The Powerful Role of Humor in the Egyptian Revolution 2011

Stripping the Boss

The Powerful Role of Humor in the Egyptian Revolution 2011

Mohamed M. Helmy and Sabine Frerichs

The final publication is available at Springer via

Please cite as: Helmy, Mohamed M.; Frerichs, Sabine, 2013: Stripping the Boss: The Powerful Role of Humor in the Egyptian Revolution 2011.In: Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, Vol. 47, No. 4, pp. 450-481published in Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science; ‘Online First’ version at:

AbstractThe Egyptian Revolution 2011 has shaken the Arab world and stirred up Middle-East politics. Moreover, it caused a rush in political science and the neighboring disciplines, which had not predicted an event like this and now have troubles explaining it. While many things can be learned from the popular uprising, and from the limitations of previous scholarship, our focus will be on a moral resource, which has occasionally been noticed, but not sufficiently explored: the role of humor in keeping up the spirit of the Revolution. For eighteen days, protestors persevered at Liberation Square in Central Cairo, the epicenter of resistance; at times a few dozens, at times hundreds of thousands. What they did was to fight the terror of the regime, which reached absurd peaks during those days, with humor – successfully. We offer a social-functionalist account of the uprising, which includes behavioral as well as cultural levels of analysis, and illuminates how humorous means helped to achieve deadly serious goals. By reconstructing how Egyptians laughed themselves into democracy, we outline a social psychology of resistance, which uses humor both as a sword and a shield.

KeywordsEgypt, 2011 Revolution, Political humor, Stress, Culture, Social psychology

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Table of Contents

The Spirit of the Egyptian Revolution

Setting the Stage: About the Social Function of Humor

Between Social, Cultural, and Political Psychology

Basic Tenets and Limits of Humor Research

Reconstructing the Conditions: The Momentum of Humor

A Short History of Egyptian Political Humor

Era Mubarak: Criticism with Gallows Humor

Eve of the Revolution: Contempt for the Regime

Tipping the Balance of Power: The Exceptional Humor of the Square

Countdown in the Square: Ridicule and Solidarity

The Humor of the Square: A Social-Functionalist Account

Illustrating the Consequences: Humor as a Means of Opposition

The Day of Departure: Triumph and Relief

Transition Period: Fifth Branch of Power

What Now? Honk if you Hate the Brotherhood!

Sword and Shield: The Humor of the Square

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No, no, please stay Mubarak, we are only joking.

(Signboard at Liberation Square)

The Spirit of the Egyptian Revolution

In 1945, George Orwell, commenting on Punch, Britain’s oldest satirical magazine, wrote,“[e]very joke is a tiny revolution”.Humor is at its best,when it is“upset[ting] the established order” (ibid.).Was it only in the figurative that Orwell wrote: “Whatever […] brings down the mighty from their seats, preferably with a bump, is funny” (ibid.)?In this paper, we addressthe humorous spirit and earnest reality of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, which not onlyunsettledthe established order, but alsoremovedHosni Mubarak from his presidential seat.

Ridicule and laughter played a prominent role in the Egyptian Revolution. The BBC and Al-Jazeera had reportson the issue, many newspaper articles and several papers have been written around the subject (Choudhary, Hendrix, Lee, Palsetia, & Liao, 2012; Hafez, 2012; Mersal, 2011; Zack, 2012). One study reports that almost one-fifth of all re-tweeted tweets to do with the Revolution were humor-related as a category second only to news-related tweets (Choudharyet al., 2012). For reasons we will explore, the Egyptian Revolution made terrific use of wit and jest to achieve its goal. It is as if a vast majority of the largest Arab nation decided to laugh themselves into democracy.

The Egyptian Revolution was characterized by widespread demonstration and protest, and was by no means circumscribed to Midan el Tahrir Liberation Square in Central Cairo. It was not the Square alone that brought down Mubarak. However, for ease of expression, we will refer to the people of Egypt’s Revolution as ‘the Square’. In this study, we will explore the use of humor by the Square and illustrate its twofold function as a sword and a shield.

