Revolution squared: Tahrir, political possibilities, and counterrevolution in Egypt By Atef Shahat Said. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2024. 360 pp.

The 2013 coup in Egypt firmly framed analysis of the revolutions that emerged in the Arab region in the categories of success and failure. The tragedy of Tahrir Square, which had presented to the world potential of taking back the streets (or squares), was bemoaned; Egyptians were either criticized for failing to become full revolutionary subjects or infantilized for not transcending social difference for the good of democracy. In Revolution Squared, Atef Said confronts these judgments forcefully and convincingly, electing to explain the 2011 Egyptian Revolution through the lens of lived contingency. With this approach, Said seeks to understand how spatiotemporal contexts influence revolutions, particularly through the ways they expand and contract political space. While the book largely focuses on events from 2011 to 2013, with special attention to the initial 18 days of the uprising that led to Hosni Mubarak's removal, the analysis is situated in the decades before and after this period. This perspective enables Said not only to embed counterrevolution in the analysis of revolution but also to trace its becoming to developments in the past. Guiding Said's analysis is the idea that revolutions are never foregone conclusions and are instead channeled through “how revolutionary actors practice and experience the revolution, particularly in terms of the actions they do or do not take in relation to the possibilities, unpredictabilities, and practices of power during the course of revolution” (p. 11). This lived contingency is produced by revolutionary actors and collectives’ in/decisions in relation to their material and symbolic access to space, and their extreme fidelity to the revolution's survival. Said's insistence on centering the revolutionaries, in all their glory and contradictions, humanizes revolution as an extraordinary process made by ordinary people. This orientation moves the book far away from classic studies on revolution that follow a causes-and-consequences formula, focused on either political or socioeconomic indicators. Using the method of “historical ethnography,” Said integrates his own reflections as participant-observer with archival sources, newspapers, social media posts, and interviews with key revolutionary actors to offer a dynamic and intricate account of the Egyptian Revolution. Further, Said's unique position (discussed in appendix 2), including as a former human rights attorney in Egypt, illuminates how he built on existing networks and modes of action, including a “culture of assistance” (p. 76). As its title suggests, Revolution Squared uses “square” to denote two key processes that governed the Egyptian Revolution and precipitated counterrevolution. Chapters 1 to 3 deal with the first, whereby “Tahrir Square represented a physical and symbolic confinement of the revolution” (p. 58). This initial squaring of the revolution collapsed revolutionary possibilities within the boundaries and actors of Tahrir Square, inadvertently foreclosing more radical and broad-based ways of organizing that were necessary once Mubarak was removed. Chapter 1 charts the evolution of street protest in Egypt and Cairo, particularly the emergence of Tahrir Square as an important site for activists. These actions form part of the expansion of political space beyond formal politics. Said deftly addresses the opportunities afforded to activists through the internet, including using blogs and Facebook groups, with a keen awareness of how these new digital tools had material effects on the ground. In chapter 2, Said narrates the “Tahrir repertoire,” which included marching to the square from surrounding urban neighborhoods, maintaining the camp in the square, exercising sovereignty within the space aided by barricades, and the growing iconography of the encampment through digital media (p. 86). Here, Said's study is particularly vivid. For example, we learn that after the police forced nearby shops to close, protesters accessed water through mosques and churches, where such restrictions were not politically viable (p. 75). Yet this spotlight on Tahrir Square undermined revolutionary actors and practices happening elsewhere. This included the popular committees established in residential neighborhoods, where citizens across Egypt took control of their own security during deep uncertainty and ambivalence toward the revolution. In chapter 3, Said asserts that these committees presented a third sovereignty during the revolution and had unrealized potential to expand revolutionary activity beyond Tahrir Square. The second squaring of the revolution relates to the framing of the revolution as primarily a path for democratic transition. In chapters 4 and 5, Said shows how the revolution's social demands were overtaken by its political aspirations, eventually resulting in the counterrevolutionary outcome of elections without democratization. Chapter 4 shows why democratic demands were a less conflictual basis for coalition-building before and during the revolution. This focus on the procedural aspects of formal politics facilitated counterrevolutionary actors—primarily the military, the Muslim Brotherhood, and liberal elites—to reduce the revolution to the organizing of elections. Said reveals these agonizing details in chapter 5, demonstrating how democratization cannot be separated from the revolutionary trajectory itself. In chapter 6 and the conclusion, Said reflects on the contraction of political space in Egypt since 2014 and what this means for the future study of revolutions and revolutionaries in the 21st century, a time of neoliberalism and crisis of democracy. Here, Said alludes that political space in Egypt has revolved back to a “Square Zero,” yet this idea could have been elaborated further. The sensitivity of Revolution Squared to revolutionaries’ perspectives and struggles suggests Said is not in the “nothing changed” camp. Still, the reader is left anticipating how Said would respond to the question of change in Egypt since 2011. Further, the conclusion does not expand on one of the main pillars of the book, that the necessary taking of Tahrir Square as the “liberated zone” (p. 216), may have isolated the revolutionaries from seizing state power. As mass protest in the street continues to be a key avenue to develop political space, is the experience of Tahrir Square primarily a lesson on lived contingency, or, is it also a warning of the double-edged sword of iconic gatherings? Revolution Squared joins recent works that focus on counterrevolution (Allinson, 2022) and the revolutionary situation (El-Ghobashy, 2021) to explain the Arab uprisings, as well as other works of anthropology that explore how urban streets are sites of sovereignty (Bjork-James, 2020). The book will be of great value to those interested in the relations among urban protests, democracy, and revolution, as well as those who employ multiple and divergent research methods (covered in appendix 3) to explain multifaceted phenomena.