Capitalizing on the Revolution: Post-Revolutionary Knowledge Economies by Angela Harutyunyan February 23, 2011
“Capitalizing on the Revolution” and “University on the Square”: American University in Cairo gives birth to post-revolutionary culture industries, whereas during the protests all it did was remain silent. A “Historic Moment” was announced only when there were credible rumors of Mubarak’s departure from power.
As I stand in the square, as I walk in the tense streets of downtown Cairo, as I take the metro full of worn out faces emotionally charged, but silent, I am haunted by a specter, the specter of a post-revolutionary culture industry and knowledge economy. As the exhilarated cries and jubilation approach their climactic finale with the Vice President’s abrupt and laconic announcement of Mubarak’s departure, I start envisioning greedy hands reaching for the biggest cut of the revolutionary pie, high-pitched moralizing attitudes and high-brow self-righteousness. But worst of all, I see an entire post-revolutionary knowledge economy based on a self-serving and pragmatic appropriation of the position of the moralizing hero- be those institutional or individual positions.
In the specific modes of production and consumption of knowledge that follow certain economic patterns, and more concretely, the patterns of globalized circulation of goods, products, signs and images, a direct revolutionary action is both neutralized and multiplied. It is being recapped in the realm of representation, documentation, historiographical undertakings and post-revolutionary educational tourism. Moreover, the reclamation of the revolution by an institution that has done nothing but cooperate with the same corrupt regime they now feverishly discard, remained conspicuously silent throughout the uprising and merely bothered with the safety and entertainment of students and faculty, seeks to reassert its legitimizing function in the constellations of the post-Mubarak, post-Ben Ali and hopefully post-dictatorial Arab world. But this legitimization does not remain merely at the level of cultural recognition and scholarship. It has its economy and politics as it strives to institutionalize and market the body of revolutionary knowledge and experience to be collected, reproduced and ultimately consumed.
As AUC announces a new program “The University on the Square: Documenting History in Real Time”, an educational initiative to “Capitalize on Egypt’s Historic Developments”, it attempts to erase the memory of its own complicit silence…
On February 17th I received an email from the Foundation for Arts Initiative informing me of an approved offer for a large sum research grant I never applied for, to “explore your own thoughts about contemporary cultural practice in Egypt’s transformed environment.”
I am wondering why I need funding to explore my thoughts…
Is this the same economy of knowledge AUC is trying to catch up with? How to deal with so much economic and ideological instrumentalization that is already traceable even before the revolution has crystalised as an event?