‘Isn’t Everything an Afterlife?’
Yasmine Kherfi and Sigrid Corry in Conversation with Dr Atef Said on Ethnographic Methods, Temporality and History.

What does it mean to write, witness, and take part in history in the making? We speak to Dr Atef Said, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois, to explore questions of methodology, as well as its personal, scholarly and political implications. His book, Revolution Squared: Tahrir, Political Possibilities, and Counterrevolution in Egypt (Duke University Press, 2024), traces the story of the Egyptian revolution of 2011, documenting the spaces and histories through which it unfolded. Through ethnographic fieldwork in Tahrir Square, its surrounding streets and digital platforms, Said examines the dynamic character of revolution—one that is both indeterminate and shaped by historical contingencies.
What does ethnography reveal, and what might it obscure? What is at stake in the web of social, political, and institutional relationships in which it is conducted? Can qualitative and ethnographic methods adequately account for the social ruptures and upheavals that shape our political present? These questions sparked a series of exchanges over the past year with Dr Atef Said, following his talk ‘Researching Revolution: A Discussion on Positionality and Historical Ethnography,’ which took place at the LSE Department of Sociology on 7 March 2024.
Anchoring our discussion in Said’s work, we reflect on shared methodological and ethical challenges of conducting ethnographic research amidst profound social change. Drawing on key themes from Said’s book—exploring agency and political subjectivity, the affective dimensions of revolutionary enchantment and defeat, and the ‘afterlives’ of historical moments—we consider how to critically analyze, periodize, and represent an unfolding present. At the same time, we are interested in the translatability of these ways of thinking, along with their tools and methods, into other contexts—considering how they might inform research across different temporal and geographic landscapes.
Yasmine Kherfi (YK) & Sigrid Corry (SC): The ethnographic approach is central to your book. How does studying the revolution ‘from below’ challenge existing understandings of revolution—both in and beyond the region?
Atef Said (AS): In my work, I insist that revolutionaries are ordinary actors and seek to capture the unpredictability of revolution. Revolutions need organizations and leaders, but focusing solely on them obscures the revolution on the ground. My ethnographic method allows me to focus on ordinary revolutionary actors and ‘lived contingency’—how they experience change. It aims to show how they navigate indeterminacies from beginning to end. My questions center on how we live revolution, through cycles of hope and despair. Through this, I want to recognize and honour people’s agency. Because even if they have not always articulated their ideas, agency is present.
Much scholarship has indeed flattened those who took part in the Arab Spring into a homogeneous mass, which erases their agency. So, I challenge normative categories of conventional ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ actors, instead emphasizing an ‘unleashing’ that occurs. For instance, when I say in my book that revolutionaries are ‘blinded by love,’ I mean that revolution itself carries a kind of blind love—a siren call. But this enchantment does not negate agency. The revolutionary subject is aware, takes risks, and chooses to act. These are the components of lived contingency. Simply put, the notion of lived contingency underscores two key ideas: revolution is not teleological, and ordinary actors matter. Ethnography helps us see this.
YK & SC: This immersion in lived experience through ethnography might be seen to confine us to the study of the present. So, what about history? How can this be accounted for in ethnographic analysis?
AS: This tension has been a key methodological consideration during the course of my work. My main training was in historical sociology, but when I started a PhD in Sociology at the University of Michigan, I found myself doing an ethnography of revolution. During my PhD, I came across the umbrella term ‘historical ethnography.’ There is no consensus on what it means, but it offers a way for sociologists to account for history and for ethnographic methods to be attuned to both past and present—to bring the field and the archives into conversation with each other. For me, it doesn’t matter too much which one you start with. Historians often don’t like it when we invoke the word ‘history’ without engaging with historiography.
The way I see it, we should be attentive to history in all our research. But what does this mean? History is not just a background. It shaped what happened in the uprisings and is also critical to the exodus story—for those who left and carried the experience of the revolutions with them. It’s the trigger. It’s the cause. It’s the pain. It’s the baggage people carry on their backs. Of course, there is a new reality in the diaspora, but it’s the old reality they bring with them.
Indeed, this methodological question is also a disciplinary question; I’m immersed in historical sociology, but I’m flirting with anthropology. I try to bring history and anthropology together—and I cite anthropologists without much concern for disciplinary labels. A synchronic analysis limits our understanding. So, how do we avoid presentism? There is no one answer, but we must remain attentive to the past, and to the important events that inform ongoing events. Ethnographers don’t have to be archival like historians and historiographers, but we must do some justice to history. Thinking historically about Tahrir, too, is what I tried to do in my book. For example, there were the British barracks near Tahrir (which was formerly called Ismailia Square). That’s why protesters go downtown to this area. They’d go to shut down city halls. Similarly, in Montreal, in response to the war on Gaza, protesters went to the Canada TV Radio national to point to their complicity. There is a history of things like that.
