The far-reaching impacts of the Arab spring.

• Author: Ripert, Yohann
• Position: The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East

A Review of The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East

By Marc Lynch

(New York: Public Affairs, 2013), 288 pages.

Embedded in its very title, Marc Lynch's The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East delves into a question that has been left unanswered by commentators and critics alike: Was the Arab uprising one underlying movement organized under a grandiose ideal to give birth to a new Middle East, or was it a multitude of popular and unfinished revolutions that unfolded in different locations in sequential timing? Lynch's answer is that it was both: The Arab uprising was a continuous oscillation between the transnational and the local. Such a reading is not, in itself, new. Pan-Africanism, an example of a postcolonial vision that emerged in the wake of the independences of the 1960s, acted as a double bind between a return to local identities (yet against tribalism) and a hope for political collectivity (a new regionalism with root differences). (1) Incidentally, the sixties were another cornerstone era for the Middle East--if only for Egypt, strategically situated at the crossroads of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula--and Lynch's book offers the possibility to observe a move, both historical and geographical, from Pan-Africanism to Pan-Arabism.

We cannot understand what has been called the "Arab Spring" without a grasp of the past thirty years in the region, an uncompromising rooting in present national events, and a firm perception of international pressures from humanitarian interventions and American interests. (2) This is the geopolitical agenda Lynch sets forth to analyze. (3) Looking at the past to envision different alternatives for the future, he provides a list of historical protests intertwined with today's challenges. To understand the latter, he asks that we position ourselves within the transformation of what he terms the "Arab public sphere." This expression is not without problems of its own, such as who composes it and how it is represented. But if we follow Lynch through the hypothesis of the emergence of a new "Arab public sphere," then an alternative to rethink the Arab Spring as an early manifestation of a deeper, longer, and slower transformation comes forth. Put simply, it asks how to transform the political passion of the Arab Spring into more permanent political structures. (4)

Media and technology, from Al Jazcera to Twitter, have often been cited as instrumental...