Narcissus and the Internet Revolution
Twenty years ago Brazilian cantautor Caetano Veloso wrote a song called “Santa Clara, Padroeira de Televisao” in which he prays to Santa Clara, the Patron Saint of Television, that “Video be a pool where Narcissus/Shall be a god who will also know how to resurrect.”
For many years, since the days that television transmitted images of turmoil in Vietnam, Paris, Mexico City, Newark, and Los Angeles, it seems that Pablo Pueblo, Pedro Pedreiro, has been in a narc-oleptic dream state, unable to Act Up, waiting for the next organizing tool –la internet que despierta.
And so, in Egipto, the emergence of cyber-pragmatism a central element in the downfall of a U.S. –backed dictator in the Middle East has become a defining discourse. Like it or not, the internet revolution has set off a storm of analysis that seems to pit younger against older generaciones to debate the merits of inherently narcissistic capitalist tools like Facebook and Twitter as political organizers.
On the surface, the skepticism of writers like Frank Rich and Malcolm Gladwell is well-founded. The material conditions of oppression, which had more to do with high-unemployment, inflation of commodity prices, and the deadening atmosphere of 30 years of dictatorship were undeniably the basis for the Egyptian Insurrection. When Gladwell casts doubt on social networking’s ability to sustain “high-risk” activism, he seems to have a point.
Consider, for instance, the young people chosen by the U.S. media and the forbidden news network Al Jazeera as the “heroes” of the Egyptian Insurrection. Wael Ghonim, the marketing director for Google in North Africa and the Middle East, who started a Facebook page called “We Are All Khaled Said,” in honor of a martyred youth who protested police brutality, has been widely lionized as “the face of the Egypt revolt,” and a casual google news search reveals upwards of 1700 mentions of him in current news stories. But when you search for Ahmed Maher, who co-founded the equally important April 6 Youth Movement, named after a labor strike in an industrial Egyptian town, you get about 30 stories.
When Ghonim, whose company took a year to figure out it shouldn’t cooperate with the Chinese government censorship before it finally pulled out, was asked for his response to Mubarak’s departure, he said, “I want to meet [Facebook founder] Mark Zuckerberg one day and thank him.” When Maher was asked about the use of Facebook and other social networking sites in Egypt, he said:
“We have a considerable influence on Egyptian and foreign media as well as the capacity to disseminate information rapidly using the internet, and through some independent media sources that publish our news continuously. But we need to reach other groups of people who do not use the internet or Twitter or Facebook, including members of the old generation as well as many young people. We need to interact directly with these individuals in clubs, universities and neighborhoods. It is important to note that reaching these people is relatively expensive in comparison to the low cost of using the internet, where we can write articles and publish blogs and videos that rapidly influence the thinking of many young people and motivate them to participate in our movement. Reaching out to populations that do not use the internet requires going directly to the streets, which is expensive and could lead to the arrest or torture of some of our members. However, we are tying hard to develop innovative strategies in accordance with the principles of non-violent change.”
Maher was making reference to the “high-risk activism” Gladwell speaks of. It’s also more “expensive”, an interesting observation, almost bringing to mind the difference between traditional television programming (expensive) and reality shows (inexpensive). So cyber pragmatism has the advantage of avoiding arrest and being cost-effective. But what about the rolling-up-your-sleeves-and getting your-cliched-fingernails-dirty work to be done now that the emperor has fled? Note that both leaders cited here are “young,” and although they have both used Facebook and Twitter, they seem to assign different levels of importance to them.
Which brings us back to Narcissus, and the messages we can receive when we stare into the reflective pool of the internet revolution. Whether it is Wikileaks, and the influence it had on Tunisia, which also affects Egypt, or the translation of the comic book Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story into Arabic by Dalla Ziada, yet another Egyptian cyber-activist, or video of Serbian activist instruction in nonviolent demonstration techniques, there is a flood of information on the internet that is allowing people to stare long enough to see themselves, and their own situations more clearly.
Inevitably, gazing into cyberspace is a narcissistic act, but what if that moment allowed us to see Martin Luther King speaking in Arabic, or allowed us to see the crumpled bodies, of striking UPR students, writhing in handcuffs on the ground, as our own? Why is it that –just two years after his rigged re-election– when we think of the mayor of New York, he is so quickly and easily transmuted into Hosni Mubarak? While it is true there are strong currents manipulating what we see in the pool, we must continue to trust in our ability to read around the filter and get to the truth, which has always been there, plain for all to see. And hope our bodies can catch up to our vision.