Thirteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Walter Benjamin once said that if the enemy wins, even the dead shall not be safe. Even the memories of that erasure gets reflected in even the leftwing writings of a later time. Amidst the chronicles of modern revolutions, and, of modern Middle Eastern revolutions, from Iran in 1905-6 Turkey in 1908 to Afghanistan in 1978, the revolutions of what can broadly be termed ‘Yemeni’, that is North Yemen, South Yemen, occupy a normally marginal when not almost wholly unrecognised place. The same applies to the revolutions in Yemen of the period 1962-1994: state formation, the relation of state to society in its class, clan and tribal forms:; the role of religion in state and society; the position of women; the economic context of social activity and the economic base of the state; the character of education; the very definition of the nation. All of these issues remain on the agenda of the twenty-first century in contemporary Yemen. My paper is thus an attempt to understand the roots of the current uprising(s) in Yemen, initiated against the former dictator Saleh in the unfulfilled promise of the old revolutions in both the former North (1962) and South (1967) of the country, on the centennial of the Bolshevik Revolution, and the 50th anniversary of the Marxist revolution in south Yemen. It also focuses on revolutionary upheaval and state consolidation in revolutionary Yemen (1962-1994) and on analytic issues following from these events and from a retrospective analysis of the events of these years.