egyptian thoughts

In a new and revolutionary exciting book, the Israeli linguist and communication prof., Daniel Dor, totally redefines our perspective and perception of language. His proposal is first to understand the evolutionary processes of language with regard and relation to both meaning and experience, not as an isolated feature of animals. Second, he offers to understand language as a communication technology, and as such, a social one by definition and practice - “it is a know-how”, he says. Taking seriously this two yardsticks of language, we can easily refer to violent, or rather explosive, conflictual aspect of it, as been extensively done by Slavoj Zizek.

Tracing the violent characteristics of language, zizek debates and supplements the views of Benjamin and Heidegger, as he emphasizes the inherent ideological inscription onto language (the power of naming, or framing), on top its possible practice as a reciprocal or symmetric recognizing technology, described by Habermas for example, or more lately, the multi-culturalists misunderstandings, as people living in ‘different world’ (as far as they particular thus different understanding of the totality of real objects). Starting at the beginning of the 20^th century with the linguistic (and pragmatic) turn of things, following Winttgenstein and Austin, the (critical) research of language started taking shapes like (CDA’s) socio-linguistics, or (Barth’s) Semiotics, until the metaphor was that men dwells in not only the prison-house, but rather the torture house of language.

With that line of thought the effects of communication are immensely ideological, as we all in the western-modern world has come to know very well with the news industry and information corporations trying to control and convey that knowledge, thus forming what Foucault has called knowledge\power. Nowadays, when what we call globalization, which is another name for global capitalism, is the basic premise of our almost-all political ajenda’s (in the form of the democratic-neoliberal state), the global discourse continues having its toll globally, especially when it comes to fantasy, on the (economically) weaker, ‘3^rd world’, or ‘developing’ coutries’.

Thus, and here we can helpfully work out Bruno Latour’s actor-network-theory’s logic, in the sense that devices being mobile, like cellphones, and immutable, like ‘facebook’, are – very practically indeed – generating a work-net, where ‘action’ is being allocated, and reallocated. That action, being shaped by global discourse is twofold. On the one hand – it is violent. The spreading of knowledge could, from the administarion’s point-of-view, get ‘out-of-hand’. On the other hand, both the administration and the people use communication devices, be it humanly such as language, or technical like cellphones, on a very regular basis, as a mean of survival. In other words, communication is paradoxical, and needs management.

However, the lower the barriers of communication are, the harder management is. For example, north-korea is pretty much isolated from the global discourse mainly due to the human-technical (very) high barrier of communication technologies, and the low spread of its users. In clear contrast, in Egypt, the barriers are much lower, as many people carry cellphones, and (not as) many use facebook or other on-line networking. In that way, people are, generally speaking, to some extent and in some some way, subjected to the global discourse. If that happens empirically, we can expect that the phantasmal affects of that global discourse will occur as well, and here precisely the ideological parameter takes place. Simply put, what it means is that the Egyptian people is exposed, thus subjected, to the wishes, or ‘habits of the heart’ (after Robert bellah), of the masters of that global discourse, surely with domestic permutations.

In terms of the social conditions, there is a major rapture in Egyptian society. First, many of them work with\in\for tourism. They know all about marketing themselves globally, using the pyramids, the history of being one of the oldest dinesty’s, even prior to Islam. Yet, as many of them return home with a monthly salary of 350 us$, it is hard to match up to the myth, the stories (of their own imaginary, the way they see, or perceive themselves, from the outsider’s eye). It is hard to be a great empire with so many leaving in slums and great poverty, especially in front of the global-capitalist discourse, of modernity, development, self-fulfilment and so-on. This rapture has been ‘lying’ there, ‘under’ the Egyptian (socio-topological) surface, quietly, as long as the politicians could continue come-up with so-much convincing responses to it, for instance, Islamic fundamentalism, or more moderate ‘hatred towards the west’ propaganda (playing the exploiting west as the element that cause to the literally poor daily situation.

Following Tunisia as the catalyst, Egyptian people saw the impossible taking shape, form and realized, and having the great advantage of lower barriers of communication, meaning more people allocating-and-reallocating action, weather political or ‘just’ personal – they could get out to the streets, with such a wonder full synchronization, timing and courage of the masses. That outburst had no central leadership for weeks now, no Leviathan (in hobbes’ terms) was present, for it was an actual network out there, and as such – it has no singular canter. Instead, what we saw is that (latourian) monstrous shape of the mass of people, the collective – as the Leviathan itself. I couldn’t think of a greater example of a Leviathan in the process of becoming. The days of staying in the streets demonstrating - demonstrated exactly how fundamental communication is so to social life.

In that light, we could say that the role of communication is not as important as the role of the communicator. In Egypt I claim, the letter defined the former, so if one in the street is more in ‘receive’ mode that in ‘send’ mode in relation to the western-dominant communicator – he\she identifies with the Other’s modes of conduct and then start the self-explanation of the differences between the two experiences. This process of what Eric santner calls ‘signifying-stress’, is internal to human language and forms itself around the present state of affairs, as an attempt to cover up the ontological (experiential and hermeneutic) gap between people.

So it is the global discourse that slowly over the years trickled to the Egyptian mind and then failed to support any substantial meaning to everyday practice of Egyptians. The global discourse was carrying signifies such as ‘equality’, ‘human-rights’, ‘progress’ but also of ‘exploitation’, and in the encounter with Egyptian and Tunisian realities – it had to start comprising the actual state of affairs. Given the social rapture I described earlier, it was only a matter of the right circumstances so this raging lava of social antagonism will erupt.

From this situation, we can draw two highly important conclusions. Firstly, communication has a major role in transforming information around the globe, in many different ways, direct or indirect. It help changing reality, in the way of explaining it, interpreting it, as somewhat meaningful. Second, the outcomes of those transformations are unpredictable. That is given the ways people use and justify their actions in such an innovative way, into a socially cluster of justifications which compose reality in a way that for Egyptians – are all related to the immense socio-economic gap from the people they come in close contact with, via the global discourse. Together, when this gap was all the more hard to cover up with ideological reasoning, the Egyptian suffering has come to a ‘critical point’-of no return – at which the entire possible-not possible relation has immediately changed, and all of a sudden, as if from nowhere, millions claimed the streets.

To sum-up, it would be worth recalling that somewhat old insight of mark granoveter about the the strength of weak ties. Global discourse does not presume that all Egyptians are connected to the Internet, or use a cellphone, not at all. Nonetheless, with so many that do, the growing or cumulative effect of that global-knowledge is multiplies by the dozen. For every person that carry a cellphone, a few that do not still sees the person using it, as a more developed one, therefore acting in his steps to follow suit. For every one of those 19% of Tunisian facebook users, a few other heard about it, And so on. In relation to the barriers of communication (censorship but not only) and their height – in the form of institutionalised management – the outcome is a contingent development of what is an absolute necessity. For now, it is the downfall of the Mubarak administration, along what is symbolises and stands-for.