We will arguethat the social functions and political effects of the humor of the Square cannot be understood without unpacking the apparent paradox between playfulness and seriousness. As our study demonstrates, humor is not just about diversion from given realities, but may become an effective resource in power battles. To keep a good sense of humor has indeed been essential, if not existential, for the Egyptians: in the long years of dictatorship, during the popular uprising in 2011, and in the ensuing transition period under military rule. While there has always been humor, its quality has changed over time, reflecting changes in the living conditions and the political culture (Boskin, 1997), which has for long been a culture of repression.

Our study covers instances of humor before, during, and after the 2011 Revolution. All three phasesare marked by fundamental tensions and ambiguities, which the Egyptian people experienced, from a behavioral and cultural point of view, as ‘stress’ or ‘crisis’. Humorous communication indicates for each of these periods what was at stake in terms of the existential choices faced by the people.In the long years of Mubarak’s dictatorship, the people experienced worsening living conditions and had very little hope for change. Hence, before the Revolution, the only alternative seemed to be between self-negating resignation and passive resistance, or rather, endurance.

While this phase was marked by ‘gallows’ humor, through which the peoplecoped with their own weakness, the humor of the Squarewas clearly distinct. It was not a sign of weakness but of strength, as it broke taboo to ridicule the leader – in public. The Square constituted an ultimatum which could have had fatal consequences for anybody involved. Nevertheless,it became a festival of resistance, with people dancing, chanting and laughing in a marvelous spirit of communityandpolitical determination.After the Revolution, we observe a ‘normalization’ of humor, which draws on the Egyptians’ renewed belief in self-efficacy, and an institutionalization of political satire, which had long been suppressed and whose comical spearheads are still subject to harassment. Under heightened uncertainty, the critical choice was – and still is between a return to the alleged stability of the old regime (or areproduction thereof), and real political change.

Our study is explorative in that it contributes to theory-buildingabout the behavioral foundations and cultural significance of humor; it isparticipatory in that it builds on experiences which the authors share with the main subjects of this study: the people of the Square; and it isreconstructive in that we aim to trace the development of humor in Egypt before, during, and after the 2011 Revolution.Accordingly,our research belongs to the hypothesis-generating and not the hypothesis-testing kind.Theresearch process started with an insight, or idea, which we sought to probe and illustrate by documented material (see references), which adds to our personal experience, until a point of saturation was reached which we deemed sufficient to present the final ‘hypothesis’: our analysis of the social and political function of humor in the Squareand beyond.

The following studyis divided into four parts.In Part I, we locate our study in the field of social, cultural and political psychology, which provides atheoretical and methodological framwork, and relate it to the main directions in humor research, which analyzethe social function of humor but still underestimate its gravity.In Parts II to IV, we reconstruct the development of political humor in Egypt from the times of Nasser until today, putting emphasis on its changing characteristics before, during, and after the 2011 Revolution. Part II focuses on different manifestations of humor under the long decades of dictatorship and illustrates how a particularly aggressiveform of humor gathered momentum in the run-up tothe 2011 Revolution. Part III explores the unique quality of humor in the Square, without which, we hope we will show, the Revolution would not have succeeded. This humor grew from a cultural tradition which was distinctively Egyptian, but which acquired a novel dimension during the Revolution. In Part IV, we give evidence for the consolidation of humoras a means of opposition inpost-revolutionary Egypt. In the precarious democracy of today, which is threatened by new forms of dictatorship under the Muslim Brotherhood, relentless mockery fulfills a key function of democratic control.

Setting the Stage: About the Social Function of Humor

Between Social, Cultural, and Political Psychology

For the theoretical framing of our study we can draw on social, cultural and political psychology, that is, an “inter-discipline” (Eagly & Fine, 2010, p. 313) or interdisciplinary field, which links psychology to sociology, anthropology, and political science.

As to social psychology, the field is presently characterized by a dwindling interest in “macrosocial structures and processes” (House, 2008, p. 241). On the psychological side, we can observe a trend towards the biological (micro-) foundations of the social mind. On the sociological side, its (macro-) contextualization is increasingly couched in culturalist and constructivist terms. Both developments further a “microsocial view of social psychology”, which emphasizes individualist bottom-up accounts at the expense of collectivist top-down accounts (Gergen, 2008, p. 336). In our study, we do start from a collectivity, and notably take for granted that the psychological properties of the Square are shaped by its power struggle with the regime. However, since our study is based on text, namely humorous discourse, cultural-cognitive approaches are equally relevant. Finally, we also consider the micro-foundations of humor-related behavior.

