The text is a re-edit of a talk given at the conference “Narrating the Arab Spring. New Questions, New Modes of Resistance and Activism and New Politics”, that took place at Cairo University from February 18th – 20th 2012, one year after the large scale street protests that led to the ousting of Hosni Mubarak, and a week after renewed protests against the ongoing violence and repression exerted on protesters by the military and police, most recently in the form of the state-condoned, maybe orchestrated, massacre of pro-revolutionary supporters of the Al-Ahly football team after a match in Port Said on February 1st. The talk was addressed to the conference’s audience, consisting of speakers and participants from different Egyptian and North African / Middle Eastern universities, and, to a lesser extent, from the Arab literature and Middle Eastern Studies departments of various European and North American universities, as well as a large number of local students from Cairo University.