Occupying Tahrir: Resistance, Violence, and Political Change

Abstract

The next rhetorical cartography that Hayes performs turns its attention to another resistive space of subjectivity, Tahrir Square in January 2011 during the uprisings now commonly known as “the Arab Spring.” The chapter first maps substantial presidential discourses from both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and argues these discourses function to sustain a binary distinction between “good” and “bad” Muslims within the terror wars. Hayes then discusses the concept of delinking as a way for resistive subjects to (re)generate their ability to move within the larger conjuncture of the terror wars. In turning specifically to the moment of resistance in Tahrir Square in January 2011, Hayes explores ways that discourses from the “hacktivists” of Anonymous, alongside rhetorics of early resistive leaders against Mubarak, demonstrate the revolutionary potential of the January 2011 moment in Tahrir for Muslim subjects living in the terror wars.