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Creative Expression in Egypt Ten Years After

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2020

Darci Sprengel
Darci Sprengel*
Affiliation:
Junior Research Fellow in Music, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Type
Roundtable
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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , August 2020 , pp. 489 - 492
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Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 Anthropologist Samuli Schielke, for instance, considered his work both anthropological analysis and revolutionary propaganda directed mainly at Western readers, stating that “my account of the Egyptian revolution is an extremely partisan one, and I would consider it a failure if it were otherwise”; “Writing Anthropology of and for the Revolution,” Fieldsights, 16 May 2013, https://culanth.org/fieldsights/writing-anthropology-of-and-for-the-revolution. See also Mehrez, Samia, Translating Egypt's Revolution: The Language of Tahrir (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Armbrust, Walter, Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), 8Google Scholar.

2 Matthies-Boon, Vivienne, “Shattered Worlds: Political Trauma Amongst Young Activists in Post-Revolutionary Egypt,” Journal of North African Studies 22, no. 4 (2017): 620–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Malmström, Maria Frederika, The Streets are Talking to Me: Affective Fragments in Sisi's Egypt (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Armbrust, Martyrs and Tricksters, 222–38.

3 Anonymous, “Observations on the Egyptian Independent Music Scene and Political Dynamics in a Post-Revolutionary Context,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 52, no. 3 (2020): 540–544Google Scholar; Yousri, Bassem, “I Am Serious!” International Journal of Middle East Studies 52, no. 3 (2020): 516–525Google Scholar; Sprengel, Darci, “Neoliberal Expansion and Aesthetic Innovation: The Egyptian Independent Music Scene Ten Years After,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 52, no. 3 (2020): 545–551Google Scholar.

4 For artists grappling with interpretation of works see, for instance, Winegar, Jessica, Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; and el-Desouky, Ayman, The Intellectual and the People in Egyptian Literature and Culture: Amara and the 2011 Revolution (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the difficulties of writing and researching in a highly polarized environment see Armbrust, Martyrs and Tricksters, 158.

5 For excellent examples of scholarly writing grappling with and demonstrating this polarization see Hussein, Nesreen, “Gestures and Resistance between the Street and the Theatre: Documentary Theatre in Egypt and Laila Soliman's No Time for Art,” Contemporary Theatre Review 25, no. 3 (2015): 357–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sonali Pahwa, “Making Revolution Everyday: Quotidian Performance and Utopian Imagination in Egypt's Streets and Squares,” Text and Performance Quarterly 39, no. 1 (2015): 56–73; Jessica Winegar, “A Civilized Revolution: Aesthetics and Political Action in Egypt,” American Ethnologist 43, no. 4 (2016): 609–22; and Armbrust, Martyrs and Tricksters.

6 Abaza, Mona, “The Field of Graffiti and Street Art in Post-January 2011 Egypt,” in The Routledge Handbook of Graffiti and Street Art, ed. Ross, Jeffrey Ian (New York: Routledge, 2016), 318–33Google Scholar; Almeida, Cristina Moreno, Rap Beyond Resistance: Staging Power in Contemporary Morocco (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bseiso, Rounwah Adly Riyadh, “Art in the Egyptian Revolution: Liberation and Creativity,” Comparative Studies of South Asia 38, no. 2 (2018): 344–53Google Scholar.

7 Nooshin, Laudan, “Whose Liberation? Iranian Popular Music and the Fetishization of Resistance,” Popular Communication 15, no. 3 (2017): 164, 178CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rayya el-Zein, “Performing el Rap el ‘Araby 2005–2015: Feeling Politics and Neoliberal Incursions in Ramallah, ‘Amman, and Beirut” (PhD diss., New York University, 2016).

8 Saleh, Ahmed, “Our Voices Persist,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 52, no. 3 (2020): 552–554Google Scholar.

