Abstract

This chapter looks at the uprisings of 2011 as acts of mass resistance to the appropriation of public resources and public spaces. They were protests against the power that had been used for decades to denigrate and exclude the public, those who were formally citizens of these states but who were also effectively denied citizens’ rights. It therefore emphasises the centrality of public space and the way in which the method of its occupation brought the public into being as a mobilised political force. In the enactment of these multiple projects of resistance across the region, two features stood out. The first was the performative aspect of this politics. The second was the way in which resistance followed the capillary forms of power itself, confounding the state authorities. Of course, coming together to express a common demand that the regime should fall did not imply uniformity of opinion about what should replace it. In some countries, this is when fracture lines began to appear, because some found it difficult to accept the plurality of the activist public. Similarly, the need to institutionalise the public to ensure genuine empowerment of those involved has sometimes proved contentious. Neither problem is insuperable, but the preservation of spaces – physical, institutional and imaginative – that are genuinely public and open to all will determine whether or not the Arab uprisings have set in motion processes that will genuinely transform politics in the region for a generation.