More reductionist accounts of the human mind are preoccupied with the universals of human behavior and tend to neglect its cultural malleability. In order to understand the “social contingency and situatedness of human action”, a more discursive approach seems in place (Abell & Walton, 2010, p. 688). This concerns not only the choice of methodology – in this case, a qualitative instead of a quantitative approach – but also the style of writing. While it may seem more ‘scientific’ to talk in the abstract about psychological mechanisms, properties, or processes, the situatedness of human action can better be captured by writing about people, about what they feel and how they act (Billig, 2011). Our account of the humor of the Square is both situated and populated, and by drawing on our own experiences, both mediated and immediate, it includes ourselves as witnesses and participants. But even though the setting of this case-study is unique, it offers more general insights about the social function of humor in Egypt and beyond.

The tension between universality and plurality is central in cultural psychology, which is concerned with “why so many generalizations about the psychological functioning of one particular population […] have not traveled well across sociocultural, historical, and institutional fault lines” (Shweder & Sullivan, 1993, p. 498). In contrast to cross-cultural psychology, which is dominated by quantitative-comparative research, cultural psychology favors a qualitative methodology which allows for a close study of single cases (Ratner, 2008). Nonetheless, both perspectives may converge in the view that “culture-specific aspects of psychological constructs” are precisely this: “indigenous” specifications of more “general psychological processes” (Ferreira, Fischer, Barreiros Porto, Pilati, & Milfont, 2012, p. 334). Thus understood, “the study of cultural psychology does not necessitate the blanket denial of universals” (Shweder & Sullivan, 1993, p. 506).

Methodologically speaking, cultural psychology is less about deduction and hypothesis-testing than about induction, or “abstracting generalization” from “single-case systemic analyses” (Valsiner, 2009, p. 19). Consequently, its idiographic focus does not exclude a ‘social-functionalist’ framework of analysis provided that the latter is enriched by a ‘cultural level of analysis’ (Keltner & Haidt, 1999). In general terms, social functionalism claims that given forms of behavior are functional for individuals and society in that they solve certain problems (of survival, stability etc.). With regard to cultural idiosyncrasies, a “milder functionalism” seems in place, which explores how “cultural facts and practices [...] may play self-regulating or self-maintaining roles within larger systems, without assuming that every cultural practice has a conservative or stabilising effect” (ibid., 1999, p.507). A proper understanding of the cultural dimension of functional behavior relies, nonetheless, on interpretive approaches, or what is referred to as ‘thick description’ (Geertz, 1973).

If culture is not taken as given, as in ‘essentialist’ approaches, but understood as always ‘in the making’, the analytical emphasis shifts from ‘product’ to ‘process’, and from static to dynamic perspectives (Valsiner, 2001; Valsineret al., 2009). Our focus is a transformation of Egypt’s political culture, which took place before our very eyes but is, even with hindsight, difficult to explain and reconstruct in all details. However, even though this study cannot fully retrace the process which triggered the ‘laughing revolution’ (Salem, 2012), our diachronic perspective allows capturing the actual change in culturally meaningful ways. By drawing on different ‘ideal types’ of Egyptian political humor which proved significant at different points in time (Weber, 2004; Gerhardt 2004; Przyborski & Slunecko, 2009, p. 163), we may document the emergence of something ‘new’ which is, at the same time, recognized as genuinely Egyptian. The humor of the Square thus exemplifies the adaptation and reinvention of deeply ingrained cultural practices.

Our material, which we collected from primary and secondary sources – guided by our own experience and the wonderment it entailed is political humor. From the point of view of political psychology, political humor can be understood as a form of political behavior, which is defined as “actions by individuals and groups related to collective outcome generation in the public sphere”, and notably to be examined “in a psychological light” (Theodoridis & Nelson, 2012, p. 29). Moreover, political psychology is ‘political’ also in the sense that it is interested in exploring the conditions not only of social stability but also of social change. In this regard, our study forms part of a ‘psychology of social change’, in which humor can be conceived as a catalyst of collective mobilization and action (Subašic, Reynolds, Reicher, & Klandermans, 2012). Political jokes and satire give ‘voice’ to the people and may even allow them to rewrite their history (Hammack & Pilecki, 2012, p. 97). In the Square, the epicenter of the popular uprising and a public space par excellence(Di Masso, 2012), the Egyptians rejected the sociopolitical order they had been raised with, repulsed the oppressive forces that had been inscribed in their minds, and claimed authorship for a new social contract (Moghaddam, 2008).