YK & SC: How do we go about being attentive to these histories? The question of historical processes, their ‘afterlives’, and how we understand them is important here. One wonders, isn’t everything an ‘afterlife’ of something else in a way? Where do we draw the temporal lines around our object of study? We’ve been reflecting on the stakes of these choices, as such boundaries can be somewhat arbitrary though empirically justified.
AS: There are simple answers to this, relating to the course of revolution. In canonical research, we talk about revolution’s origins (causes or triggers) as the beginning—revolutionary outcome as the end—and the revolutionary trajectory as everything in between. However, defining each is debatable in the literature. In the Egyptian case, scholars and actors disagree on when the revolution started. Perhaps the killing of Khaled Said by the police in 2010 did not ‘make’ the revolution but was one of several triggers. Maybe the events in Tunisia were the spark. Yet, longer historical processes were also at play. We must ask: what were the preconditions? Was it the neoliberal structuring of the state, security, and economy? These deeper questions set the tone and are analytically more difficult. This is just one example of how hard it is to pinpoint a beginning.

YK & SC: Right. An attunement to these preconditions is important to account for such layered, structural shifts.
AS: Yes, and defining the end is even harder than the beginning. In the Egyptian case, one could argue the coup marked a decisive counterrevolutionary victory. When Egyptian activists began calling it a ‘coup,’ many told me it was the first time they considered the revolution defeated. I also asked when they first sensed momentum was vanishing, even before the coup.
Determining where to draw the boundary between beginning and end requires considering both scholarly and activist perspectives. These questions are not just academic; they are deeply political. Regimes, think tanks, and counterrevolutionary analysts seek to define and confine revolutions. Scholars need parameters too, but we must also be aware of how these issues are politicized, especially by dominant actors. Critical reflection is essential, particularly regarding how regimes and dominant narratives frame events. And the difficulties extend beyond defining just the beginning and end. Chronology and turning points are also contested, and these temporal markers matter in identifying and understanding contentious events.
Understanding how events are lived takes us beyond these temporal categorizations. It allows us to recognize that revolts are big contentious events that contain both possibilities and limitations. Revolutionaries and social movement organizers recognize revolutions as entangled with their struggle—with attention to their fluctuating momentum. Revolutionary intensity is indeed when possibilities feel limitless; the sense of ‘we can do this!’—which is what scares those in power. Momentum is key. It’s not just about frequent protests but also about intensity and critical mass-moments when people had the upper hand, occupying squares, paralyzing regimes, and creating liberated zones.
YK & SC: So, as much as it is about understanding and engaging with temporality, it seems you are inviting scholars to construct a more textured and affective account of how these events are lived—where the research process is about how we piece these experiences together. Though, returning briefly to questions of periodization—what do you make of terms like ‘aftermath’ and their implications for how we frame historical processes?
AS: The notion of aftermath is interesting but problematic due to its openness. The Arab Spring uprisings and the continued relevance of Iran’s 1979 revolution in today’s ‘women, life, freedom’ protests highlight how revolutionary memory persists. Some call this the ‘aftermath,’ but I prefer ‘afterlife’ over ‘post,’ as the latter is merely chronological. Ultimately, scholars must justify their choices. One way to define an aftermath is to ask: where is the momentum? If momentum is gone, we are in the aftermath. In my work, I avoided declaring the ‘death’ of revolutionary momentum. It may decompose, but it is not dead.
YK & SC: Yes, many rushed to declare the revolution dead. How did your ethnographic method help you complicate the linear narratives and timelines that dominate understandings of the Arab Spring?
AS: One actor told me that the “revolution is defeated, but I’m not!”. We can think of defeat in stages, degrees, or as a subjective experience. It is difficult to make sense of the condition of defeat, because of course there’s no final defeat. And if we believe in a final defeat, simply put, we believe in the end of history. I don’t believe in the end of history, as Fukuyama has it, because we cannot give up hope. Some scholars don’t explicitly declare the end of history, but implicitly they say it all the time, in their framings of history and the present. I’m not saying that I have hope all the time. But, as a human, as somebody who lived through revolution and defeat, I witnessed history being made.
The late Hani Shukrallah, a brilliant comrade and Marxist journalist wrote on the anniversary of the coup:
“…Popular revolutions fail a lot more than they succeed, but they remain the main engine of human history. The important thing is learning. I am on the verge of seventy years of age. I know that I will not live a successful revolution, but I am confident that it will come, not in Egypt alone, but in the whole world. I am not saying this as the result of a belief in some historical determinism but based on a deep conviction that the inherent desire of the human soul for freedom and justice is impossible to erase. The victory is ours!”
