The live event (27 September 2021) at Casa Arabe in Madrid was wonderful and engaging. Along with the institute’s Karim Hauser and Jordanian novelist Fadia Faqir, we discussed reimagining futures for the Arab world through literature and social contracts. I discussed the themes in my book chapter “Kinetic Karama: Bargaining for Dignity in the Pursuit of a New Arab Social Contract” in The Modern Arab State: A Decade of Uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, Ed. Youssef Cherif.
Amro Ali, “Kinetic Karama: Bargaining for Dignity in the Pursuit of a New Arab Social Contract” in The Modern Arab State: A Decade of Uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, Ed. Youssef Cherif, (Berlin: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2021) pp. 41-67.PDF version
“Dreams of the detainee” (1961). Painting by Egyptian artist Inji Efflatoun. Courtesy of the Barjeel Art Foundation.
Summary: The protest cries of karama (dignity) in 2011 saw the emergence of a new subjectivity in the Arab world that birthed a new citizenship paradigm and elevated the citizenry as a compelling sovereign collective. Karama developed not only as a form of bottom-up universal humanism but also independently outside the confines of academia, religious-secular debates, and even human rights organizations. For many decades, karama had been reserved for the loftiness of the nation and liberation struggles, whereas karama for the individual meant a moral virtue that constituted an apolitical being. In 2011, however, the understanding of karama made a phenomenal leap from the moral into the political realm and thus became a political force in its own right. Karama developed into a self-contained movement, a philosophy that people yearned to develop, encapsulating a story that expands the moral imagination and asks its protagonists to imbibe the rhythm of life with a higher temporal calling. It is the citizen’s inherent worthiness and inalienable right to make the social contract.
The seminar, which is hosted by the EUME/Forum Transregionale Studien, explores how the Egyptian city of Alexandria has long been subjected to utopian and dystopian tensions that permeate the arts, literature, architecture, history, and everyday language. One of the seeds of utopianism could be traced to Naguib Mahfouz’s novella Miramar (1967) that repositioned Alexandria as a welcoming safe haven and a cosmopolitan asylum that can bring back an Egyptian utopia and an alternative vision of the homeland, and made more vivid in films like Youssef Chahine’s Alexandria, Why? (1978) that aligned with the then growing trend that represented Alexandria as a utopian desire. The question of utopianism leaped into the political realm in the 1990s that saw Hosni Mubarak’s regime and the international community take an interest in Alexandria as a lost utopia that must somehow be restored through a Greco-Roman refashioning and an uncritical revival of cosmopolitan discourse. This was a useful guise for neoliberal economics with Alexandria being the laboratory for privatisation – later rejected through the 2011 revolution that led to, albeit temporary, forms of civic utopia emerging. Yet the road from utopia to dystopia was inevitable, and this seminar seeks to understand the growing dystopian impulses of recent years that are shaped by, and in turn shape, the coastal city’s thematic peculiarities: nihilism, mutant capitalism, climate change, nostalgia, among others, in illuminating the tendency towards dystopian motifs.
Amro Ali, “Kinetic Karama: Bargaining for Dignity in the Pursuit of a New Arab Social Contract” in The Modern Arab State: A Decade of Uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. Eds. Youssef Cherif (Berlin: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2021).
My chapter contribution looks at the triumph of karama (dignity) over sharaf (honour) as a form of ethical logic since 2011 in the Arab world. The text engages with Friedrich Nietzsche, Erich Fromm, and Frantz Fanon in exploring the idea of individual dignity as a legitimizing narrative, in which karama was not reborn as a theoretical concept or an enhanced individual virtue, but a self-contained movement and a story that expands the moral imagination.
I was interviewed, along with Leila Chamma, Ramy al-Asheq, and Liwaa Yazji, for a feature piece in exBerliner magazine on Berlin as the “new Arab intellectual capital”. The print issue is out now in Germany (1 February 2021), you can download the PDF version of the print article or read the online version (or in German) which is now available (19 April 2021).
