It is three years since we published a special edition focusing on the dramatic changes and insurgencies in the Arab world. In those three years, the democracy movements that have attracted so much attention all over the world have in some instances consolidated their position but in other cases have suffered bitter setbacks. While in some places the despots who were previously in power have been ousted, the situation in Syria for example has completely escalated. Whereas the deeply entrenched autocratic structures on the Arabian peninsula have on the whole remained intact, elsewhere, for example in Tunisia, there is a clear move towards free parliamentary elections. At the same time however the spectre of a new authoritarianism is beginning to emerge right across the region.
That is more than reason enough to ask what has actually followed in the wake of the Arab Spring. Which of the hopes awakened across the board in early 2011 have been fulfilled, at least partially? What kinds of new obstacles have emerged since then for multi-faceted endeavours to attain greater emancipation in this geopolitical area?
Political scientist Farid Hafez looks by way of example at the situation in Egypt, the most populous Arab state. Here, where the most pronounced sea-change – alongside that in Tunisia – began to take shape three years ago, the imponderable aspects of the democratic process soon became most dramatically apparent. References to “Islam” and “Islamists” cropped up and, as Hafez analyses, were, so to speak, used as a pretext to secure political prevalence for the military leadership in the country. “Islamophobia”, an ideological pattern widespread predominantly in the West, is sublimely instrumentalised in this context and helps the new-old powers-that-be to disregard the power balance in the country. This does not bode all too well in terms of enduring democratisation.
The catastrophic impact of divisions along various religious, ethnic and political lines is demonstrated in the civil-war situation in Syria, with no end to the conflict in sight. Whereas there was also a considerable degree of resistance from the cultural scene in the country three years ago, this has now either been crushed or has of necessity shifted abroad, as Charlotte Bank explains in her article. Although many artists on the spot still cling to the vision of a better, violence-free future, they are confronted with formidable repression, which even takes the form of manifest violence against individuals. Artist Róza El-Hassan is however endeavouring from abroad (in this case from Hungary) to hold high the banner of overarching artistic-cultural resistance. Her project, Syrian Voices, excerpts of which she presents here, is threatened not only by the situation in Syria spinning out of control, but also by a lack of support from Western institutions, as El-Hassan elucidates polemically.
The role played in the region’s political process by Western “relays”, whose positive intentions cannot be called into question, is an issue with far-reaching implications. The Gulf Labor Initiative, which we reported on in Edition 1/2012, continues relentlessly to condemn the ignoble labour conditions for workers constructing the new high-profile cultural-sector buildings in the Gulf States, a phenomenon likely to be repeated too in construction of football stadiums for the World Cup in 2022. Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann conduct a critical evaluation of this campaign and come up with an ambivalent conclusion: essential though it is to turn the spotlight on human rights violations in this context, it is just as important to be aware of one’s own (Western) entanglement in the “World Class Culture” that also simultaneously benefits from this outsourced world culture. In their essay Nat Muller and Ferry Biedermann also engage with this subtext as they analyse the offshoots of the revolts in the Arab world with reference to the Gulf States. Their appraisal is sobering: whilst multi-faceted artistic activities from Dubai to Abu Dhabi are increasingly becoming a magnet for the international jet-set, the many cases of censorship and prohibitions that have affected even big-name exhibitions over the last few years should not be forgotten. The Gulf States may well have become generous hosts of “Western” activities, but at the same time it is important not to overlook the humanitarian and indeed ideological price associated with this.
Latent hotspots in and beyond the region are further focal points in this edition: Fadi Toufiq for example sheds light on the still acute after-effects of the civil war in Lebanon nearly 25 years after that conflict officially ended. Finally, a separate, multi-part “Special” addresses the current situation in Ukraine and the artistic scene affected by it. This once again throws up the crucial question of the kind of new power balances and competing forces that impinge upon the political and cultural upheavals unfolding in many places. It also raises the question of the extent to which the utopian scenario of an Arab Summer, unrealised as that may still appear at present, can be generalised beyond the bounds of this specific geographical frame.