Rise and Fall of Tahrir Theorizing Temporality

Social Problems, 042020, 0, 1–19
doi: 10.1093/socpro/spaa024
Article
The Rise and Fall of the Tahrir Repertoire:

Theorizing Temporality, Trajectory, and
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Failure
Atef Said
University of Illinois at Chicago
A BS TR A C T
This article examines how and why the strategy of occupying Tahrir Square went from
being the central mode of action and defining image of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 to
an ineffective strategy read by many as symbolic of the revolution’s ultimate failure during
the transitional period of 2011–2012. This question speaks to a lacuna in the literature on
repertoires, specifically a lack of attention to their temporality and the lessons to be learned
from their failure. I propose a framework that examines the trajectory of repertoires and
traces their 1) meaning; 2) internal composition; 3) relationality vis-a-vis the regime in rela-
tion to which the repertoire is practiced; and 4) temporal momentum. Using this frame-
work, I chart the rise and fall of the Tahrir repertoire in a very short period: from February
12, 2011, to December 5, 2012. The article draws on ethnographic, qualitative, and histori-
cal data collected over three research trips taken between February 4, 2011, and January 7,
2015.
K E Y W O R D S : repertoires, Tahrir Square, Egyptian revolution, Charles Tilly, repertoire’s

trajectory.
Aerial photographs showing Cairo’s Tahrir Square teeming with hundreds of thousands of protestors
remain some of the most iconic images of the 2011 Egyptian revolution. They conjure the sense of
hope and change that swept the region at that time, and they document the central and most visible
means by which people demanded that change: the mass occupation of key public spaces. Less atten-
tion has been accorded to images and accounts of similar but profoundly less successful protest
efforts in the same space that occurred later in 2011 and in 2012. As early as July of 2011, for exam-
ple, protestors established a camp in Tahrir Square that lasted for almost an entire month, signifi-
cantly longer than the camps in January and February of that same year. But when police and military
forces forcefully evacuated the camp on August 1, over one hundred people in the square were
I would like to thank Kim Greenwell, Howard Kimeldorf and the Social Problems editors for their comments and editorial advice. I
am grateful to Michael Schwartz for his very generous feedback and to anonymous reviewers for their critical and very constructive
comments. An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the Mobilization Conference on Social Movements and Protest:
Nonviolent Strategies and the State, at San Diego State University on May 5–6, 2017, and at the colloquium of the Sociology-
Anthropology Department. Illinois Wesleyan University, November 28, 2017. Please direct all correspondence to Atef Said,
Department of Sociology, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1007 West Harrison Street (MC 312), Chicago, Illinois 60607-7140.
Email: atefsaid@uic.edu.
C The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
V
All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.
1
2 Said
arrested and tortured.1 According to one of these protestors, “We were beaten and electrified. We
were kicked with military boots, targeting our private parts.” Another person described beatings and
degradation by military soldiers who yelled that the protestors were “infidels . . . destroying the
nation.”2
The contrast between the two moments is striking. In one, the establishment of a protest camp in
Tahrir Square emerged as the central piece in revolutionary organizing. In the other, the same strat-

egy, though extended for an even longer period of time, yielded vastly different and more disappoint-
ing results: forced evacuation, arrests, and torture. Perhaps most puzzling in light of this contrast was
the fact that protestors continued, albeit unsuccessfully, in their efforts to re-occupy Tahrir not only
in 2011 but repeatedly throughout the year after. And in each case, the results were the same: even-
tual forced evacuation, arrests, and torture. In some instances, live ammunition was used, and protes-
tors were killed.
How and why did the strategy of occupying Tahrir Square decline so radically in effectiveness?
And why, one might ask, did protestors continue to rely on the same mode of action once it had be-
come so costly and fruitless? The Egyptian example, I argue, is a valuable one, because it reveals rep-
ertoires of contention as dynamic, unstable things, and it has important implications for how we
think about this concept that is so central to social movement scholarship. Before proceeding, and for
the purpose of clarity, I define the Tahrir repertoire as a set of available means, which include the oc-
cupation of public space, the formation of a mini-republic that required the presence of many forms
of organizations, and the erection of barricades to police the space and protect this republic, as well
as the presence of marches and rallies that end in Tahrir Square.3 Although partly inspired by past
protests in Tahrir, this combination was invented in the uprising in 2011. Many of the important
pieces that made the repertoire successful the first time were missing during its repeated use.
Here, I chart the rise and fall of this repertoire, relating both processes to their context, meaning,
and temporality. I begin by discussing the literature on repertoires of contention, identifying in partic-
ular two problematic trends—tendencies to 1) study repertoires in presentist terms and 2) to focus
only on instances of successful innovation or adaptation, paying less attention to instances of repeti-
tion or even failure. To attend to these problems, I propose an alternative framework that seeks to
capture repertoires’ dynamic trajectories—how they change over time, how they interact dialectically
with ruling regimes, and how, in cases such as Tahrir, they “rise and fall.”
The occupation of Tahrir Square was, of course, just one component of the events composing the
2011 uprising, but the establishment of a protest camp became widely understood as the revolution’s
central mode of action, so much so that scholars refer to the revolution itself as the “Tahrir
Revolution.” To be clear, my point is not to conflate the revolution and the revolutionary repertoire
with the protest camp in Tahrir—a clearly reductionist reading.4 Against this reductionism, I present
a disaggregated account of the famous revolutionary repertoire. I demonstrate how the occupation of
Tahrir was only one piece of this repertoire. Other pieces include the erection of barricades, the sig-
nificance of marching rallies, and the creation of a mini-republic in Tahrir. Besides, while others have
examined how and why this repertoire became so powerful, I seek to understand also how and why it
lost this power over time.
1 See “El-Nadeem Publishes Testimonies of the Evacuation of Tahrir Sit-In” (2011).

2 “El-Nadeem Publishes Testimonies of the Evacuation of Tahrir Sit-In” (2011).
3 Social media also played a role in this repertoire. I do not discuss the role of social media here due to the limitation of space.
Elsewhere I analyze how what I describe as the “virtual making of Tahrir” contributed to the centrality of Tahrir and the making
of the revolutionary repertoire during the revolution. See Said 2014:103.
4 Conflating the revolution and the revolutionary repertoire with the protest camp in the square is clearly a case of misleading re-
ductionism; for more on this, see Abul-Magd (2012). See also chapter 2 of Neil Ketchley’s work (2017) on the significance of
the battles around police stations during the uprising.
Rise and Fall of the Tahrir Repertoire 3
PROBLEMS IN THE STUDY OF REPERTOIRES

Charles Tilly (1986, 1995, 2006) developed the concept of “repertoires of contention” based on his
extensive historical study of protest methods and rebellions in England and France. He defined reper-
toires as a “whole set of means [a group] has for making claims of different types on different individ-
uals” (Tilly 1986:2) and “claims-making routines that apply to the same claimant-object pairs: bosses
and workers, peasants and landlords, rival nationalist factions, and many more” (Tilly and Tarrow