I wrote a brief essay for the Forum Transregionale Studien on the techniques I undertook to teach sociology and philosophy to the Egyptian public and to elevate the agency of the audience members.
An enthusiastic Egyptian youth exited the closing of a lecture event in late November 2017 and rushed to a coffeehouse near Tahrir Square to meet up with his friends. He told them about this woman thinker called ‘Hannah Arendt’ who he just learned about and her peculiar idea of ‘new beginnings.’ Several nearby curious patrons overheard the chatter and enquired about the philosopher. The social circle widened, and the youth continued discussing the lecture that he had just attended. It would see some of the patrons coming to the next lecture session on Walter Benjamin’s loss of aura concept.
The youth had attended the first event in a long series of lectures and workshops (2017–2018) that I co-ran with Mona Shahien, the director of Tahrir Lounge Goethe, in Cairo, Alexandria and Minya, mostly in Arabic and some in English, that aimed to introduce philosophy and sociology to the Egyptian public in a comprehensible and practical way. I want to focus on the audience participant as an agent and I will outline, albeit not exhaustively, how the public teaching of sociology and philosophy can be merged with a certain structure, approach and content that elevates the agency of audiences. The project consisted of ten lectures; a workshop on Benjamin’s storytelling and aura, Arendt’s Vita Activa and Vita Contemplativa, and a theater play. I will focus mainly on the lectures as they were the primary thrust of the project and hold promise for academics, intellectuals and practitioners who seek to convey the ideas of the academy to the public.
The Theatre of Thought (not a theater as such but lectures) manifesto could be summed up as:
the public should be recognised, and elevated, as the primary ideal, and the individual’s present difficulties in experiencing or attaining pluralism and civic responsibility is tied to the city’s loss of meaning and the citizen’s alienation from one another. The development of philosophical thinking can help address this malaise.[1]
The project explored the notion of restoring the individual’s dignity and agency by ‘recalibrating’ them both to relate to the city. It raised the following questions: How can historical imaginaries, ideas, persons, sensibilities and aesthetics work their way into renegotiating the citizen’s relationship to the city? How can a crippling nostalgia be appropriated for a forward-looking civic vision? How do philosophical themes make one understand the familiar spaces, such as neighborhoods and coffeehouses, better? How can individuals and groups endow their urban terrain with a clearer identity and a relatively better coherent narrative? Does self-expression disguise a different set of established rules and practices in which nonconformity begins to look quite similar? How do we reconcile the digital order with the terrestrial order? What are the implications of perceiving the other, in terms of trustworthiness and reliability, when they are dissolved in a digital swarm?
It has been my long-running interest to merge the field of sociology and the ideas of philosophy to produce a particular type of discussion for Egyptian and Arab contexts. One way to do this was to approach an underdeveloped subdiscipline: Sociological philosophy. The American sociologist Randal Collins describes and validates this area as such: “[N]ormative self-reflection is a fundamental aspect of sociology’s scientific tasks because key sociological questions are, in the last instance, also philosophical ones” and “[i]f knowledge (or discourse in general) is social, then sociology should be in the most important position to reflect on the nature of philosophy as a form of knowledge or discourse.”[2] To put it another way, philosophy on its own is akin to the blazing sun, while sociology lends the shades that slightly obscure but reveal hues, tints, tones, tinges and contours of the philosophical subject. Philosophy in its ‘purest’ essence can be at high risk of handicapping itself from conveying ideas, making dense texts inaccessible and driving away readers and listeners.
