Semiology and the City: Meanings and Appropriations of Tahrir Square

Recent appropriations of Egypt’s Tahrir Square mirror those of the Egyptian flag. In 2011 the flag, already symbolizing national unity, was appropriated into a sign of unity against the military government. Protesters painted it on faces and marked allegiance to the revolt with it in other ways. Yet by 2013, the military leadership, taking advantage of this new symbol of revolt, re-appropriated the flag to fuel dissent against the elected Islamist government. Tahrir, Arabic for “liberty,” went through similar rebrandings. Initially called Midan Al Ismailliya, it originally was part of Ismail Pasha’s Parisian inspired downtown, but by 2011, it was physically little more than a roundabout. Yet a nexus for major streets, bridges and representations of state such as abutting government buildings and the National Museum, it became a setting for protest. Tahrir was thus briefly liberated from authorities’ projections, only to be re-appropriated by becoming a symbol for a revolution that never occurred and a platform for revolt against Islamists rejecting military rule. Drawing on Roland Barthes’ Mythologies, which suggests that we register cultural images through circulated background stories, we consider the changing semiology of Tahrir, how authorities have assimilated otherness through it, affirming the status quo through the pretense of revolution and raising questions about prospects for genuine rebellion.