Presenters: Zeph Schafer, Mark Plumlee and Maia Salomon
Mentor: Vera Keller
PM Session Oral Presentation
Panel Name: A5 Perceptions of Cultural Change
Location: Oak Room
Time: 1:15pm – 2:15pm
This study emerged from an honors college seminar examining how public spheres began to form throughout the premodern era. Our research was informed by works such as German sociologist, Jurgen Habermas. Habermas proposed the idea of representative publicity to discuss the relationship between symbolic individuals and an emerging publicity. Informed by Habermas’s theories, we discussed the symbolic personhood of Wael Ghonim on the Egyptian revolution. As a symbolic figure who gave a face to the revolution, his release from jail played a pivotal role in the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. We looked at news articles and videos of the Revolution, and contrasted Ghonim’s role as a symbolic figure with the role of pre-modern monarchs in public displays of their body. Ghonim’s role in the revolution showed the role of a physical body in modern democratic revolutions.