The Slogans of the Egyptian Revolution, Sketch of a Nonsaid Epic?

During 2011, revolutionary slogans migrated from Tunisia to Bahrein. Those iconic formulas became thus the symbols of the collective fervor of the Arab Spring. The slogans play an immediate role of mobilization inside the demonstrations and, at a larger scale, during up-rising moments, but they seem to be also a major tool in the fictionalization of the events. They are the main crucible of the revolutionary narrative, which functions seem to be similar to the one of the epics and of the gest. It might seem strange to compare the laconic form of the slogans to the long narrative form of the epic poem, since the former can be likened more to proverbs, maxims and aphorism. The aim of this paper is to consider the following hypothesis : the “revolutionary” slogans have revived during the up-risings of January 2011 the great epic fictions, by sketching a revolutionary narrative to found or re-found nations in crisis.