Paper short abstract:

This paper ethnographically explores Egyptian men acting in time and on the future in the wake of the 2011 uprisings. Critically engaging the anthropology of generative events, it depicts the revolutionary years as temporally fractured, entailing parallel processes of acceleration and stagnation.

Paper long abstract:

This paper traces a handful of young Egyptians experiencing and acting on fractured temporalities in the wake of the 2011 Revolution. Egypt's (counter-)revolutionary period accentuated an awareness of life being lived within multiple temporal modalities. While the uprisings accelerated socio-political processes and made brighter futures seem within grasp, many young Egyptians also experienced the period as urgently stagnant: prospects for economic stability, family building and fun were all foreclosed.

Based on long-term fieldwork among Cairene football supporters in 2011-13 and shorter stints of follow-up research, the paper traces shifts in temporal texture around three 'generative events' (Kapferer, 2015): the 2011 Revolution, a stadium massacre in Port Said in early 2012, and the 2013 Military Coup. As David Scott notes, such events are 'exceptional times' when human action 'stands out starkly' through 'its ability to intervene' (2014): singular moments of 'potentiality', which cannot be understood through recourse to history but only in terms of the futures they actualise (cf. Deleuze, 2004). At the same time, Jaspir Puar suggests, periods of speeding history often imply a slowing of time (2007). Engaging this conundrum, the paper ethnographically depicts Egyptian men interpreting the past through actions in the present. Often, their actions were geared towards making a living; at moments, they tried to carve out a slice of stability; sometimes, they hoped to enact revolutionary futures-otherwise. United in a post-revolutionary timespace laden with capitalist promises, futurity and history, they all 'speculated' on the future so as to act on and master it (Bear, 2015).