Cairo: my city, my revolution

Weaving autobiographical and historical narratives that stem from the author’s experience as an Egyptian, living the current revolution between two urban geographies, the chapter investigates the growing culture of activism in Egypt and the genealogy of urban transformations in downtown Cairo, before and during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. The chapter argues that the ‘urban transformations’ that defined and redefined the cultural, social, and political fabrics of Cairo demonstrate a ‘performative’ impulse in a constant negotiation between the symbolic and the ‘real’. It then shows how Tahrir Square, a central piece of urban landscape in Cairo, became during the 2011 revolution a physical and symbolic reference point, generating both effective action and affective power, which emphasizes its significance as an important tool of grassroots democracy.