Adopting a social-functionalist framework of analysis, we are interested in the cultural and political context of humor as well as in its physiological and psychological underpinnings. In this regard, our study aims to ‘combine social and biological approaches to political behavior’ (McDermott, 2011), or ‘biological and cultural epistemologies’ (Haste, 2012). The question of how “large-scale social behavior” can be accounted for “by studying social cognition in individual subjects” (Adolphs, 2003, p. 176)is not resolved by isolating individuals and exposing them to selected social stimuli, as it is often done in experimental settings, but by conceiving them as active participants in real-world discourses, which is, in this case, the ‘folklore’ of political humor (Shehata, 1992).

Basic Tenets and Limits of Humor Research

Humor is in our genes; it belongs to our individual repertoire (Wrench & McCroskey, 2001). Humor is an inherently social phenomenon; it “lies at the heart of social life” (Billig, 2005, p. 236). Laughter is understood by everyone, it is truly cross-cultural (Sauter, Eisner, Ekman, & Scott, 2010). However, often enough our reasons to laugh are not self-evident but context-dependent; and we need to explain ourselves to outsiders (Davies, 1990). In this study, we will contextualize and explain the humor of the Square. We will look at how humor served to inform and prepare the individual, and how it could have changed group interactions and the collective motivation of the Square; how humor grew from and consolidated a shared identity, and how it influenced the experience of the Square. This approach cuts across the different physical, psychological, and social levels of functional analysis, which “all […] contribute to the understanding of humor” (Stephenson, 1951, p. 569).

Contemporary humor research clusters around three theories that put different emphases on the emotional, cognitive, and social functions of humor. According to relief theory, humor provides relief from stress, a release of nervous energy with measurable physiological consequences (Meyer, 2000; Wilkins & Eisenbraim, 2009). Its emphasis is on emotions. In contrast, incongruity theory highlights cognition (Berger, 1976). In this perspective, humor arises from surprising characteristics or absurdities which violate common sense, or taken-for-granted moral and social norms (Meyer, 2000). The third approach, superiority theory, represents a more sociological point of view. Accordingly, people laugh at those whom they perceive as ignorant or deficient, thus sending “an explicit message of superiority” (ibid., 2000, p. 314). In this perspective, humor may act both as a social corrective (Davies, 2009), and as a means to reinforce group unity (Wilkins & Eisenbraim, 2009). All these theories play a role in explaining the humor of the Square. However, in order to understand its specific quality and even necessity, we have to elaborate on what distinguishes the Square from most other sites of humor: the fact that it was more about life and death than about having a good laugh.

The classical opinion of psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, and even novelists seems to be that “[w]e feel the comic only in playful situations, not in those we take seriously” (Holland, 1982, p. 30). This is illustrated with John Updike’s dictum that “[l]aughter […] can be construed as a signal of danger past or dismissed […] within an arena, […] where the customary threats of life have been suspended” (cited as in ibid., pp. 30-31). George Orwell (1945) thought that a thing is only funny when it is not “actually offensive or frightening” and thus qualified the ‘revolutionary’ potential of jokes. More explicitly, it has been claimed that humor does not change the world but accepts it as it is, whereas real revolutionaries were lacking humor (Speier, 1998, p. 1358). The paradox that ‘liberating humor’ can only be enacted in narrow confines has also been expressed as follows: “liberation […] comes to us as we experience the singular delight of beholding chaos that is playful and make-believe in a world that is serious and coercive”, when we can be sure that “no penalty is exacted from us” (Knox, 1951, p. 541). Along similar lines, it has been claimed that “[t]he social context of humor is one of play” which allows people “feeling relaxed and uninhibited […] to have fun and derive emotional pleasure from nonserious incongruities” (Martin, 2007, pp. 5-6 and 15).