Engaging Agency
Why would a university student in Assuit take the five-hour train journey specifically for an event in Cairo and return the same night? How do we end up with a peculiar scene of an Azhari scholar seated next to a worker from a jeans factory? The why question is critical to make sense of agency and what motivates people to come to an event mostly out of their domain of studies or usual interests. The answers to these questions were helped by the post-lecture conversations and the efficient feedback mechanism instituted by the Tahir Lounge Goethe. Part of the reason why the events could attract audiences was due to Shahien strongly believing in the project’s endeavor, prioritizing it, and putting resources into organization, promotion, and translation. In Cairo’s case, it was also helped by the venue, the Goethe Institute, being central and easy to reach by metro. Moreover, like all cultural spaces, there is often a significant number of returning audience members. However, there were overlapping and distinct factors that need further explanation.
The motives included many attendees seeking, to an extent, to compensate for a dysfunctional education system. For a number of young women from conservative families, the evening events were a way to justify their absence from home to gain extracurricular educational value. It was often some sort of dissatisfaction with the status quo as a sufficient underlying motive for going to these types of events. A number of audience faces at the start of the session revealed a weary gloom as if they had stepped out of the trenches of the suffocated public sphere. They did. The facial expressions are what one would expect after a two-hour long-winded session. Ironically, in many instances, it was the reverse in these events. Where frowns can also eventually turn to smiles. These places have become, in some sense, the last spaces of refuge from a public sphere that is increasingly criminalizing independent thought and non-officially sanctioned culture.
The audience participant’s voice and disclosure of identity was essential to their agency; the lecture often allowed a rolling conversation as the presentation unfolded. It was important to create sufficient breaks and meetings after the session, actively introduce members of the audience to each other and ask for their names. What may seem as banal or routine in any lecture event was often a profound experience for many of them. Some had never been in a situation at university in which their ideas were solicited or allowed to challenge the instructor. This was not unique to the project, but it did emphasize the importance of building a small community out of the sessions. The other approach to agency involved throwing down a challenge. Instead of me simply giving book recommendations, I asked them to head to the used book markets in Cairo’s Azbakeya or Alexandria’s Nabi Daniel street to engage with the books that seize their interest. Many did so. For some, reading a book after graduating from university was unheard of unless it was for work purposes.
The event always started with a powerful relatable metaphor. It would be the spearhead that set the tone for the lecture. Metaphors included, for example, the legend of Icarus, the Flying Dutchman and a vintage photo of a woman at the station waiting for the train. The metaphor when employed compellingly enabled the audience to project themselves onto the unfolding narrative of the night and add depth to the dizziness of their alienation, review their perception of social problems and kindle a reconstruction of imagination capacities needed for thinking through social and moral quagmires. It also helps to focus on the philosopher’s topic rather than the philosopher to avoid the problem of mini cults growing around the respective philosopher. This is why the philosopher’s name was not included in the lecture titles.
One of the hurdles can, at times, be dispelling the myth that philosophy is opposed to religion. This often needed to be discussed from the outset, and it helped by pointing out that Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali and Augustine of Hippo, among many others, were philosophers. A Muslim woman in a hijab in Minya said to me during the lecture break, “I had always feared philosophy as I felt it was atheist-driven, but I came to it through Kierkegaard because he was Christian.” This was interesting although not unusual. The religiosity of the philosopher or books that show a substantial overlap with faith made audiences highly engaged. Starting off with Arendt’s idea of forgiveness and briefly referencing Islamic and Christian texts on forgiveness, for example, helped to give the philosophical conversation a holistic formation and relatable intimacy without losing sight of the ongoing discussion.
This paper briefly examined the conditions and method of bringing sociological-philosophy to the Egyptian public, as well as the role of agency that engages audiences. I hope in future to expand comprehensively on the concept and look at class, social strata, generations, audience dynamics, content delivery, translation and the project’s successes and setbacks, among other factors.
Following the closing of the “Creative Public” session in 2017, a boy scout leader from the audience approached Shahien and said he wished he brought a 19-year-old boy scout he knew to these events. Shahien replied that he can bring him to the next session. The elder replied this was no longer possible as he had recently met the youth at a Cairo coffeehouse to discuss his future that would see him enter the college of engineering. During the chat, the waiter serving the coffee overheard them and stated that he himself had recently graduated from engineering. The prospective student was struck with horror that this could also be his future – serving coffee after completing some four hard years of engineering studies. Two days later, he committed suicide.