2006:16). The concept has since become canonical, and the literature on repertoires has grown im-
mensely in the last few decades. Much of this work has enriched and expanded the concept, whether
examining its dynamics in contexts beyond Europe (Eckstein 2013; Wyrtzen 2013), revisiting histori-
cal practices with new evidence or angles in mind (Steinberg 1999; Traugott 1993), or documenting
the emergence of new repertoires among contemporary actors and activists (Soule 1997; Taylor et al.
2009).
Most relevant to this article have been efforts to track the ways in which repertoires travel, trans-
fer, and/or diffuse from context to context, over space and time, and between different actors and
groups (Chabot 2000; Soule 1997; Tarrow 1996; Wada 2012). Doug McAdam (1983) made the im-
portant distinction between repertoire innovation and adaptation; more recently, Michael Biggs sug-
gested a tripartite framework of invention/innovation, appropriation/adaptation, and repetition
(2013). Biggs also noted, however, that repertoire remains one of the most overused but under-
studied concepts in social movement theory (2013:407), thus echoing reminders from Tilly himself
that the concept needs more revisiting and revisions (Tilly 2008:xiv). I focus here on two problematic
trends in the study of repertoires that impede, in particular, our ability to understand their changing
use, effectiveness, and meaning over time.
The first trend is studying repertoires in presentist terms. It is understandable that scholars tend
to study repertoires in only one context, at a particular moment, and within a single movement only,
given the difficulty of doing extensive historical and/or comparative research. Most efforts to rectify
this have focused on the quality of modularity. The key question posed here is why certain reper-
toires but not others became modular in the sense of being transferable from one context to another
(Wada 2012:545), but not necessarily how the repertoire itself may change over time, though valu-
able exceptions do exist (Chabot 2000; McAdam 1983; Pfaff and Yang 2001; Ring-Ramirez,
Reynolds-Stenson, and Earl 2014). When temporality is made the focus of analysis, it is usually in the
form of events or protest cycles (McAdam and Sewell 2001). While looking at events and cycles is
critical, it may be insufficient to study temporality’s effects.
Yet, temporality is actually built into the very concept of repertoire. Repertoires are, by definition,
practices chosen from memory and/or based on the familiarity or experiences of protestors. As Sarah
Soule states, “Repertoires are historically specific and reflect the ‘cultural expectations’ of the period”
(1997:859). Repertoires are often likened to scripts, but they are not rigid; indeed, as Tilly himself
noted, protestors are capable of improvisation (Tilly 2008:xi–xii). Bridging past, present, and future,
repertoires carry within them a constant tension, not only between regimes and actors, as I will dis-
cuss below, but also between the different iterations of repertoires practiced in different moments.
Attention to this tension has manifested mainly in the form of studying innovation, arguably one of
the most well researched topics in the study of repertoires (Boutros 2017; McAdam 1983; Wang and
Soule 2016).
The second trend is the tendency to focus only on instances of successful innovation or adapta-
tion, paying less attention to instances of repetition or even failure. Tactical innovation is a Tillian no-
tion par excellence, and there are many excellent works that build on his original framework to
examine repertoires’ strengths, weaknesses, and the innovations they generate. Dan Wang and Sarah
Soule, for example, argue that “tactical innovation occurs as a response to changes external to move-
ments, such as police repression and shifts in political authority, or is due to internal movement pro-
cesses, such as the characteristics of movement organizations and actors” (2016:517).
4 Said
Repetition is innovation’s necessary counterpart, the flipside that gives it meaning and vice versa,
yet repetition has received comparatively little attention. The oversight is puzzling, especially when
we consider another Tillian definition of repertoire as “claims-making routines” (Tilly and Tarrow
2006:16, emphasis added). At least some degree of routinization is assumed, suggesting that a reper-
toire’s capacity for repetition without change is not so much one option among many as it is a primary
characteristic, the background condition against which variations emerge. Furthermore, it is not just

repertoire repetition that gets overlooked but also the full range of possible outcomes. Here again,
the literature reflects assumptions and connotations built into the terms themselves as scholars tend
to focus not just on innovation but also on instances of successful innovation (one might even argue
that unsuccessful innovation is an oxymoron).
The irony is that instances of innovation are relatively rare in social movements when compared
with instances of its absence or even failure (Koopmans 2004:25).5 Diffusion scholars often assume
that only successful innovations will diffuse to potential adopters (Soule 1999:121). Similarly, Biggs
argues for more distinction among three sequential phases in the evolution of repertoires—invention,
appropriation, and repetition, each of which is conditioned by feasibility, legitimacy, and effective-
ness—as well as various factors such as grievance, opportunities, resources, networks, identity, and
others (Biggs 2013:409). Importantly, even after adoption, Biggs does not take repetition for granted,
pointing out that “even if a tactic remains feasible, legitimate, and effective, it will not survive without
being used” (Biggs 2013:410). I would also highlight the converse: that even if a tactic declines in fea-
sibility, legitimacy, and/or effectiveness, it may continue to be used; when this happens over a rela-
tively short period of time, it is especially intriguing. As Biggs points out, “There are natural limits to
repetition since memories fade and people die” (Biggs 2013:410). But how then to account for the
decline of a repertoire in the same place over a short period of time?
Tilly reminds us that a repertoire is “not only what people do when they make a claim; it is what
they know how to do and what society has come to expect them to choose to do from within a cultur-
ally sanctioned and empirically limited set of options” (quoted in Tarrow 1996:283). Thus, reper-
toires of contention have two distinct, if implicit, layers: the means of protest and the knowledge about
those means that make them available for selection. Often, however, discussions of repertoires high-
light the former while sidelining or forgetting the latter.
While it is tempting to reduce the concept of repertoires to the tactics and means of protest, the
real potency of the concept derives from the practices themselves in relation to their context and their
meaning for actors. The familiarity with a tactic makes it easier to carry out (McCammon 2003:798).
But, by the same token, just as familiarity with a repertoire does not mean stagnation, nor is it a guar-
antee of success. If a proper understanding of innovation means thinking through political and cul-
tural contexts, the same holds true with cases of appropriation and failure to innovate (Taylor et al.
2009:866). For this reason, it is just as important to analyze repeated uses of a repertoire that is not
successful.
STUDYING REPERTOIRE TRAJECTORY

I propose an alternate framework that focuses on a repertoire within a particular site or movement
and charts its course. Studying this trajectory requires that we look at the different ways in which a
repertoire develops (or fails to develop) over time—this includes, but is not limited to, innovation,
adaptation, and repetition. This approach foregrounds the temporality of repertoires and the ways in
which they are shaped by changes in political and cultural contexts. To chart a repertoire’s trajectory,
I propose that we look at four dimensions in a given repertoire in different moments in time: 1)
meaning, 2) internal composition, 3) relationality vis-a-vis the regime in relation to which the reper-
toire is practiced, and 4) temporal momentum. I will elaborate on these below.
5 As Michael Biggs explains, “repetition is far more likely than adoption; adoption is far more likely than invention” (Biggs
2013:408–409).
First, to investigate a repertoire’s meaning, we should look at all cultural aspects of repertoire and
how these aspects entail meaning-making processes by actors in the repertoire. For example, we can
study artistic forms produced within and for the repertoire, as well as banners and slogans. Looking
at the cultural aspects in repertoires reminds us that repertoires are not only means but also meaning-
ful. Each repertoire iteration may mean different things to actors in the movement. Through studying
the meaning of a repertoire over time, we are able to interrogate whether a given iteration is an inno-

