Revolution and enlightenment

This paper outlines the general scope and dynamics of the relation between the ideology of the Arab revolutions and their method. It also suggests how qualitative differences between the revolutionary and post-revolutionary phases ought to be approached. The revolutions themselves may be described in a general sense as “liberal” in ideology and “anarchist” in method. This liberal ideology is evident in the common slogans of all Arab revolutions in 2011, which highlighted democratization, limited executive power, new constitutions, more civic liberties, the concept of “popular will,” and mechanisms of accountability to guard against corruption as well as the excesses of the state security apparatus. These demands for a “civic” state appear to have influenced even the religious participants, many of whom found themselves compelled to respond to the environment by liberalizing religious thought itself. In this sense, the liberal revolution may in one sense be seen as a resumption of the Arab nahda heritage, which had dominated intellectual and cultural life under colonialism and also in the postcolonial period up to 1973. On the other hand, a persistent preference for an anarchist method in revolts is evident in how they have resisted the temptation to give rise to savior leader figures or collective parties that would stand in for the revolution, even after their success. This resistance to leadership needs to be understood in light of earlier regional experiments in which anti-colonial movements have in fact highlighted the opposite tendency--namely revolutionary dictatorship. I propose that a new memory has formed as a result of past revolutionary experiences, and surfaced as a rare combination of liberal theory and anarchist method. This combination, in turn, proved uniquely suitable to undoing the ideological heritage and institutional structures of the most recent phase of the authoritarian age (1973-2011).