Cultural Sovereignty in a Global Art Economy: Egyptian Cultural Policy and the New Western Interest in Art from the Middle East

Abstract

The post‐1989 transformation of the Egyptian art world reveals the particular tenacity of colonial logics and national attachments in culture industries built through anticolonial nationalism and socialism. Tensions emerged between and among Western and Egyptian curators, critics, and artists with the development of a foreign‐dominated private‐sector art market and as Egyptian art begins to circulate internationally. This international circulation of art objects has produced rearranged strategies of governance in the cultural realm, collusions and conflicts between the public and private sector, and, most importantly, a new articulation of cultural sovereignty.

“Anybody Can Do It”: Aesthetic Empowerment, Urban Citizenship, and the Naturalization of Indonesian Graffiti and Street Art

“…My observations on how Indonesian street art connects different discourses and changes to urban space and culture are inspired by anthropologist Jessica Winegar's ethnography of recent contestations between state and non‐state actors over the meaning and authenticity of Egyptian art (Winegar ). Winegar situates the “discovery” of a new generation of young, cosmopolitan Egyptian artists by Western art critics and institutions within the broader framework of neoliberalism in the Middle East and the changing relationship between the state and its favored citizen‐allies.…”

MORE ALIVE THAN ALL THE LIVING: Sovereign Bodies and Cosmic Politics in Buddhist Siberia

“…As early postperestroika hopes for Buryat territorial sovereignty were slowly eroding, indigenous politics reorganized itself around claims usefully defined elsewhere in terms of “cultural sovereignty”—a broad notion signifying strategies to maintain and develop cultural alterity, as well as assert autonomy from external control (Coffey and Tsosie 2001). Such expressions of sovereignty are usually disaggregated from territorial nationalism and are primarily nonjuridical and strategic; they are often executed on equal footing but in interdependence with other sovereignties (Cattelino 2008; Winegar 2006). Cultural sovereignty discourse has become especially vital for Buryat leaders after the collapse of the USSR, as, against the earlier hopes of indigenous elites, their marginality seems to have been enhanced in post‐Soviet Russia.…”

The Artist and the City in “Euro‐Mediterranean” Marseille: Redefining State Cultural Policy in an Era of Transnational Governance

“…Rather, recent scholarship posits new modes of governance emerging parallel to the state. Jessica Winegar (2006) argues that in Egypt new fields of “cultural sovereignty” are taking shape within and between state‐centered fields of cultural policy and international art markets. These studies raise important questions about the role of the state in a new transnational era.…”