Hani here reminds us that in addition to thinking of the necessity of revolutions, we also should continue to believe in people’s power. People power is real, and hope is real. There are always cycles of progress and backlashes, revolutions and counterrevolutions. These cycles are not mechanical—like waves, they fluctuate. So, we need nuanced understandings to deal with defeat and to attend to the degrees, the intensity, subjectivity, power, and agency involved—and most importantly, to acknowledge that there is no final defeat. In this sense, I’m not writing a defeatist book, but instead I want to bring a set of nuanced answers. Problematizing the defeat is one thing, but being defeated is another.

YS & SC: This point you raise about cycles of revolution, and the need for nuanced understandings of power, agency, and defeat, highlights the complexity of how these events are processed and remembered. In this regard, ethnography helps open our view to how phenomena are made sense of. Memory is a key ‘archive’ and site of inquiry here. Did drawing on it help you find answers to the questions you were asking?
AS: For Yasmine, I know memory is very relevant to what you’re doing. In my book, I thought about the revolution as ongoing—not something that people are simply remembering, implying that it’s over. Remembering is a more historical term. The field of collective memory emerged from the discipline of history. It’s important to attend to what that memory means. It doesn’t necessarily point us to something being over, but instead to an ongoing process of remembering. I want to raise the question about periodizing and moments of exception, because for the diasporas, who experienced the revolutions [of the Arab Spring]; it’s about being transplanted in a new society, what they carry with them and how they bring it to their current contexts. How are they bringing something from the Arab Spring, the uprising or the defeat with them? What do we relive elsewhere? We are still enmeshed with our revolutions.
So, we discover something about the electricity of hope and despair or how to live through defeat or the ongoing act of remembering. People are still making sense of the events they lived through. The revolution happened in the past, ten years ago, but it is still informing how they live. So, we must come up with a term or idea of how. What do you bring from the past, from the revolution, and then the exodus? The revolution, the cost, the trauma, the memory of it continues. There’s lots of temporal ‘can of worms’ here. Some anchors are necessary. I anchored my book in Tahrir Square, but I went back and forth in time and space. Challenging temporal boundaries or ‘methodological nationalism’—a ‘bordered’ framework of analysis—is part of the fun of doing research.
YK & SC: Yes! But this ‘ongoingness’ can also be a challenge, politically. It raises questions about the politics of writing and scholarship – and their relationship to political struggle. We’ve been reflecting on the tension between the slow pace of academic scholarship, and the crises of the present moment… This brings us to entrenched and naturalized divides between ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’; ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ and the ‘activist’ and ‘academic’ that often shape academic knowledge production. The idea of ‘activist-scholarship’ troubles these boundaries though, raising questions about the multiple and often fraught relationships embedded in our positionalities. It also brings deeper ethical questions into view, prompting us to consider why we write and what relationship we have to the struggles we write about. How do you navigate such tensions in your work? How do you balance or negotiate the role of an activist or an organizer with that of a scholar?
AS: I moved from Egypt to the US, and I found myself alienated. I had to navigate a great dichotomy in this notion of the activist-scholar. I feel I am privileged now as someone thinking about revolution. I had leverage and resources to write a book and to get tenure. So many incredible theorists and scholars and revolutionaries didn’t have this luxury. I learn from movements. I respect them, but I’m aware of the power dynamic that exists between me and the movement. I don’t fetishize the movement, instead I try to remain accountable to it. I do not pretend to know more than my interlocutors, instead I’m guided by people and revolutionary actors first and foremost. I also want to break down divisions: we are not ‘native informants’—we’re empowered. I’m a revolutionary, a scholar and a theorist.
It is often true that academics often reproduce what ordinary people say, but the question is, do you take advantage of movements or are you driven by a deeper commitment? I’m not speaking on behalf of the movement, but I must reckon with a sense of guilt or shame. So, I seek their advice. I have tons of questions to ask trusted Egyptian comrades, friends, Arab scholars, and leaders. I am aware that I didn’t always do justice to the movement, but I kept asking questions until I found some coherence. In navigating the different hats, my parameter is my gut, my heart and intellectual inquiry. So, my advice for students is follow your heart, which is not the most practical piece of advice, but I found my heart is what has kept me sane. Of course, such knowledge production is only part of a wider project of liberation. But knowledge and movements are intertwined. One must learn to ‘revisit’ the movement all the time. The book was, in some sense, a liberation for me from my guilt and pain left over from the revolution. It’s true that one will never be completely satisfied with their own research, and that many questions will remain unanswered. The real question is how best to do justice to the story and people you are writing with and about.
About the Author
Yasmine Kherfi is a writer and editor. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Sigrid Corry is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Sociology at London School of Economics.
Atef Shahat Said is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is the author of Revolution Squared: Tahrir, Political Possibilities, and Counterrevolution in Egypt (Duke University Press, 2024).
Citation: Yasmine Kherfi; Sigrid Corry; Atef Shahat Said, ‘Isn’t Everything an Afterlife?’, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 05.06.2025, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/59548
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Forum Transregionale Studien (June 5, 2025). ‘Isn’t Everything an Afterlife?’. TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research. Retrieved June 20, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/1428t