This tragic incident would shape successive events. Animating Spaces of Meaning sought responses to the rise of mediocrity and fragmentation of meaning that have become a familiar part of everyday urban life. It also elucidated that all study disciplines, professions and workplaces of all stripes can have their dignity, respect and even charm. Engineering and medicine should not be the only attainable routes to powered social mobility; the social sciences, arts and humanities, and any other stigmatized disciplines, for that matter, need to be elevated into highly respected areas of study. Conveying the sociological-philosophy lessons also means keeping a pulse on the lives and stories that the public brings to the sessions and then responding and shaping the following session accordingly. In some respects, it echoes Hannah Arendt’s personal axiom that “thought itself arises out of incidents of living experience and must remain bound to them as the only guideposts by which to take its bearings.”[3]
[1] Amro Ali, “When the Debris of Paradise Calls,” Amro Ali, 15 December 2017, https://amroali.com/2017/12/debris-paradise-calls-philosophical-concept-play/ [accessed 15 February 2021].
[2] Collins, Randall, “For a Sociological Philosophy,” Theory and Society 17/5, 1988, 669-702, 671. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00162615.
[3] Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977, 14.
Citation: Amro Ali, Bringing Philosophy and Sociology to the Egyptian Public, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 15.04.2021, http://trafo.hypotheses.org/28053
If you are a PhD student in Middle Eastern Studies and based at a university in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, or Iceland, then apply to this workshop. I will be giving the keynote lecture, “Thinking with metaphor in a literal era” on 19 August 2021.
An interview with Dina Abdel-Megeed on SBS Arabic on my journey of returning to Egypt from Australia. The interview can be listened to below.
يحلم الكثيرون في العالم العربي بالهجرة. فلماذا يختار بعض أبناء المهاجرين العودة إلى موطن آبائهم؟ الأكاديمي عمرو علي يحدثنا عن رحلته من استراليا إلى مصر.
“أنا ممتن للغاية للتعليم الذي حصلت عليه في استراليا و على حياة كاملة عشتها هناك و لكني دائما كنت أحلم بالرجوع إلى مصر.”
هكذا بدأ عمرو علي الأكاديمي الاسترالي من أصول مصرية حديثه عن رحلته من غرب استراليا إلى أزقة القاهرة و شواطيء الإسكندرية.
لم تكن أسرة عمرو التي هاجرت إلى استراليا في السبعينات من القرن الماضي تنوي أن تقضي بقية حياتها في استراليا. كانت تنظر الأسرة التي تنقلت عدة مرات بين مصر و استراليا إلى السفر كمرحلة مؤقتة سوف يتبعها استقرار في مصر. و لكن صعوبات الحياة في مصر دفعت الأسرة إلى اتخاذ قرار الهجرة بشكل نهائي.
ذكريات عمرو كطفل في الروضة و الصف الأول الابتدائي في مصر ليست بالكثيرة و لكنها تراكمت عبر السنين خلال الزيارات المتكررة لتخلق بداخله حنينا إلى وطن بعيد و إلى شعور بالانتماء لم يستطع أن يجده في استراليا.
بداية حياة الأسرة في استراليا كانت في قرية صغيرة اعتبرها عمرو مكانا مثاليا لغياب العنصرية. يقول عمرو: “كانت تلك القرية الصغيرة التي ولد فيها أخي وأختي بمثابة جنة صغيرة لي.”
انتقال إلى بيرث و تحديات جديدة
ولكن انتقال الأسرة إلى بيرث في غرب استراليا جلب معه تحديات لم يكن عمرو يتوقع مواجهتها في تلك السن الصغيرة. يقول عمرو: “بمجرد الانتقال تشعر نفسك تحولت بشكل تلقائي إلى جزء من أقلية.”