vation (that brings a new meaning), an adaptation (appropriation of an existing meaning), or a repeti-
tion (exhausting an old meaning).
Second, to study a repertoire’s internal composition, we should look at the internal configuration
and dynamics in a repertoire. This includes the spatial dimensions of the repertoire. This also
includes the configuration of the movement and actors, such as studying the role of revolutionary co-
alition and its fate in this research. This also includes the cases in which the overall repertoire entails
more than one mode of action or means of protest and how these modes interact with one another.
Some examples from this research are the relation between rallies and the protest camp and how this
changed dramatically from the time of the revolution to the time of the transition. The same goes
with barricades in relation to the protest camp.
Third, to examine repertoires’ relationality vis-a-vis the regimes against which they are levied, I
build upon Tilly, who argues that the repertoire-regime relationship can generally be classified in
three ways: as prescribed, as tolerated, or as forbidden (Tilly 2006:75). Tilly and Tarrow also suggest
that a critical understanding of a regime should look at two angles, capacity and democracy. Thus,
roughly speaking, regimes can be located on a continuum of four ideal-type configurations—high-ca-
pacity undemocratic, high-capacity democratic, low-capacity undemocratic, and low-capacity demo-
cratic—that produce specific types of contentions (Tilly and Tarrow 2016:58). This way of looking
at the regime-repertoire relation, however, remains too unidimensional, focused on what the state
will or will not allow. I argue that though undoubtedly asymmetrical, the relationship is much more
dialectical.
In order to analyze the regime-repertoire relation, I propose that we consider the following ele-
ments: 1) the nature of the regime; 2) the type of repertoire(s) being used—whether prescribed, tol-
erated, or banned—bearing in mind that these categories are not always clear or rigid; and 3) how
actors respond both to the intervention itself and to the regime’s responses, identifying opportunities
and threats as they develop and reshaping repertoire(s) accordingly. This approach pays attention to
temporality and shifting strategies and responses over time in order to capture the dialectical
repertoire-regime interplay.
Fourth, to capture the often uneven effects of temporality, I propose giving attention to questions
of momentum, a multilayered notion that refers to the rhythm and pacing of events and actions but
also their degree of intensity and urgency. Here it is useful to revisit Tilly and Tarrow’s differentiation
between periods of incremental change and moments of rapid political change or revolution (Tilly
and Tarrow 2016:19–21). How repertoires are used and how the state responds vary across these
two conditions. During periods of incremental change, repertoires are shaped more by routines and
are less dramatic. The change here is affected by one or more of three conditions: the general relation
between claims making and everyday social organization; the impact of the long historical accumula-
tion and creation of repertoires; and the relation between repertoires and regimes (where the regimes
are more stable and not imperiled by revolutionary situations) (Tilly and Tarrow 2016:20). The key
is that during periods of incremental change, it is the relation between repertoires and regimes that
primarily shapes how repertoires are practiced.
During a revolutionary situation, by contrast, the following features are crucial: the state is thrown
off balance, and there is a deep split in the control of coercive means, which impacts, in turn, the
state’s capacity to impact repertoires; and every actor’s interest is at risk. As I will show, the occupa-
tion of Tahrir was as much a matter of life and death as of advancing the revolution. During revolu-
tionary situations, many actors mobilize for action, and activists find themselves deliberately
6 Said
disrupting existing routines and innovating in their use of repertoires (Tilly and Tarrow 2016:19).
Understanding the opportunities that are created in a revolutionary context (and that are closed once
that context shifts to one of transition) is critical to explaining the rise and fall of the Tahrir reper-
toire. Regime crisis and the opportunities it opens for the creativity of actors are two sides of the
same coin during revolutionary situations (Goldstone 2009:19).
Of course, the radical opportunities for creativity and tactical innovations during a revolutionary

situation do not automatically or necessarily produce transformations (Tarrow 1993:283–84).
Likewise, the falling-off of revolutionary momentum and the shift to a period of transition does not
necessarily entail the decline of those repertoires that proved most effective during the period of cri-
sis. It follows, then, that just as one must account for how and why a repertoire becomes revolution-
ary, so must one examine when and why it stops being so. In my proposed approach, I have
attempted to draw a balance between understanding a repertoire as a unique and complex configura-
tion of collective action that took place in a given moment by specific actors with specific goals and
as an iteration of an old repertoire and/or a new inspiration for the future.
It is important to note that these dimensions do overlap. I am drawing boundaries between them only
for analytical purposes. For example, one cannot separate the intensity of a revolutionary moment (the
temporal momentum dimension) from the regime-repertoire relation, as discussed earlier. Thus, temporal
dynamics and regime response, such as repression, are also linked, as I show in this article. Actors who
make choices and change the composition of repertoire do create meaning about these changes as well.
METHODS AND DATA

I draw on data collected using three methods: ethnography, qualitative interviews, and historical re-
search. I used these methods over the course of three research trips: the first, overlapping with the
revolution, from February 4 to April 16, 2011; the second from July 16, 2013, to January 6, 2014;
and the third from December 16, 2014, to January 7, 2015. Most of my ethnographic research took
place during the first two trips. During the first trip, I participated in and observed events on the
ground in Tahir Square on a daily basis from February 4–11; I then stayed in Egypt until April 16. I
marched in rallies and took as many notes as possible, despite the often overwhelming circumstances.
Most of my notes regarding Tahrir centered around organizing efforts, communication, and the quo-
tidian details of sustaining life and order in the space—something I described in my notes at the time
as the camp’s geography of mobilization. I conducted interviews in the second and third research
trips. These interviews were semi-structured, and most of the questions concerned the activists’ orga-
nizing efforts and their participation during the uprising. I relied on the interviews for information
about things that happened in Tahrir prior to my arrival to the revolution on Feb 4. On my third re-
search trip (December 16, 2014 to January 7, 2015), I conducted interviews that sought to fill some
gaps. I conducted a total of 56 interviews during the second and the third trips. I tried to ensure that
my informants varied across gender, class, and political orientations (see Table 1).
Some informants were interviewed twice over different research trips. Conducting interviews over
different trips gave my research a longitudinal dimension and allowed my informants to reflect on
what happened both during and after the 2011 uprising. As for the historical research, this occurred
throughout the three trips. This included collecting different types of documents, such as political
groups documents, leaflets which were distributed in Tahrir and some of the sit-ins analyzed in this
paper, and newspapers. My historical research also included collecting materials related to organizing
in Egypt in the decade prior to the uprising.
In the discussion to follow, I examine how a combination of protest means worked together in an
innovative way during the uprising in 2011. And then I show that many of the important pieces that
made the repertoire initially successful were missing during its repeated use. Some of these pieces in-
clude the inability to form a mini-republic, reliance on the camp without the mobilization and sup-
port of marching rallies, the lack of barricades and the ability to control the entire space of camp.
Table 1: Demographics of Interviewees

Gender Class1 Place Age Previous political Participated in
experience Tahrir?
Phase 2 (July 12, 2012–January 8, 2013); N 5 50

23 women 10 WC * Cairo: n¼29? 20–30: n¼11 32 had prior 33 yes; 17 no

27 men 40 MC Giza: n¼4? 31–40: n¼28 protest
Alexandria: n¼6 41–50: n¼7 experience;
Mahala: n¼6? 51–60: n¼3 18 had not pro-
Suez: n¼5 61–70: n¼1 tested before
the revolution
Phase 3 (December 16, 2015–January7, 2017); N 5 14
7 women WC 6 Cairo: n ¼ 13 20-30: n ¼ 4 12 had prior
7 men MC 8 Port Said: n ¼ 1 31-40: n ¼ 10 experience;
2 did not have
prior
experience
*Self-identified class of interviewee: WC ¼ working class, MC ¼ middle class
Rather than simply counting which tactics existed in the first attempt which did not exist in the re-
peated attempts, I situate this discussion within a better framework—proposed above—taking into
account the Tahrir repertoire’s meaning, its internal composition, its relationality vis-a-vis the
Egyptian regime, and its temporal momentum, in two different moments: the revolution and the
transitional period. Here I am inspired by the original Tillian formulation in which repertoires are
conceived as historical and cultural categories, which involve but cannot be limited to means of pro-
test.6 In the following sections, I apply this proposed approach to explain the “rise” then “fall” of the
Tahrir repertoire, respectively.
THE RISE OF THE TAHRIR REPERTOIRE

