of Revolutionary Possibilities: Squared I: How the Revolution Was “Bound” within Tahrir  57
3. Sovereignty in the Street: Popular Committees, Revolutionary Ambivalence, and Unrealized Power  87
4. The Two Souls of the Egyptian Revolution: Democratic Demands, Radical Strikes  112
5. Waning Revolutionary Possibilities: Squared II: Counterrevolutionary Coercion and Elections without Democratization  147
6. Square Zero: The State, Counterrevolutionary Paranoia, and the Withdrawal of Activists  178
Conclusion: Revolution as Experience  210
Appendix 1. Brief Timeline of the Egyptian Revolution, 2011–2018  227
Appendix 2. A Note on Positionality  231
Appendix 3. Notes on Methods, or How I Conducted Historical Ethnography of a Revolution  235
Appendix 4. Major Political Coalitions in Egypt, 2000–2010  251
Notes  263
References  289
Index  325