تجربة عمرو كطفل من أسرة عربية مهاجرة في مدرسة في بيرث لم تكن سهلة على الإطلاق حيث شعر كثيرا بالوحدة والعنصرية التي كانت خفية في بعض الأحيان وظاهرة فجة في أحيان أخرى.
“كان معظم الأطفال الآخرين لديهم حلفاء من نفس الخلفية الثقافية لكنني كنت واحدا من أطفال قليلين للغاية من مصر. و زاد الأمر سوءا أثناء حرب الخليج حيث فرضت علي الهوية العربية التي كنت حتى ذلك الوقت لا أفهم عنها شيئا.”
الحياة في بيرث كانت مليئة بالقوالب الجاهزة التي كان على أطفال المهاجرين الإنصهار فيها حتى يتمكنوا من الإندماج في المجتمع. يقول عمرو ضاحكا: “يعاني أبناء المهاجرين من متلازمة أطفال الثقافة الثالثة.”
لعب الراجبي والذهاب إلى الحانات و غيرها من النشاطات التي يراها البعض اختيارا يرى عمرو أنها كانت تستخدم كوسائل لتقييم مدى اندماج أطفال المهاجرين في المجتمع الأوسع.
يرى عمرو أن الظروف كانت تدفع الأطفال ذوي الخلفيات الثقافية المتعددة إلى كره أنفسهم و أصولهم الثقافية.
“في وقت من الأوقات يتمنى الطفل أن يكون أشقر الشعر وأزرق العينين و أن يكون اسمه مايكل حتى يتمكن من الاندماج في المجتمع.”
في عمر العشر سنوات واجه عمرو موقفا مؤلما في المدرسة يعتبره نقطة فاصلة في حياته.
عند تدريس الإنجيل في صفه الدراسي كان يتم إخراج الأطفال الغير مسيحيين من الفصل وفي مرة من المرات أصر عمرو على البقاء خصوصا بعد أن سمع أن الحصة كانت عن قصة إبراهيم والفداء. و أثناء حديث المدرسة أخبر عمرو إحدى زميلاته في الصف أنه شهد ذبح الأضحية في مصر. أخبرت زميلته المدرس الذي قام بدوره بتعنيف عمرو على مرأى ومسمع من جميع زملائه مسميا دينه ب”الدين البربري”. يقول عمرو: “كانت تلك تجربة من التجارب الكفيلة بتدمير طفل.”
شغف بالقراءة يفتح آفاقا جديدة
الإحساس بالوحدة والشجارات المتكررة في فناء المدرسة التي لم يكن لعمرو فيها حلفاء دفعته إلى تكرار الذهاب إلى المكتبة التي وجد فيها ملجئا وطريقة لإثراء معلوماته.
“كان ينظر إلى على أنني لست ذكيا بالقدر الكافي. دفعني هذا إلى الذهاب إلى المكتبة بشكل متكرر و قراءة الموسوعات من أول صفحة حتى آخر صفحة في بعض الأحيان.”
لم يكن والد عمرو قارءا و لكنه أخذ في شراء الكتب له مشجعا إياه على الإطلاع وتوسيع مداركه.
يرى عمرو أن نقطة التحول الحقيقة في حياته جاءت عند مشاهدته فيلم عن حياة مالكوم إكس أحد أشهر الشخصيات في حركة الحقوق المدنية في أمريكا في الستينات.
“جعلني هذا الفيلم أشعر بالفخر بثقافتي وديني وجعلني أشعر أن اختلافي ليس عيبا.”