Meaning
To understand how the Tahrir repertoire became a synonym of the revolution, we should start with
how protestors got there in the first place. One of my informants explained the significance of the im-
portant day of January 28, when protestors battling police forces were finally able to fully seize and
hold the square:
The police’s plan A was to prevent protestors from reaching the square, and then plan B was to
seize the square if some or many were able to reach it. But what happened was that due to the
huge number of protestors, police were exhausted and defeated in many battles around Tahrir.
In other words, protestors were engaged in different battles with the police in different loca-
tions, most notably in Ramses St., Qasr al-Ainy St., and Qasr El-Nile Bridge. It was protestors
who surprised the police and surprised themselves indeed, to reach Tahrir from different
entrances coming from many routes, at the same time, all in the afternoon of January 28.
The unexpected victory, as well as the long history of struggle, enhanced the experience, making
the occupation of Tahrir a major morale boost for protestors. Protestors formed check-in committees
to inspect visitors, especially after the now infamous “camel battle” of February 2, 2011, when
6 It is worth nothing here that Tilly chose the term repertoires carefully, aware of its temporal (and cultural) richness compared to
such relatively static terms as storage, repository, toolkit, or collection.
8 Said
Mubarak supporters attacked the square and Tahrir protestors succeeded in keeping the square to
themselves. When I entered the square on February 4, 2011, people in the committee greeted me
with, “Welcome to the revolution.” In my ethnographic observations during the revolution, I saw ban-
ners that made a clear association between the repertoire and the revolution, such as a banner with a
list of the demands of the revolution, which was signed by “Tahrir Protestors.” Other banners in-
cluded “spread Tahrir to all other squares,” which meant spreading the revolution.

Protestors also made references to previous attempts at occupying Tahrir and cited them as inspi-
ration and called the new attempt a revolution (Said 2015:354–55). For some, it was an attempted
occupation of Tahrir by students in 1972. For others, it was a more recent 2006 effort by Egyptian
bloggers to occupy the square, which lasted about twenty hours. Indeed, one of the founders of the
bloggers movement talked to me about their organizing efforts in 2006 and described feeling as if
their work had finally paid off during the revolution. One young activist told me she felt “jealous of
these past events,” which she had been unable to witness personally; in 2011, however, she suggested
that the revolution “was a redemption for the unsuccessful protests in the past.” One example of in-
novation is the idea of the one-million-person rally, something that had never happened in Egypt’s re-
cent history. I asked several leadings members of The Coalition of the Youth of the Revolution
(CYR) about these rallies. All suggested that it “was a bold move, and we figured that a ‘million-per-
son rally’ would be enough to get the world’s attention and scare the regime.” These rallies became a
critical component of the revolutionary repertoire, as I will discuss below.
Internal Composition
To understand the significance of the occupation piece in the larger repertoire during the revolution,
one has to consider the history of Tahrir Square itself, as well as its geography, which made the rela-
tion between different modes of actions particularly significant. Located in the heart of downtown
Cairo, Tahrir Square comprises about 11.5 acres of open space. This sprawling, centrally located site
is also home to about ten government ministries and is in close proximity to the headquarters of
both the cabinet and the parliament. Occupying Tahrir, in short, means effectively occupying and
shutting down the government.
The central geography of the square also made questions of timing and travel—and, hence, the re-
lationship between the protest camp and other means of action, such as rallies—crucial. While the
battles within Tahrir have received the most attention, the rallies leading to the square were at least
as important. Because studies of repertoires rarely examine how different modes of action interact
with one another, the contribution of the rallies to the occupation of Tahrir remains understudied.
Rallies—and here I refer specifically to marching rallies7—are a form of moving protest, but far from
being aimless, they generally have a target, a logistically or politically significant endpoint where par-
ticipants can gather, for example, to make speeches and to voice demands. It was the rallies—from
various starting points, repeated day after day—that established Tahrir as the physical endpoint and
emotional climax of the revolution itself. Activists, primarily those associated with the CYR, deter-
mined the places from which rallies started, and this information was disseminated via traditional and
social media, particularly the “We Are All Khaled Said” Facebook page. The starting points were of-
ten mosques or other smaller squares in Cairo and in other cities, but regardless, all the routes an-
nounced by activists were specifically crafted to end in Tahrir.8 In other words, while rallies and the
Tahrir protest camp were two separate protest tactics, they were also closely linked and made up a
larger revolutionary repertoire. Rallies served their own functions, but by ending them in Tahrir,
7 I use the term “rallies” here to refer specifically to marching rallies. I argue against using the word “rallies” as a generic term to
capture varied forms of protest such as standing rallies, marching rallies, and sit-ins. The differences among these forms of action
can become increasingly important in authoritarian and revolutionary contexts.
8 Most media coverage, Egyptian and international, at the time of the revolution correctly associated the rallies/marches with the
camp in Tahrir but failed to distinguish between the two components of the revolutionary repertoire.
activists reinforced the notion that Tahrir was the culmination—literally and symbolically—of the
revolution.
Another important example of the unique composition of the repertoire during the revolution is
the organization of the camp, which made it like a republic. On a more basic level, establishing a
camp meant setting up tents and spaces for sleeping at night and addressing basic needs such as bath-
rooms, food, waste disposal, and security. As the sit-in grew in size, various committees formed spon-

taneously to deal with such issues. Centers were set up to collect food, medical supplies, and other
donations. As one of my informants, a leading activist and founding member of the CYR, told me,
“The square was like a complete republic—we had ministries of health, food, and defense.”
Of course, this organization would not have been possible if the occupiers of Tahrir been in open
discord with one another. Importantly, it was also the coming together of a coalition of diverse
groups that made the Tahrir repertoire so effective in its organization. As suggested by several schol-
ars (Goldstone 2011; Said 2014:152), it was the presence of this diverse coalition that made Tahrir
so powerful.9 While Jack Goldstone highlights the significance of cross-class coalition in the Egyptian
Revolution (Goldstone 2011), Said argues that Tahrir witnessed the convergence of three types of
coalitions: 1) political coalitions, 2) cross-class coalitions, and 3) youth coalitions (Said 2014:152).
Regardless of how we look at Tahrir, we cannot understand the power of its camp and its rallies dur-
ing the revolution without linking this to the power of the revolutionary coalition that existed at the
time.
Regime-Repertoire Relationality
Perhaps the most ironic set of factors contributing to the rise of the Tahrir repertoire were the
responses of the regime itself. During the eighteen days of the revolution, the Mubarak regime used
multiple strategies to quell the uprising, all focused at Tahrir. These varied from using force, to trying
to isolate and demonize the protests, to negotiation. The use of force on the part of the state and
pro-Mubarak supporters had an unintended effect, leading the public to identify with protestors
against Mubarak.
The second strategy involved using official media and state propaganda to isolate the protestors
and to construct those in Tahrir as enemies of the state and not representative of the nation. Despite
the fact that protests took place in many locations in Egypt, the regime continually tried to portray
the uprising as taking place only in Tahrir so as to minimize the level of unrest and to justify its
speedy repression. Many conservative celebrities, politicians, and state intellectuals were interviewed
extensively on state TV to praise Mubarak’s reform and/or criticize the protests in Tahrir. Over and
over again, the protestors were referred to in a reductive and pejorative manner as “the kids of
Tahrir.”10 Yet the paradoxical effect of this strategy was to construct and inadvertently acknowledge
Tahrir as the counterpart of the state in the conflict. The political climate had become acutely polar-
ized, such that society was essentially divided into three main camps: pro-Mubarak/regime, pro-
Tahrir/revolution, and a third party, known at the time in Egypt as “the couch party” in reference to
the significant part of the population that was reluctant to participate and worried about the stability
of the country.11 The regime’s response to Tahrir belied its own discourse that Tahrir was an isolated,
aberrant uprising, and it inadvertently contributed to constructing the square as the symbol of the
revolution, the “other side” with which the regime had to contend. The regime was also in crisis and
was forced to tolerate the camp, to use Tilly’s terminology, thanks to the intensity of the revolution-
ary moment, as I show below.
9 As I discuss in the second part of this paper, this diversity made the revolutionary coalition vulnerable after the fading of the rev-
olutionary momentum. See Mark Beissinger (2013) who argues that the fragility and weakness are coded into revolutionary coa-
litions given their diversity. Beissinger describes these as “negative coalitions” where diverse constituencies are united only by
anti-incumbency goals.
10 Naguib 2011.
11 Importantly, this “party” should not be understood as pro-regime, but as neutral (or, perhaps more accurately, ambivalent).
10 Said
Temporal Momentum
When I talked to my informants both during the occupation of Tahrir and afterwards, almost all men-
tioned the difficulty of conveying how they felt during the revolution itself. It seemed that for many,
the camp was experienced as “a time out of time,” as anthropologist Hanan Sabea (2013) has de-
scribed it. This inability to describe the experience reflects, I argue, the intensity and reconfigured
time of the revolutionary moment or situation. Protestors were operating on multiple levels at

