Taking revolution seriously: a keywords approach to Middle East studies

This chapter examines the term revolution as an Arabic keyword. Inspired by Raymond Williams's work on keywords, it calls for delinking the word revolution from a zero-sum focus on political outcome and connecting it with revolutionary history in the Middle East and North Africa. The chapter offers a temporal typology of the use of the keyword in Arab contexts to distinguish between its invocation in authoritarian communication (revolution as suspended in time); as a mobilization tactic (revolution as a future goal); and as a past experience (revolution as political reflection). The chapter concludes with situating this keywords approach to revolution within Edward Said's theory of Orientalism that has long called for taking seriously revolutionary politics in the region.