عمرو في حفلة حصوله على درجة الدكتوراة من جامعة سيدني
دخول عمرو إلى الجامعة فتح له آفاقا أوسع وعالما أرحب حيث تعدد الثقافات و الخلفيات. يصف عمرو حياة الجامعة ب”البوهيمية”. ولكنه واجه بعض المصاعب في الجامعة أيضا حيث كان المستوى الأكاديمي المرتفع لإحدى مقالاته سببا كافية لاتهامه بالغش بحجة أن “اللغة الانجليزية ليست لغته الأصلية.”
شعور عمرو أنه يعيش في “أبعد مدينة في العالم” و بحثه عن مكان يشعر فيه بالانتماء جعل عنده رغبة دائمة في العودة إلى مصر. و لكن زياراته المتكررة إلى مصر والفترات الأطول التي بدأ في قضائها هناك جعله يشعر أن ما كانت لديه كطفل كانت نظرة حالمة غير واقعية عن موطن آبائه.
موطن الآباء: من الصورة المثالية إلى الواقع
مع منتصف الألفينيات أصبح لدى عمرو صورة واقعية أكثر عن الحياة في مصر وبرغم إدراكه لمصاعب الحياة هناك إلا أنه ظل يراها مكانا أقرب إلى قلبه. انتقل عمرو للحياة في مصر بعد حصوله على درجة الدكتوراة من جامعة سيدني و يعمل عمرو الآن أستاذا في علم الإجتماع في الجامعة الأمريكية بالقاهرة.
“عند تدريسي في مصر أشعر أنني في مهمة روحية و أشعر أن الطلبة على الرغم من انتمائهم للطبقات العليا في المجتمع لديهم شعور بمشاكل المجتمع من تلوث و ازدحام و ركود اقتصادي. في الجامعة في سيدني كان الطلاب أقرب إلى الزبائن.”
ثورات الربيع العربي أعطت عمرو أملا في أن يكون جزءا من تغيير إيجابي في المنطقة. تعثر تلك الثورات و التغيير الذي كان يأمل الناس أن تجلبه أصاب البعض بالإحباط و لكن عمرو يرى “أنه علينا خلق مساحات للأمل.”
يشارك عمرو مع متابعيه على مواقع التواصل الإجتماعي مقتطفات من حياته في مصر
“مصر بلد في حالة حراك و هناك مساحة لإحداث تغيير وخلق معنى قد لا تتوفر في أماكن أخرى.”
يشارك عمرو مع متابعيه على وسائل التواصل الإجتماعي صورا لجولاته في أسواق الكتب المستعملة في القاهرة وأخرى للقطط و العشاق على شواطيء الإسكندرية. يتحدث عمرو عن رحلة القطار التي تأخذه من الإسكندرية بسحرها إلى القاهرة بزخمها و حراكها الذي لا يتوقف بشغف كبير. تربط رحلة القطار تلك ماض لم يعشه عمرو بحاضر ما زال يبحث فيه عن مكان لنفسه.
“تذكرني رحلة القطار تلك التي عمرها لا يقل عن 170 عاما بجدي و أبي. جدي كان فني قطارات و أبي كان مهندسا يشرف على إصلاح القطارات. و ها أنا ذا أعود لأركب نفس القطار الذي كانا يركبانه منذ عشرات السنين.”
Cairo gives you energy, Alexandria gives you enchantment. Stay too long in one city and you’ll be burned out by Cairo or disillusioned by Alexandria. Shuttle back and forth between the two cities may permit a pleasant rhythm and creative equilibrium to emerge in life. pic.twitter.com/3vq1bnFwPK
“You talk as if a god had made the Machine,” cried the other. “I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind.” – E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops (1909).