once—consciously participating in an event of possible historic significance being followed by mil-
lions of people around the world, but also fighting for their very survival on a day-to-day basis on the
ground. One informant told me that “everybody was in a different space, while we shared worry and
excitement collectively.” Another stated “We were thinking of Egypt under Mubarak; we were think-
ing of our shared life in Tahrir, as well as thinking about an uncertain but hopeful future. Everything
took on added intensity and urgency, since the stakes were so high.” Though protestors were clearly
buoyed once they gained control of the square, the mood was hardly one of unqualified jubilation.
One of my informants explained the feeling that first night of occupation, January 28, 2011:
When Tahrir protestors started the sit-in on January 28, 2011, at night, they did not have any
other choice. At the time, there was the Mubarak regime and his security apparatus [which
seemed to be defeated at the time] on one side, and protestors have this [liberated] square on
the other. If we had left the square, we would have been killed. The protestors would have re-
ceived a worse repression than what they have received. At the time, we could not think of any
big strategies, just save ourselves and save the uprising. If we could die outside the square any-
way, why not die here, for the sake of the uprising?
What protestors were able to establish in Tahrir was both facilitated and amplified by the
other “side” of the revolutionary situation: the breakdown of the regime. According to Tilly, the
incapacity of the state to use its coercive apparatus is a critical feature of revolutionary situations
(2008:126–27). On the night of January 28, confronted with the effective collapse of the state
police apparatus and after constant battles with protestors, Mubarak, as a commander-in-chief,
asked the military to intervene. At the time, Mubarak’s regime had lost control of the square
and lost its main coercive apparatus, the police. During the revolution itself, the army acted not
so much against protestors as it acted in the role of a supposedly neutral observer, sometimes
failing tragically to intervene and protect civilians, as with the “camel battle.” It is fair to say that
between roughly January 28 and February 11, Tahrir Square was entirely policed by protestors,
while everything outside it was policed by the military.12 The military announced its backing of
the protestors’ demands on February 10, in the context of the revolutionary situation and after
the fact that Tahrir repertoire was deemed successful.
THE DECLINE OF THE TAHRIR REPERTOIRE

Most scholars agree that Egypt’s so-called transition to democracy failed (Brown 2013). This is not
to say that mobilization and protests in the country ceased after February 2011—quite the contrary.
Many protests followed Mubarak’s ousting, including those who opposed the Supreme Council of
the Armed Forces’ (SCAF) control of the transition and those who focused on what many saw as the
sectarian and exclusionary politics of the incoming Morsi administration. Furthermore, mobilization
in Tahrir Square specifically continued to be a popular strategy well into the transitional period.
Indeed, some protestors and commentators were quick to proclaim the resurgence of the revolution
12 With the exception of the role of the popular committees, which were organically formed groups of citizens who came together
to protect neighborhoods, these also had the power of arrest. They handed the arrested, presumably escaped convicts, to the
military. Discussing this further goes beyond the scope of this paper.
whenever protestors returned to the square.13 None of these efforts, however, was able to repro-
duce the scale, energy, or effectiveness of the Tahrir repertoire. I examine this in the rest of this
section.
I focus in this section on the period from February 12, 2011, the day after the ousting of Mubarak,
to December 5, 2012, the day the last protest camp in Tahrir was evacuated. The appendix docu-
ments ten sit-ins that took place during the period under consideration. I focus on the sit-ins as the

central component in the Tahrir repertoire during the revolution. Two criteria were used for inclu-
sion: 1) sit-ins that took place only in Tahrir Square or in the Tahrir area and 2) sit-ins with goals re-
lated roughly to the revolution.14 Only three of these sit-ins gained any noteworthy momentum and
duration, with the longest being the July sit-in, which lasted for almost one month. I included in this
list three sit-ins in front of the headquarters of the Egyptian Radio and Television Union (known as
the Maspero Building), which was dominated by Coptic youth, because other leftist and revolution-
ary youth groups participated in these sit-ins. Besides, this building is within walking distance of
Tahrir Square. Larger revolutionary demands, such as accountability for Egypt’s government and kill-
ers of protestors, were part of the demands of these sit-ins, in addition to other specific demands,
such as stopping attacks on Egyptian churches.
Some of the cases to build protest camps in Egypt after the revolution that I do not discuss in this
article include attempts in April and May 2012 by regime supporters in Abbassia Square and briefly
by the Unknown Soldier Memorial in Nasr City Cairo, and camps organized by the Muslim
Brotherhood supporters in Rabaa al-Adawiya Square in Nasr City and Nahda Square near Cairo
University, both of which were formed after the ousting of president Mohamed Morsi in July 3,
2013. The Nahda and the Rabaa Camps were evacuated by force, and the Rabaa camp witnessed a
massacre by the military regime in Egypt on August 14, 2013. It is fair to say it was an occupation of
the Tahrir Square that symbolized the revolution, and it was the Rabaa massacre, an attack on a pro-
test camp in a square, that represented the triumph of the leading counter-revolutionary force: the
military. Even though I do not discuss these cases here, the argument presented in this paper would
apply to them as well, as all these cases represent instances of polarization and symbolize the revolu-
tion’s fragmentations and the ineffectiveness of the Tahrir repertoire as a strategy of protest, a prerog-
ative that is part of my argument in this paper.15
I focus only on the famous protest camp established in Tahir Square during the revolution and
the many attempts to build camps in the same square and in neighboring areas that were inspired by
Tahrir’s symbolic revolutionary power. I believe that I cannot do justice to the complexity of these
other cases in the limited space of this article. My selection is also justified by the dramatic contrast
between what happened during the revolution and what happened after the revolution in the very
same place, a contrast that makes a compelling case for the theory and analysis presented here and for
its relevance to the theory of repertoire.
Meaning
I visited the Tahrir camps in March and April of 2011. Compared to the revolution’s huge banners
that declared “we are the revolution,” smaller signs in these sit-ins were displayed. These carried both
13 See, for example, CBS News on Oct. 9, 2011 (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/revolution-egyptians-return-to-tahrir-square/).

