Being a revolutionary I've been watching the events in Egypt, and at the same time, coincidentally, was reading Reading Lolita in Tehran, and so I've been thinking about living in revolutionary times...→[More:]...even the other night, I happened to listen to this American Radio Works documentary on speeches of the Civil Rights movement...and this article on Egypt's young revolutionaries today was interesting: "They were born roughly around the time that President Hosni Mubarak first came to power, most earned degrees from their country’s top universities and all have spent their adult lives bridling at the restrictions of the Egyptian police state...Many in the circle, in fact, met during their university days".

The Civil Rights show was really interesting - they were interviewing people about Stokely Carmichael addressing students, and the interviewee kept characterizing the activists as "revolutionaries." You were a revolutionary, or you weren't. it was a category of person. "All these revolutionaries walked in with their Afros...we used to have meetings with other revolutionaries..."

So it's all got me thinking about being a 'revolutionary.' It has been a clear identity for people in all these milieus. The outcomes, obviously, really vary, but I'm so struck by people's descriptions of the atmosphere leading up to revolutionary times, and then activism during them. Not all revolutions are awesome. The Islamic Revolution in Iran followed on to a period of protest in which there were many, many ideological factions arguing in favor of their own desired outcome to the end of the Shah's reign; the Islamists ultimately gained control, but that was by no means determined early on. The revolution could have ended up a Marxist or a democratic one, had conditions been different. But it was really something to read about the impassioned debates, the way a classroom or party could just erupt, the long intense and abstract discussions of right, wrong, and strategy. What a unique human experience it is to join in a timely and huge and serious cause, to debate and struggle for leadership and direction and focus, and much of this is common to any revolution.

When I was in high school I read a ton of 60s counterculture literature, and I don't think I've thought about 'revolution' as a human experience rather than a historical process very much since then. Though I'm certainly no stranger to causes and activism, I also haven't partaken of any true revolutions. It's interesting to look back on the seriousness of the gender debates I got involved in while in college in the early 90s - one could sort of say there were gender revolutions, queer revolutions, but not on the calling-for-government-toppling scale of the Black Power movement or a democratic revolution. My mom was certainly involved in what was then called "Women's Liberation," and that had a lot of revolutionary feel about it, but I was a kid through most of the peak activity. The countercultural revolution was sort of something, but again, much more cultural than political. There are differences and similarities in these cultural revolutions vs. political/governmental ones.

I don't have anything of substance to say about revolution now, except how interesting it is to note the similarities in atmosphere from one revolution to another, and in some way to say there's part of that experience I envy, the part about a deeply felt commitment to ideas and finding common cause with a large number of others, and finding ways to lend your particular rhetorical or organizational or cooking skills or what have you to a much larger and decentralized event. Not everyone experiences this, and those who do have something interesting to say.

I guess my take is that there is always change, and activists always work to promote they change they want, and that can take the form of cultural revolution and create revolutionary rhetoric. But political revolution is a somewhat unique thing. It's not always called for and it's not always successful - probably not even mostly successful.

I suppose it's just the bearing out of the idea that, occasionally, very occasionally,

in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them...

I wonder...do you feel you've been part of any revolutions? Are you a revolutionary?