Rejoinder: reading Tahrir in Gramsci

SUMMARY

De Smet’s rejoinder to the ROAPE debate addresses the conceptual, analytical and historical questions posed by the contributors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Brecht De Smet is a postdoctoral lecturer and researcher at the Department of Conflict & Development Studies, Ghent University, and author of A dialectical pedagogy of revolt: Gramsci, Vygotsky, and the Egyptian revolution (Brill, 2015) and Gramsci on Tahrir: revolution and counter-revolution in Egypt (Pluto Press, 2016).

Notes

1. Where otherwise unattributed, all page references refer to my work under discussion, De Smet 2016a.

2. Tansel quotes Gramsci ‘Can this “model” for the creation of the modern states be repeated in other conditions?’ (‘Questo «modello» della formazione degli Stati moderni può ripetersi in altre condizioni?’) (Gramsci 1971, 115, Q10II§61) to support his claim that Gramsci advanced ‘passive revolutionary transitions as a “model” of producing capitalist hegemony’. However, I would argue that Gramsci puts ‘modello’ in quotation marks precisely because the uncritical use of ‘model’ leads to a catch-all concept of capitalist transition.

3. De Smet (2012); Zemni, De Smet and Bogaert (2013); De Smet (2014); De Smet (2015).

4. While I accept Tansel’s insightful additions to my brief analysis of Turkey, I fail to see the opposition between comprehending 1908 as a revolution and analysing Kemalism as its Bonapartist result. In fact, the inability of the revolutionary movements ‘to coalesce into organisations/movements with defined goals and effective strategies that could effect long-term social change’ (Tansel, this issue) typically anticipates a Caesarist outcome.