The history of Egypt's revolution

Jack Shenker has a fine piece in the Guardian on The struggle to document Egypt's revolution:

On any given evening Cairo's Tahrir Square creaks under the weight of its own recent history: trinket-sellers flog martyrs' pendants, veterans of the uprising hold up spent police bullets recovered from the ground, and an ad hoc street cinema screens YouTube compilations of demonstrators and security forces clashing under clouds of teargas. This is collective memory by the people, for the people – with no state functionaries around to curate what is remembered or forgotten.

"Egyptians are highly sensitive about official attempts to write history and create state-sponsored narratives about historical events," says Khaled Fahmy, one of the country's leading historians. "When Hosni Mubarak was vice-president in the 1970s he was himself on a government committee tasked with writing – or rather rewriting – the history of the 1952 revolution to suit the political purposes of the elite at that time. That's exactly the kind of thing we want to avoid."

Fahmy knows only too well about the inherent tension between acts of mass popular participation and official attempts to catalogue and record them. Less than a week after the fall of Mubarak, the professor received a phone call from the head of Egypt's national archives asking him to oversee a unique new project that would document the country's dramatic political and social upheaval this year and make it available for generations of Egyptians to come.

"I was initially very reluctant," says Fahmy. "I didn't want people to think we were producing one definitive narrative of the revolution. But then I started thinking about the possibilities, and suddenly I got excited."

Khaled Fahmy, who is quoted above, is a noted historian of Ottoman Egypt (at AUC, formerly at NYU) and I've had the occasion to talk to him about the project. In a few months we intend to interview him about it, perhaps for the podcast.

Importantly the story includes links to websites documenting the revolution, which are reproduced after the jump.  

Remembering revolution: five additional projects attempting to archive Egypt's political upheaval

• Tahrir Documents Provides scans of dozens of printed leaflets that were circulated in the streets during the anti-Mubarak uprising, from religious tracts to lists of political demands.

• R-Shief An ambitious data-mining project that draws content from Twitter and hundreds of other websites documenting the Arab spring, and provides tool and visualisations to help analyse it.

• University on the Square A collection of revolutionary stories and memorabilia shared by the staff, students and alumni of the American University in Cairo.

• 25Leaks.com The definitive home of documents seized by protesters from state security headquarters in the aftermath of Mubarak being ousted. The site's creators have remained anonymous for their own safety.

• Memory of Modern Egypt An initiative in Arabic by the vast Bibliotheca Alexandrina on the Mediterranean coast that seeks to collate material on the revolution from across Egypt, including the stories of martyrs.

Comments

[SPG]

Hi there,

I'm a European, living in Egypt and owning a business here for more than 7 years. I saw the other day on the CNN, someone complaining that people won't be on Taharir Square if there was jobs available for them.

Let me tell you something, we are trying to employ people during the revolution, as our business still runing well, and it is Mission Impossible! They are all complaining about the revolution but none of them are working hard to put together the country!

I always compalint of Egytpians being lazy, greedy and arrogant! but after the revolution things are getting worse, specially with muslim. You can see there are plenty of people who needs money, as unfortunately in Egypt poverty is everywehere, but they will die of hunger thinking that Alaa will provide... ???? of course, they will not work hard for their money, they will complaint instead... thinking that the money that this corrupt politicians stole from them (and us, me) will be returned to the people. They are literally saying that now the goverment will deposit money on their bank accounts. Can you belive that? And I don't mean that ignorant and uneducated people is saying that, also people with education! Can you literally be more stupid?

I don't think this country will recover even in a 90 years, with this arrogant and lazy actitud, this people will turn the country into kaos and wait for Alaa to come and sort it out.

I tried to employ people, paying european salaries! and I struggle to find someone willing to work hard! It is unreal! Productivity of this nation is so low, that you need to see it to really believe it!!

I wish them the best, poor souls!! but if things continue as now I will pack up my things and stop investing on this country!