Incorporating the Egyptian Revolution into English Culture Courses: Toward a Revolutionary Pedagogy Ahmed Gamal Ain Shams University

Theoretical Framework: McLaren and Farahmandpur’s Paradigm: “Revolutionary Pedagogy” Sub-paradigms: Critical Literacy - Counternarratives - Countermemories

Critical Literacy Revolutionary pedagogy stresses the importance of acquiring a critical literacy—where literacy is defined as a practice of reflecting, analyzing, and making critical judgments in relation to social, economic, and political issues. (See Lankshear & McLaren, 1993; see also Giroux, Lankshear, McLaren, & Peters, 1996)

Counternarratives - Countermemories Revolutionary pedagogy seeks to “identify alternative subject positions that we might assume or counternarratives and countermemories that we might make available to our students to contest existing regimes of representation and social practice” (McLaren and Farahmandpur 2001, 145).

The Culture Course in a Pre-Revolution Context Pre-Revolution Curriculum: Culture course as a syllabus to be transmitted. 1. Matthew Arnold's views of culture 2. T.S. Eliot's views of culture 3. Michel Foucault's views of culture 4. Antonio Gramsci's views of the intellectual 5. Edward Said’s views of the intellectual

The Culture Course in a Post-Revolution Context Post-Revolution Curriculum: Culture course as a process focused on the interaction of teachers, students and critical knowledge. Analyzing global culture and making critical judgments in relation to social, economic, and political issues such as globalization and transnational capitalism.

The Revolution of 25 January as a Component in the Culture Course Second Module Modernity Modernism Postmodernity & Postmodernism Globalization & Cyber-Culture Orientalism & Counter-Orientalism

Globalization and the Revolution of 25 January Globalization Globalization Negative Frame Positive Frame Economic Stagnation Cyber-Revolution

Assessment of Globalization I The Negative Frame Economic crisis Threat to the livelihoods of workers The growing income inequality Social disintegration Increasing poverty and alienation

Critique of Globalization Since the beginning of the 1970s the economic system has been in a long period of relative stagnation. For some, this 'financialization' of capital encourages usurious behaviour with negative consequences for economic and social development. It is therefore largely responsible for the longevity of stagnation and the severity of unemployment, as it locks economic policies into a deflationary spiral. (Samir Amin 1996, 216-7)

Economic Causes of the Revolution and Globalization High unemployment - Food price inflation - Low minimum wages

The Egyptian Revolution as an Economic Upheaval “[T]he last decade saw more than three-thousand labor protests.” “The April 6th Movement—a group of young Web-based activists who took their name from the date of a 2008 textile-workers’ strike—was able to yoke labor’s newfound militant energy to the national drive for democracy.” (Tarek Masoud 2011, 21)

Assessment of Globalization II The Positive Frame Cyber-Culture and Cyber-Revolution

The Impact of Facebook on the Revolution of 25 January This revolution started online. This revolution started on Facebook. This revolution started in June 2010 when hundreds of thousands of Egyptians started collaborating content. We would post a video on Facebook that would be shared by 60,000 people on their walls within a few hours. I've always said that if you want to liberate a society just give them the Internet. (Wael Ghonim in CNN Interview, 2011)

What is Counter-Orientalism? Counter-Orientalism and the Revolution of 25 January as a Counternarrative What is Counter-Orientalism? Counter-Orientalism is a kind of scholarship and discourse that critically reflects on its own production and reproduction of the Orient as 'subject' rather than 'object' of knowledge and attempts to counter the reinscription of the essentialist strategies of Orientalism.

Orientalist Narratives before the Arab Spring Arab Defeatism and Quietism “[T]he Western doctrine of the right to resist bad government is alien to Islamic thought.” Bernard Lewis ‘Islamic Concepts of Revolution’ (33) In P. J. Vatikiotis’ Revolution in the Middle East, and Other Case Studies (1972) The Arab Spring as a Counternarrative & a Countermemory

Globalization and Cyberculture Cultureeay4 Globalization and Cyberculture http://newenglizy.multiply.com/journal/item/3052/Cultureeasy4_Lecture_4 Orientalism & Counter-Orientalism http://newenglizy.multiply.com/journal/item/3059/Cultureeasy4_Lecture_5  

Egyptian Revolution’s Impact on Occupy Wall Street

Khalid Saeed

National Solidarity

Revolution Persists