Issue No. 600
Opinion
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22 - 28 August 2002 Issue No. 600 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
The politics of emotion
There is no doubt that a significant component of the revolution's initial driving force relates not to politics but to psychology, operating on the level of feeling and symbolism. These are levels that are normally excluded from political discourse due to their emotive content and subjective signification. Yet it is only with the help of such concepts that the contemporary Egyptian can gain any useful perspective on the revolution.Revolutions in general, and especially the July Revolution, derive legitimacy from the extent to which they manage to mobilise emotions, drawing people together rather than expressing individual viewpoints. In the case of the July Revolution such emotions were mobilised not to procure support for a truly collective and sustained project but as a form of exploitation: the publicity and propaganda that present the revolution as being somehow an inevitable product of the yearnings of the Egyptian people. Rather than fortifying the Egyptian spirit over the period of the last half century the revolution has exhausted it; no wonder the conceptual framework within which it continues to promote itself -- drawing on concepts of psychology and symbolism -- has ceased to signify, having long ago been reduced to a barren stretch of slogans.
After 50 years what is needed is not an objective assessment but an equally emotive concept that can tap into the energies of Egyptians, propelling them forward and up.
This week's Soapbox speaker is the deputy editor-in-chief of Al- Siyasa Al-Dawliya magazine.
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