14 The first criterion seeks to avoid any potential confusion by mixing the specificity of the Tahrir camp, the focus of this paper,
with other attempts to camp or rally in other areas of Cairo or Egypt during the uprising and/or its aftermath. The broad nature
of the revolutionary goals was impossible to ignore in setting up the second criterion. I defined the goals as issues related to call-
ing for a new constitution or establishing rule of law or accountability for the old regime figures. All these issues were generally
part of the original demands of the revolution in 2011.
15 For this research I also interviewed several leading activists from Suez, Alexandria, and Mahala Kobra, three large cities that
played important and distinct roles in the Egyptian uprising. Activists in these cities confirmed that although the main squares
in these cities, such as Arbaeen square in Suez, el-shoun in Mahala, and Qaeed Ibrahim in Alexandria, were critical to the uprising,
there were no encampment attempts in those spaces. I also do not discuss attempts to occupy factories, which would go beyond
the limits of this research.
12 Said
the broad demands and slogans of the revolution, such as “bread, liberty and social justice,” and new
demands, such as ending SCAF rule or ensuring justice for the martyrs of the revolution and their
families. Other slogans included “the revolution continues.” It was by then known to actors as “the
Tahrir sit-in,” not “the revolution’s camp.”16 During this period, the media increasingly portrayed
thugs and protestors as synonymous, making the camps seem more dangerous and disruptive than
politically representative of any “public.” In my field notes during this period, I wrote that the main

concern for many protestors was now simply trying to convince a skeptical public that the revolution
was not being “stolen” and redirected toward destructive ends.
As discussed in the previous section, a complex combination of factors associated the revolution
with the Tahrir repertoire during the uprising. This was a novel process of giving a new meaning to
the place and the modes of action around it. Ironically, while many observers reduced the revolution
to the camp in Tahrir, many protestors in the transitional period were thinking the same way. Their
logic was that if occupying Tahrir were the central revolutionary tool of the people, surely it could be
deployed again. Here, I discuss how different factors changed the meaning of the place, such as pro-
testors’ battles over Tahrir and its meaning, and the shifts in the agenda of various political factions.
Given Tahrir’s symbolic power, it was natural that various groups continued to rally there in the
transitional period. Disputes quickly emerged, however, over which groups were entitled to claim the
space, for doing so now meant representing themselves as embodying the spirit of Tahrir and the rev-
olution. Protests started immediately, as people began to realize that the transitional authority (the
SCAF) was not really interested in reform. Secular and leftist groups and young people continued to
attempt sit-ins in the square; meanwhile, Muslim Brotherhood members and Islamists developed a
closer relationship with the SCAF. In all ten of the cases I examined between February 12, 2011, and
December 5, 2012, the sit-ins ended with some level of violence, as either the pro-military regime or
pro-Muslim Brotherhood groups, assisted by security forces, cleared the square. Supporters of the
Muslim Brotherhood did not generally attempt sit-ins, except in one instance when they occupied
the square for one day to protest the delay in announcing the presidential election results, which
ended with the victory of their candidate, Mohamed Morsi.
When I asked some protestors in the March sit-in why they were camping, they told me they were
angry because SCAF had kept Mubarak’s cabinet, headed by Ahmed Shafik (Mubarak’s last prime
minster and later a candidate for presidency), and that they were enraged because of the lack of ac-
countability of old regime figures. Shafik was forced to resign in the end of March. This perhaps was
not necessarily or only because of their protest. But for them, the idea of continuing the revolution
was meaningful, and their effort was not a waste of time. Yet, it is one thing to make a revolution and
another to speak of continuing or reviving it, after the waning of its conditions.
Internal Composition
During the transitional period, the strategy of occupying the square changed in terms of numbers,
composition, and other logistical dynamics. My informants reported varying levels of participation in
the sit-ins after the revolution, but most agreed that the number was usually in the low hundreds, if
that, and no sit-in was maintained long enough to constitute a camp. During my own ethnographic
research, I saw only scattered tents, usually no more than 20 on average. The sit-ins in March, April,
and July of 2011 and in November/December of 2012 were the biggest, but even in these instances,
the numbers paled in comparison to the estimated 200,000 sleeping in Tahrir during the peak of the
revolution. Crucially, these later protests were not only smaller in number, they were also more ho-
mogenous, comprised mostly of left-wing youth. The homogeneity and the small numbers are
16 To be fair, it is not accurate to say that these sit-ins were aimless and had no goals, as they were combining the broader goals of
the revolution as well as new goals related to different circumstances in the transitional period. I do not discuss in depth the
developments of grievance from camp to camp due to the limited space in this article. The appendix details circumstances and
specific reasons for the camps examined in this article.
related. The famous Tahrir sit-in during the revolution owed its size to the wide coalition that bought
together people from the far left to the far right and across classes. In the post-revolutionary period,
however, only very radical youth remained interested in trying to reestablish a protest camp in the
square.17
The relationship between rallies and the occupation of Tahrir also changed during the transitional
period. During the revolution, rallies effectively fed the revolutionary camp, both literally and symbol-

ically, by bringing in supplies and people and demonstrating support. Also, like the camp itself, the
rallies during the revolution benefited from intense unity and mobilization. Rallies in the aftermath of
the uprising, by contrast, were fragmented—both temporally, sometimes occurring only once a
month, and politically, in some cases even manifesting a hostile relationship with attempted sit-ins in
Tahrir.
One of the clearest examples of these divisions is the case of two rallies, one organized on July 22,
2011, and one a week later, on July 29, 2011. The first, organized by secular, liberal, and leftist groups,
demanded the drafting of a new constitution before anything else. The second, organized by the
more electorally organized Islamists, called instead for immediate parliamentary elections. Although I
will not discuss the details here, my point is that both rallies were staged separately from the camp
that had already been set up in Tahrir at the time, established on July 8 by radical youth after a differ-
ent rally. By the time of the Islamists’ rally on July 29, the protestors in the original camp worried
that the Islamists might attempt to usurp their place in the square. At the same time, the radical youth
mocked Islamists for being political opportunists who made a show of organizing a rally but were un-
willing to truly advocate for their agenda by camping longer in Tahrir and pressuring the authorities.
Some of the secular protestors even came up with the derisive slogan “revolution until afternoon,”
implying that for the Islamists, revolution meant only a few hours of protest.18
In terms of the spatial difference, camps in the transitional period were smaller, and they were
confined to a very small space in the middle of the square, known commonly to Egyptian activists
who are familiar with Tahrir as al-sinyiia, or “the tray.” Compare this to what happened during the
revolution, when protestors controlled the entire square. Another important element in the configu-
ration of the repertoire is its actors. While the building, strengthening, and unifying of a coalition is
critical to a revolution, so too is it critical in shaping the outcome and trajectory of events. Jack
Goldstone suggests that when revolutionary coalitions fracture after a revolution, the fracture can
take various forms, including “constructive opposition, paralysis, or polarization” (2011:461). What
happened in Egypt in the period from 2011 to 2013, I would argue, was a combination of paralysis
and polarization, to varying degrees and at different moments (sometimes, for example, things
seemed to be in total paralysis, such as in the months immediately prior to the coup in July 3,
2013).19 But most importantly, this paralysis and polarization in 2011 and 2012 affected mobilization,
fragmenting it in the form of groups competing over who could claim Tahrir and how Tahrir, as both
a public political space and a revolutionary symbol, should be used. Divided in this way, working
against rather than with one another, opposition groups were less effective in their efforts to use the
Tahrir repertoire, and it was also much easier for the new regime to divide and conquer.
17 I should note here that there is no contradiction between the fact that various groups were competing over the square in the
transitional period and the idea that only leftist and radical youth were interested in attempting to reoccupy Tahrir. As I discuss
in this article, all groups continued to rally in Tahrir, but only revolutionary, leftist youth attempted to camp there. Even with re-
spect to single-day rallies in Tahrir, all groups competed for recognition as the most representative of the original revolution. In
other words, everyone continued to recognize that the space was important, but they disagreed about how it should be properly
used.
18 The slogan mimics the original slogan “revolution until victory” and takes advantage of the fact that in Arabic, “until victory”
(hata al-nasr) rhymes with “until afternoon” (hata al-asr).
19 It is important to note here that the paralysis was, in part, a result of the obstruction of the elected president by the deep-state
apparatus.
14 Said
Regime-Repertoire Relationality
Whereas the regime during the revolution was in crisis and unable to control the situation, the post-
revolutionary state focused on reestablishing control and reconfiguring itself, this time with a crucial
addition: the direct interference of the military apparatus and intelligence in domestic security and
policing. Under the SCAF, military intelligence expanded, and military police spread throughout the
country. More and more civilians were arrested and held for military trials. According to a report by