E.M. Forster “The Machine Stops” (photo by Amro Ali, 2021)
In his farsighted 1909 novella, The Machine Stops (free to read or download at Project Gutenberg), E.M. Forster writes of a future world where people have lost the ability to communicate face to face and are unable to live on the surface of the earth. Each human being lives below ground in a cell while all communication and bodily needs are taken care of by a supreme omnipotent deity known as the Machine. Living on opposite ends of the earth, Kuno frequently argues with his mother Vashti who has long been sedated by technology to the extent that life itself frightens her. Kuno implores his mother to exit her cell and come visit him as he can no longer tolerate talking to her through “blue optic plates”. She is hesitant travel as it would mean she would have to board an airship and risk seeing the land below that she frowns upon, “I dislike seeing the horrible brown earth, and the sea, and the stars when it is dark”. When Vashti does eventually take the flight, the sight of the earth gives her no inspiration whatsoever. Even when she flies over Greece with its innumerable majestic islands and peninsula, and its long glorious past, only to murmur “No ideas here” and closes the window blind. An enraged Kuno who is eager to see the stars from the surface of the earth like his ancestors, says to his mother “We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralyzed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it.”
Forster’s 1909 novella was a counter-argument to H.G. Wells’ successful 1895 novel, The Time Machine, that painted a bright tech-utopian future (rival fictional binaries signaling roadmaps to the future are a fascinating area to explore, e.g. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World vs George Orwell’s 1984). Forster was a visionary in which he looked around and perceived the seeds of immobility in the inertia-driven Edwardian era of his time which saw the introduction or spread of gramophones, radio, telephones, and mass production. The author took this trend to its logical conclusion, giving us more than an inkling of where the future home was headed – from addiction to digital devices to the fetishization of working from home, among many other trends. All in the midst of the terror of the same that turns today’s cities into generic cities that are filled with Zaras, H&Ms, and Starbucks.
The dystopian story was projected thousands of years into the future, except many of its motifs have crystalized in our contemporary world. Techno-fundamentalism puts us at the mercy of algorithms and automatic processes, as well as producing a fatal compulsion to digital devices that shape the sense of being, civil society, and social movements. A digital gluttony, like in the novella, has blurred human relations, and paralyzed the centrality of thinking.
The ongoing digital revolution requires a human counter-revolution grounded in socio-geographic practices that disciplines the encroaching technology from becoming central to thinking and displacing the human condition and its relationship to the collective good. Techno-fundamentalism is more than the worship of technological use and innovation. It can be as subtle as the belief and hubris that we have the right tools. While methods of capacity building were a feature of past activism, it is now assumed that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the likes are readily available to be harnessed. It removes the once necessary years of preparation, organizing, slow trust building measures, in order to quickly scale up the movement. A Martin Luther King jnr in the twenty-first century would instantly become known internationally, rather than his fame gradually budding after a prolonged duration while the civil rights movement slowly built up and took form.
For techno-fundamentalism to be addressed it needs to be understood in light of what drives it. Belief in the progress fallacy and the technological neutrality myth is harmful as it lends immunity to technology to never or rarely be questioned. Perhaps because it showcases itself to be the norm and empty’s political language of meaning, that it becomes difficult to recognize it as the default mode of thinking. On an individual level, this can be negligible, but a collection of individuals in a digital civil society and social movement will surface larger problems. Oblivious to the global backlash, tech experts are not catching up with the social weariness and “techlash,” and may in fact be emboldened by the pandemic that has given them the upper hand. It is an age when Zoom and video communication tools are being groomed as the new orthodoxy in the evolving models of the world’s political economies.
Thinking against and with techno-fundamentalism requires a return to earth, by staking the weightless and fluid digital order in the solid terrestrial order of consequential political practices, thus making abstractions more palpable. Otherwise, the fleeting digital swarm overwhelms civil society, social movements, and publics with a scourge of shapelessness that subverts voices for a mass of noise and echo-chambers – “no ideas here.”
The above is a short modified extract from my paper, “Re-envisioning Civil Society and Social Movements in the Mediterranean in an Era of Techno-Fundamentalism,” published in the European Institute of the Mediterranean (Barcelona). The journal article is open access. Also, you might be interested in another short post from the article, What a sideway map of the Mediterranean reveals.