9 This approach foregrounds the unintended consequences and sociopolitical forms that emerge from and after revolutions, situating the revolution across a larger spatiotemporal horizon while questioning to what extent the 2011 Egyptian revolution serves a starting point or unique spatiotemporal marker in the first place; After the Event: Prospects and Retrospects of Revolution, conference, 15–16 May 2019, University College London (conference program: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/anthropology/sites/anthropology/files/after_the_event_ucl_conference_programme_and_abstracts_updated.pdf).

10 Soliman, Laila, “A Talk that Never Really Happened in Time,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 52, no. 3 (2020): 501–505Google Scholar; El-Hajj, Muhammad, “The Gravel on Our Beds,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 52, no. 3 (2020): 506–509Google Scholar.

11 Helmy, Ayman, “Al-Fann Midan (April 2, 2011 – August 9, 2014) or The Last Graffiti on the Wall of the Revolution,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 52, no. 3 (2020): 555–558Google Scholar; Nassar, Aya, “To Stand By the Ruins of a Revolutionary City,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 52, no. 3 (2020): 510–515Google Scholar.

12 Asfour, Ayman, “Between Dependent and Independent: The Contemporary Music Scene in Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 52, no. 3 (2020): 536–539Google Scholar; Tarzi, Salma El, “How do you write about the cultural scene when you're inside it?” International Journal of Middle East Studies 52, no. 3 (2020): 498–500Google Scholar.

13 Moll, Yasmin, “Living through Thick Concepts in Revolutionary Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 52, no. 3 (2020): 493–497Google Scholar.

14 See also Armbrust, Martyrs and Tricksters, 11. Nicola Pratt, “Making Sense of the Politics of the Egyptian Revolution in and through Popular Culture,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 52, no. 3 (2020): 531–535.

15 Khaled Fahmy, “Opening Politics’ Black Box: Reflections on the Past, Present and Future of the Egyptian Revolution,” in Shifting Sands: The Unravelling of the Old Order in the Middle East, ed. Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson (London: Profile Books, 2015), 69–81; see also Armbrust, Martyrs and Tricksters, 214.

16 For instance, the repression of certain types of art in Egypt, especially downtown, was a key practice of Ottoman and British colonial rule as well as previous Egyptian military regimes. See, for instance, Karin van Nieuwkerk, “A Trade Like Any Other”: Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1995); Eve M. Troutt Powell, “Burnt-Cork Nationalism: Race and Identity in the Theater of ‘Ali al-Kassar,” in Colors of Enchantment: Theater, Dance, Music and the Visual Arts of the Middle East, ed. Sherifa Zuhur (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2001), 36; and Samia Mehrez, Egypt's Culture Wars: Politics and Practice (London: Routledge, 2008).

17 Reem Abou el-Fadl, “Introduction: Connecting Players and Process in Revolutionary Egypt,” in Revolutionary Egypt: Connecting Domestic and International Struggles, ed. Reem Abou el-Fadl (London: Routledge, 2015), 15; Adam Hanieh, “Re-Scaling Egypt's Political Economy: Neoliberalism and the Transformation of Regional Space,” in Abou el-Fadl, Revolutionary Egypt, 172.

18 Mariam Elnozahy, “The Economics of Creative Expression,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 52, no. 3 (2020): 526–530; Saleh, “Our Voices Persist”; al-Tarzi, “ How do you write about the cultural scene when you're inside it?”.

19 For instance, the essays here raise questions regarding the politics of translation (and indeed of writing for translation), of writing for an English-speaking academic audience, and so on.

20 Yasmin Moll, “Conversation on the Egyptian Revolution: Fieldwork in Revolutionary Times,” Fieldsights, 17 May 2013, https://culanth.org/fieldsights/conversation-on-the-egyptian-revolution-fieldwork-in-revolutionary-times.

21 Mohsen el-Khouni, Mouldi Guessoumi, and Mohamed-Salah Omri, “Introduction,” in University and Society within the Context of Arab Revolutions and New Humanism, ed. Mohsen el-Khouni, Mouldi Guessoumi, and Mohamed-Salah Omri (Tunis: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, 2016), 9–18.

22 See also Mona Abaza, Cairo Collages: Everyday Life Practices after the Event (Manchester, UK: University of Manchester Press, 2020), 3–4.