Human Rights Watch, in 2011, approximately 12,000 civilians, mostly youth, faced military trials.
In this context, SCAF relaunched a campaign of negative media coverage vilifying protestors as
thugs. SCAF also actively infiltrated protests and responded to them with mass arrests and violence.
Previously, this strategy backfired on the state once the scale and longevity of the protest camp be-
came clear, essentially forcing the state to engage with protestors; the small scale and disorganization
of the post-revolutionary occupations, however, made them much easier to dismiss and/or demonize.
In the transitional period as well, security forces were much more effective at infiltrating attempted
sit-ins. One informant told me that the difference between the camp during the revolution and one
of the camps he participated in later (July) was that “during the revolution we were controlling the
entire square, and in this camp, we cannot even control our own tent” [in reference to police infiltra-
tors’ ability to take part in the sit-in].
During my field work in Egypt in 2011, I was able to visit the camps in March and April before
they were evacuated by force, and I noticed that there were no barricades. The protestors no longer
had the power to police the space they were occupying. As another informant told me, it was easy to
tell the difference between the occupation of Tahrir during and after the revolution because “during
the revolution we were arresting intruders, but in the later cases we were being arrested.”
Temporal Momentum
In the context of protestors losing control of the square, one can understand why and how protest
camps in the transitional period had to contend with a more problematic mix of violence and vulnera-
bility. As mentioned above, almost all these sit-ins were ended by forceful evacuation by security
forces. Tents were torn down, multiple arrests were made, and in some cases, even live ammunition
was used, killing some protestors. The violence was by no means unprecedented; there had been vio-
lence during the revolution, of course, particularly during the early days of the sit-ins. But the regime
recognized that by virtue of their lower numbers and relative lack of widespread public support, the
camps that came after the revolution were more vulnerable. Repressive measures intensified and
seemed designed to test protestors’ solidarity. After the March sit-in, for example, some activists were
tortured in the Egyptian Museum, and the military intelligence and police conducted forceful virgin-
ity tests on female protestors. The July sit-in that was ended on August 1, 2011, witnessed mass
arrests and excessive use of violence against activists. The ebb and flow of temporal momentum also
helps to explain the different outcomes. The state had used violence before, but by now, protestors
were exhausted, no longer buoyed by the initial intensity and euphoria of the first occupation. One of
my informants who participated in the January revolution told me that he did not take part in later
attempts to camp in Tahrir. When I asked him why, he explained that, “SCAF had the upper hand;
we lost the public and we could not even take control of the square.”
Crucially, it was not just the reconfigured state that gained momentum while protestors lost theirs.
The attitude and energy of the larger public had also transformed. The Egyptian public yearned for
stability, and the middle class, which had been pivotal in their support of the revolution, had by then
become resistant to any radical changes. The decline of public support that manifested in temporal
rhythms refused disruption. During my visits to the camps in Tahrir in March and April of 2011, I
noticed that what few tents were there were almost empty during the day. Only a small number of
protestors remained during normal work hours. This contrast with the “time out of time” of the revo-
lution could not have been starker. Whereas ordinary life was essentially suspended during the
revolution, even when occupations of Tahrir were attempted, normal, everyday economic and social
life continued, even on the part of the protestors themselves, most of whom left for work during the
day.
In some cases, responses to the camps went beyond public apathy to active hostility and violence.
Camps during the transitional period were under constant attack, especially at night—and not just by
state forces. A group of so-called “honorable citizens,” composed of state infiltrators and ordinary citi-

zens who supported the regime and were willing to use violence against protestors, emerged as early
February 13, 2011 (two days after Mubarak’s ousting), brandishing the slogan “the people want the
evacuation of the square,” in direct contrast to the revolutionary slogan “the people want the downfall
of this regime.” Any revolutionary momentum that had accumulated was lost soon after Mubarak’s
ousting. The intensity and urgency of the moment dissipated, seeming to take the energy and unity
of opposition groups and the larger public with it. The strategies of the state regained effectiveness,
while those of the protestors fragmented and lost legitimacy. The decline of the Tahrir repertoire was
complete.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

At its inception, the Tahrir repertoire was emblematic of revolutionary ideals and the unity of the rev-
olutionary coalition. By the end of the transitional period, it represented fragmentation, thuggery,
and yearning for a lost revolution. The repeated attempts to camp in Tahrir during the transitional
period were predicated upon the unprecedented success of doing so during the revolution. But it is
one thing to honor the uprising by returning to its site and quite another to expect that simple repeti-
tion—without the original conditions and without an understanding of how a repertoire may be
changed by its own success—is possible, let alone capable, of producing the same outcome. As shown
here, even in the same place and using the same strategy, and by roughly some of the same actors, the mean-
ing and the outcome of the repertoire varied. Repetition alone does not make a successful repertoire,
just as the previous success alone does not guarantee the outcome of repetition.
Some might argue that the Tahrir repertoire did not work a second time because the (reformed)
state saw what happened the first time, and worked to make sure that the repertoire could not work a
second time. This is partly true, but it is an insufficient explanation. Of course, security changes were
made, and the state acted offensively. But the state would not have been able to do this without the
existence of many other factors. As my analysis shows, it is not only regime-repertoire relations that
matter in the effectiveness of a repertoire, but there was a combination of many other factors that
contributed to the decline of the repertoire, such as losing momentum, which meant losing public
support, and the changes in the composition of the repertoire itself, such as the fracture of the revolu-
tionary coalition and lack of rallies. All these combined reasons contributed to the failure of the reper-
toire in the repeated attempts. Giving credit to state repression only or blaming protestors for relying
on the same strategy as the single reason to explain the fall of the repertoire is too simplistic.20
My point is not to paint the efforts to occupy Tahrir during the transition as a waste of time or to
say that they were completely without productive effect. Nor do I wish to suggest that all attempts to
repeat a once-successful repertoire will fail; all such attempts must be evaluated on their own merits
and in relation to their specific conditions. Many of the revolutionary youth with whom I spoke dur-
ing the uprising and in the first few months afterward talked about Tahrir and its camp romantically
and euphorically. But the revolutionary youth I interviewed in the summer of 2012 had become skep-
tical and were critical of the camp’s limitations as a mode of action during the uprising itself and
20 It worth noting here that many radical youths stopped the strategy of camping. Some, as indicated above, became critical of this
strategy. Some did engage in social media campaigns against SCAF, and others joined political parties. Analyzing how these
other strategies worked in the transitional period goes beyond the scope of this article. I also argue against a total disconnect be-
tween rallies and protests in this period and electoral politics. Discussing these connections goes beyond the scope of this paper
as well.
16 Said
especially in its aftermath. One informant, for example, pointed to the disconnect that existed be-
tween the Tahrir camp and other forms of mobilization after the revolution: “These camps [after the
revolution] were just mobilization for the sake of mobilizing. How can we do camps without public
support and without rallies?”
The revolutionary repertoire, at the center of which was establishing and maintaining a protest
camp in Tahrir, was inspired by past attempts to occupy the square, but its use in January 2011 con-

