The bureaucratic revolution: The Syrian opposition’s civil registry system

Adding to the so-called fourth wave in literature on revolutions, this paper argues that the Syrian revolution should not only be seen through its violent iconography or as a lost cause but rather as an ongoing, bureaucratic process. It does this through an examination of bureaucratic revolutionaries – lawyers and judges, administrators and civil servants – who established and implemented the Syrian opposition’s civil registry system. Using Veena Das’ idea of magic and the Arabic Islamic concept of al-ghayb, the article presents a new way for grasping the grey zone revolutions inhabit – between legibility and illegibility, legal and illegal, the state and a state in waiting.