Errant Musings

After two weeks of non-violent protests, and decades of murder and torture, Egyptian revolutionaries have toppled a repressive regime. Mubarak and his ruling party have given into the demands of the hundreds of thousands of protestors and given all authority over to the military. It is yet to be seen what the military will do with this power, whether they will give up significant amounts of their power in the transition to a civilian-led democracy.

Despite the harsh realities that await us in the morning, the beauty of this moment cannot be overstated. A murderous regime has been overthrown, but more than that the Egyptian people have fought back the fear and alienation the regime depended on, and from many they have become many AND one. An organizer of the revolution was just speaking on Al-Jazeera and in tears she cried: “Everything now seems possible, everything is possible. For centuries they’ve told us that as Arabs we are not capable of democracy, but we have proven them wrong. I’ve never been so proud and happy in my life. I’m just overwhelmed.”

From all the way across the world I too am overwhelmed. In my field of study we are entrhralled with the question of revolutionary consciousness: what is it, how does it emerge, what conditions make it possible, is it a moment, is it a process, does it belong only to the moment of danger, or can it exist among us in the everyday?  For the past two weeks I have been glued to the air streams of information watching this consciousness unfold and come into being.

One of the things I’ve witnessed is that revolutionary consciousness was expressed in Egypt as a profound love: love for a future that lived only as a dream, love the revolutionaries have for one another as beings who deserve to live in dignity. Time and time again stories emerged of the protesters caring for one another, feeding one another, sleeping together, and talking without regard to religion and class—notably with full participation by women and men, young and old. Love and courage, courage and love—to me the lesson of Egypt is that these are the two fundamental features of revolutionary consciousness.

Certainly it is this moment, just as the regime topples, where the euphoria of this mode of being is made most visible. Though we must remember that it was built heart by heart, moment by moment, many days and weeks before now. What we must also recognize is that Egypt has much more to teach us about revolutionary consciousness in the next days, weeks, months, and years. It is my hope that there are forms of this consciousness capable of spreading beyond Egypt and the Middle East (next Iran! next Palestine! next Saudi Arabia and Yemen and Syria!).

Valentine’s Day is just a few days away here in the US. There are parts of me that have recoiled at the incredible sappiness and seeming silliness of the holiday. But now, for the first time, I see the holiday through a different lens. There is something powerful and beautiful about a holiday dedicated to celebrating love; it’s just that we’ve been holding on to a rather stunted version of something that in reality is full of revolutionary potentialities. This Valentine’s Day can we widen the scope of our embrace to include people in other continents, speaking foreign languages, and worshipping foreign gods? Can we withstand the emergence of a Middle East that doesn’t match our vision of it?

I sound impossibly naive, I know, but the Egptians have just given me hope in human beings again—everything truly seems possible.

One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to read more non-dissertation books. The goal is one book a week. It’s an ambitious project, made more difficult by all that needs to be read for the dissertation, not to mention trying to get through my weekly The New Yorker.

January: 1 1/2 books read.

I started out with a collection of essays by Woody Allen, Mere Anarchy. I really enjoy Allen’s short fiction because he makes me laugh out loud in a way that few authors do. The New Yorker frequently publishes short pieces of his—and they are gems. A few of my favorites are “Udder Madness” and “Will the Real Avatar Please Stand Up.” Check them out, you won’t be disappointed.

I must confess that I didn’t make it through this collection. More than two Woody Allen stories at a time is just too much. When you read his essays it doesn’t so much feel as though he’s giving you the voice of an orginial character coming alive through narrative. Rather, he inserts a version of his own Woody Allen character into various other fictional people, animals, objects. The effect is absurd, which is why it’s hilarious. But Woody Allen the character isn’t exactly the kind of person you can stand to spend more than an hour or so with. I’ll probably make it through this book piece by piece eventually—especially if I leave it by the toilet. I think Woody would appreciate that.

In a departure from my usual fiction-only reading habits, the next book I picked up was Valerie Plame’s Fair Game. This one I read on the Kindle while traveling. I was inspired to read it after seeing the amazing film version featuring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. I don’t know how the filmakers did it, but even though I knew how the story ends I was on the edge of my seat completely stressed out. While many of us have most likely forgotten the event, or paid it little attention at the time, the movie shows us why we should care. There are so many different levels to the film—personal, national, international—and each one is done just right. In my opinion, this movie and its actors should be up for Oscars.

The book can’t help but be drab in contrast. I say this because Valerie Plame was a covert operations specialist. She’s not allowed to write about the good stuff. While the filmakers aren’t bound by contracts and ethical obligations to the CIA, Valerie is. She could explain the basics of what her job was like (and what it was like to be a mother while being a CIA agent), but not any of the particular details. And here I get to why I think this needs to be read: politically appointed CIA officials at the higher levels of the office in charge of reading through, redacting, and releasing these kind of books tried their best to kill it. They have redacted the most insane things, like how long she worked for the CIA and how she met her husband—all of which is public knowledge you can get through simple internet searches. When you get to a place where material was redacted, the editors let you know. At times, the redactions clearly take up pages. It makes it hard to figure out what is going on, but I think the publishers did the right thing by releasing the book anyway. They have provided an afterword written by a knowledgable journalist, and she fills all these pieces in for you. Read this first, not after.

The other fascinating thing about this book is that she describes a life that we aren’t use to women living. She was like the real herione that I was glued to the tv watching in Alias (well, for much of her career she was more like Jennifer Garner’s handler played by that really cute guy whose name I can’t think of). Even though the media and the government tried to paint her as nothing much more than a former ambassador’s wife she was in fact not only a covert operative, she was chosen to participate in elite covert ops. I followed the events as they unfolded at the time, and I bought their depictions of her hook line and sinker. I pictured her as someone recruited into the CIA because of her marriage to her husband, and I thought she did little other than report what she overheard at state dinners, etc. I’m no fan of the CIA or the military, but the feminist in me loved reading about this woman breaking the gender boundaries in much the same way that I was thrilled seeing Demi Moore seriously kick ass in G.I. Jane.