The protests that emerged from the northern Sudanese city of ‘Atbara in December 2018 represented an outpouring of anger at a regime that had attacked the social fabric of the country as much as it had decimated its economy. It was perhaps for this reason that the slogan that came to characterize it—“tasqut bas!” (it should just fall!)—was not so much political (calling for a particular set of rights, reforms, or new modes of governance), as it was poetic, a raw and powerful expression of a desire for change, with exactly what that change would look like left in suspension.

That the protest movement came out of the railway town of ‘Atbara indexed the way that labor, a mode of belonging that transcends political, ethnic and religious divides, had a power to create a mass movement in Sudan in a way that traditional parties and identities were unable to muster. “Laborer” is an identity all shared—even if this movement, spearheaded by the Sudanese Professionals Association, emerged out of a particularly elite form thereof—and the disconnect between that labor and human flourishing had become obvious to all, regardless of persuasion.

Truncating the famous Arab Spring call of al-sha‘b yurid isqat al-nizam! (“The People want the fall of the regime!”) to the economical two-word slogan “tasqut bas!” (it should just fall!) protesters were engaging an apophatic politics, its solidity founded on a process of negation. “The people want the fall of the regime” was being cited, but without even “the people” to hold onto any longer, perhaps due to its implicit reference to the socialist and populist movements of Sudan’s past (al-haraka al-sha‘biyya, al-mu’atamar al-sha‘bi, etc.).  Though the professional umbrella model has precedent in the 1964 and 1985 popular uprisings,  it is important to point out that today’s movement has relied not at all on the political forces, figures, and frames of Sudan’s recent history: left, right, or center, Islamist, secularist, or otherwise. It was as if a clearing-of-ground was necessary before anything new could be built. As one protester commented, as quoted by the New York Times, “They led us to freedom but we don’t know anything about them.” In the apropos phrasing, then, of tasqut bas, not only alliances but even identity is intentionally left wide open, the future uncharted.