The Prefigurative Politics of Tahrir Square–An Alternative Perspective on the 2011 Revolutions Mathijs van de Sande Published online: 14 March 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract Only one year after the global wave of protest movements and revolts— starting with the ‘Arab Spring’, then, subsequently, the Indignados movement and Occupy- our appreciation of such movements turned sour. The aim of this contri- bution is to question the predominantly sceptical and defeatist discourse on these movements. One element central to many defeatist discourses on the 2011 move- ments, is the way in which a lack of demonstrable ‘outcomes’ or ‘successes’ is retrospectively ascribed to them. Therefore, an alternative approach should be formulated, which would allow us to recognise the significant or valuable aspects of these movements and their practices, without downplaying them as ‘unsuccessful’ or ‘failures’ altogether. Pierre Rosanvallon’s concept of ‘counter-democracy’ and Hardt and Negri’s perspective of a ‘Multitude’ will be evaluated as alternative approaches to current political movements. Although they are meritorious, both perspectives do not go far enough and need further articulation. The notion of ‘prefiguration’, originally derived from contemporary anarchist discourse, could be beneficial to this endeavour. After defining and deepening this concept from an anarchist perspective, it will be applied to one particular context: the occupation of Tahrir Square in Cairo, during the 2011 revolution in Egypt. As will be concluded, in its application this concept of ‘prefiguration’ could teach us more about the recent wave of protest movements in general, and could help us to formulate a different approach to such movements. Keywords Prefiguration Á 2011 revolutions Á Arab Spring Á Anarchism Á Means/ends Á Tahrir Square M. van de Sande (&) Research in Political Philosophy Leuven (RIPPLE), Centre for Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy, Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, Kardinaal Mercierplein 2, box 3200, BE-3000 Leuven, Belgium e-mail: mathijs.vandesande@hiw.kuleuven.be 123 Res Publica (2013) 19:223–239 DOI 10.1007/s11158-013-9215-9