stituted a novel iteration that came to symbolically embody and practically enact the revolution itself.
That it became such is thanks to a variety of factors, including the supportive role played by the rallies
in bringing people to Tahrir, the role of the regime in inadvertently legitimating Tahrir as the nexus
of the revolution, and the creation of a revolutionary crisis that put the state on the defensive while
providing new opportunities for the agency and innovation of protestors. My point is not to provide
an exhaustive list here of the factors contributing to the revolution but to foreground the temporality
and dialectical relationality of the situation as it unfolded. Neither temporality nor relationality froze
at the moment of Mubarak’s ousting; rather, everything about the context continued to evolve as con-
ditions changed, sometimes in contradictory directions. So, it is not surprising that the use, effective-
ness, and meaning of the Tahrir repertoire changed once things shifted to a period of transition.
Of course, repertoire change is addressed through the concept of innovation, but less understood
are the ways in which a repertoire might change in effectiveness and meaning through repetition.
Given scholars’ tendency to overlook both repertoire repetition and failure, it is not surprising that it
is the rise of the Tahrir repertoire—not its decline—that has received more attention. Tahrir has
been credited with inspiring revolutions and mobilizations elsewhere, but none has produced the
same results. Rather than simply chalking this up to something like the waning of the Arab Spring,
for example (which presumes the same object rolling over time and across contexts), we should
rather understand it in terms of the inherently dynamic, temporal, and relational nature of repertoires
themselves.
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APPENDIX
SIT-INS IN TAHRIR SQUARE AND THE GREATER TAHRIR SQUARE AREA IN THE
AFTERMATH OF THE REVOLUTION THROUGH DECEMBER 2012
1. The March Sit-In. This sit-in took place in Tahrir Square from February 26 to March 9, 2011.
Organized by the CYR and other radical and revolutionary youth, its goal was to pressure the
SCAF to comply with the revolution’s demands, which included dissolving the state security intel-
ligence. The sit-in ended with the violent evacuation of the square by the military police and the
arrest of many youth activists, who were subsequently tortured at the Egyptian Museum, located
18 Said
on the edge Tahrir Square (Abdel Mon’em Riadd Square). Among those arrested and held were
seventeen women who were forced to undergo virginity tests.
2. The First Maspero Sit-In. This sit-in took place in the Maspero area, which is very close to
Tahrir, in front of the headquarters of the Ministry of Information and the Egyptian National
Radio and TV Union. It began on March 5 and ended on March 12, 2011. The sit-in was orga-
nized by revolutionary youth and radical Coptic youth who participated in the revolution. This

group of youth formed the foundation of what was later known as the Maspero Youth Union, the
majority of whom were Coptic youth who participated in the revolution and who organized later
sit-ins. The goal of the sit-in was to pressure the government to investigate sectarian attacks
against Christians and the Coptic Church in Sole (Atfeeh). It ended with a violent, forced evacua-
tion by the military police. Sixteen activists were injured.
3. The April Sit-In. This sit-in, which also took place in Tahrir Square, began on April 8 and ended
on April 12, 2011. Its main organizers were the CYR and revolutionary and radical youth. Several
low-ranking military officers participated in the sit-in, which may explain the excessive violence
used by the military to evacuate the camp. The main goals of the sit-in were to compel the SCAF
to put Mubarak and his regime on trial, to call for the political disenfranchisement of Mubarak’s
regime figures, and to dissolve Mubarak’s National Democratic Party. Military police stormed the
camp using live ammunition and arrested the defecting officers. One protestor (Ali Maher) was
killed.
4. The Second Maspero Sit-In. This sit-in took place in the Maspero area, near Tahrir. Beginning
on May 8 and ending on May 27, 2011, this was organized by the Maspero Youth Union. The
goal was to demand that the Egyptian government investigate the attacks on Copts, specifically
the attacks that took place on May 5 against a church in Embaba. This was perhaps the only sit-in
in the transitional period that ended peacefully, with promises by the government to investigate
attacks on the Copts.
5. The July Sit-In. This sit-in also took place in Tahrir Square. Organized by groups of revolutionary
youth, it was perhaps the longest sit-in in the transitional period, beginning on July 8 and ending
on August 1, 2011. The objectives of this encampment included the continuation of the revolution
and the protest of the slowness of the trials of regime figures and the killers of protestors during
the revolution. It ended on the first day of Ramadan with mass arrests and forceful evacuation by
the military police and security forces.
6. The Third Maspero Sit-In. This five-day sit-in took place from October 4–9, 2011, ending with
the famous Maspero Massacre. It was organized mainly by the Maspero Youth Union and was
joined by many revolutionary youths. The goal of the sit-in was to protest yet another attack on
churches in Egypt, especially a recent attack on a church in Marinab in Aswan that took place on
September 20, 2011. On October 9, 2011, a rally of protestors marched from Shoubra to the
Maspero building, where military tanks and armored vehicles ran over protestors and used live
ammunition. Twenty-eight protestors were killed, mostly Coptic youth, and 212 were injured.
7. The Mogama’ Sit-In (Mohamed Mahmoud Battle). The sit-in started on November 18, 2011,
following a famous rally, and ended on November 25, 2011. The goal of the rally was to protest a
proposal (a constitutional declaration document) by an SCAF-appointed cabinet member (Ali
AlSelmy, the vice president of the cabinet) that gave more power to the SCAF and limited the
rights of elected bodies in future constitutional assemblies. The main sit-it, which took place near
the Magama’ area in Tahrir, was held primarily by the families of the martyrs and those injured in
the revolution. The sit-in ended with the famous Mohamed Mahmoud Street Battle on
November 25, during which the military police, using live ammunition, tear gas, and nerve gases,
attacked the occupiers of the square and the revolutionary youth who had joined in solidarity.
Though there are no definitive tallies of the number of protestors killed, some estimate that the
death toll was no less than 200, with hundreds more injured, many of whom were blinded by
police snipers. A group of youth decided to move the sit-in to Hussein Hegazy Street, in front of
the cabinet.
8. The Cabinet Sit-In. This sit-in, which took place in the vicinity of the Egyptian cabinet headquar-
ters near Tahrir, began on November 25 and ended on December 16, 2011. It had the same goals
as the previous sit-in, with an additional protest against the attacks on Mohamed Mahmoud.
Several protestors were killed when the camp was evacuated by force. A well-known image from

this sit-in is that of a female protestor, who became known as “the blue bra girl,” being dragged,
stripped, and beaten by military police.
9. June 20 Sit-In. This sit-in, which began on June 20 and ended on June 24, 2011, was the only
camp that was organized by the Muslim Brotherhood and their supporters in Tahrir in the transi-
tional period. The goal of the camp was to pressure the Presidential Election Commission to take
a neutral stance between Mohamed Morsi (the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate) and Ahmed
Shafik (a prominent figure from the old regime). The camp ended peacefully, with the Muslim
Brotherhood celebrating the announcement of Morsi’s election.
10. Tahrir/Ithadiya Sit-In. This sit-in took place from November 23 to December 5, 2012, and
comprised only few tents in Tahrir. The main organizers of the camp were radical youth, liber-
als, and socialists; Nasserite political parties also participated. The objective of the camp was to
protest Morsi’s constitutional declaration, which was announced on November 22. Many pro-
testors believed that the declaration expanded presidential powers, and some worried about the
exclusionary politics of the Muslim Brotherhood. The majority of protestors and the main camp
set up in front of the Ithadiya Presidential Palace after a large rally that took place on
November 23, 2012. On December 5, 2012, Muslim Brotherhood supporters, aided by police
forces, attacked the camp and injured protestors.

Rise and Fall of Tahrir Theorizing Temporality

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Social Problems, 042020, 0, 1–19

The Rise and Fall of the Tahrir Repertoire:

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K E Y W O R D S : repertoires, Tahrir Square, Egyptian revolution, Charles Tilly, repertoire’s

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1 See “El-Nadeem Publishes Testimonies of the Evacuation of Tahrir Sit-In” (2011).

PROBLEMS IN THE STUDY OF REPERTOIRES

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STUDYING REPERTOIRE TRAJECTORY

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METHODS AND DATA

Table 1: Demographics of Interviewees

Phase 2 (July 12, 2012–January 8, 2013); N 5 50

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*Self-identiﬁed class of interviewee: WC ¼ working class, MC ¼ middle class

THE RISE OF THE TAHRIR REPERTOIRE

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THE DECLINE OF THE TAHRIR REPERTOIRE

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13 See, for example, CBS News on Oct. 9, 2011 (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/revolution-egyptians-return-to-tahrir-square/).

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DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

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