Violence, Social Actors, And Subjectivation In The Egyptian Revolution

This chapter gives an account of what we call the social actors’ “subjectivation” in the Egyptian Revolution. This notion encompasses their emotions, their strategic calculations, their mood, and their cultural features. Although structural factors like the economy and politics and, in particular, the geopolitics of the region play an important role in most of the Arab societies, too often they are stressed at the expense of the “subjective” state of the social actors. This chapter accounts for the revolution on the basis of the “subjectivation” hypothesis that highlights the interaction between the people and elites.