‘Loud’ and ‘quiet’ politics: Questioning the role of ‘the artist’ in street art projects after the 2011 Egyptian Revolution

Sprengel, Darci

doi:10.1177/1367877919847212

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Within wider feminist geographies of resistance, scholars have explored quiet politics (Askins 2014, 2015; Hankins 2017; Pottinger 2017; Sprengel 2020) as small, embodied, and everyday political practices that frequently go unnoticed. For Pottinger (2017:217), quiet activism constitutes “a form of engagement that emphasises embodied, practical, tactile and creative ways of acting, resisting, reworking and subverting”.…”

Section: Approaching Alternative Maps Of the Political Through Refusalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acts of Disengagement in Border Struggles: Fugitive Practices of Refusal

Meier

2023

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This paper explores people's acts of disengagement from activist campaign and group spaces in the context of border struggle activism in Germany and the UK as fugitive practices of refusal. These acts of disengagement took the form of remaining silent or intentionally distracted, sleeping during activist meetings, distancing oneself from activist groups during conversations, or completely withdrawing from these spaces. The paper approaches these acts, first, as practices of refusal that expose notions of the political rooted in liberal struggles over power and freedom as not only risky but also inherently self‐defeating and, second, as radically optimistic and vitalising practices of recovery and care that insist on alternative modes of thinking, practising, and experiencing sociality and the political that can inspire us to consider political agency in relation to wider abolitionist projects.

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Section: Approaching Alternative Maps Of the Political Through Refusalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acts of Disengagement in Border Struggles: Fugitive Practices of Refusal

Meier

2023

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“…Musannafat translates literally as 'literary work', but in practice their remit is far broader.7 Perhaps the most prominent of these cancelled events was al-Fann Midan festival (Art is a Public Square) in 2014(Sprengel 2019). …”

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confidence: 99%

“… 7 Perhaps the most prominent of these cancelled events was al-Fann Midan festival (Art is a Public Square) in 2014 (Sprengel 2019). …”

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confidence: 99%

The Musicians’ Syndicate and the contradictions of state control over music in Egypt

Frankford

2023

Pop. Mus.

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Based on 21 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Cairo with musicians who perform a musical style known as shaʿbi, this article unravels the complex role that the state-affiliated Musicians’ Syndicate plays in musicians’ working lives in order to investigate the contradictions of state control over music in Egypt. Focusing on moments of encounter between musicians and Syndicate officials, I consider why my interlocutors’ time was split between evading the Syndicate and its restrictions, and embracing the Syndicate by calling for it to implement harsher interventions. Doing so not only sheds light on the reality of cultural production in an authoritarian state, but also prompts a broader reconsideration of scholarly approaches to popular music censorship, requiring us to move beyond dichotomies of ‘state vs. society,’ ‘censors vs. censored,’ and ‘resistors vs. oppressors’ that have tended to dominate scholarship on music censorship.

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Making Sense of the Politics of the Egyptian Revolution in and through Popular Culture

Pratt

2020

Int. J. Middle East Stud.

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The outbreak of the Egyptian revolution in 2011 gave a huge impetus to the study of popular culture. In particular, scholars working in such diverse fields as anthropology, media studies, film studies, comparative literature, and cultural studies have highlighted the flourishing of creativity and the role of popular culture in mobilizing and articulating popular resistance to authoritarianism and challenging state media narratives of events. 1 Not only artists but also ordinary people used music, poetry, graffiti, jokes, and citizen journalism to document events, tell their stories, and express their viewpoints. Comedy and in particular political satire were used to criticize and ridicule the authorities. Citizen journalism became prominent in correcting the omissions or distortions of state-owned media and creating a revolutionary narrative. The figure of the martyr of the revolution (that is, those individuals who died at the hands of the security forces in political protests) was ubiquitous in various forms of popular culture and served to create public sympathy not merely for those individuals but, more importantly, for the cause of the revolution. The state was not the only object of criticism. Popular culture also was used to raise awareness of sexual violence against women protesters, which was perpetrated not only by the police and military but also by unknown gangs of men. Moreover, popular culture was not only expressive of resistance to dominant power. It also was an arena for pro-regime voices, such as the TV presenter Tawfiq 'Ukasha, who used his show to whip up hostility to the revolution and support for the military. 2 Yet political scientists have largely ignored popular culture and its role in the 2010-2011 uprisings. This reflects a general lack of attention to nonconventional forms of political agency alongside a narrow definition of what constitutes "the political" within the field of political science. Rather, in the wake of the Arab uprisings, political scientists have focused primarily on comparing structural or institutional factors or social movement dynamics to explain the outcomes of the 2011 uprisings across different countries. 3 As Jillian Schwedler argues, such approaches have obscured important micro-level as well as transnational processes. 4 In particular, these approaches are ill suited to capturing the shifting subjectivities and identities and contested meanings of the revolution that underpinned post-2011 political dynamics. I argue that to capture these important dynamics it is necessary to study the processes of meaning-making

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‘Loud’ and ‘quiet’ politics: Questioning the role of ‘the artist’ in street art projects after the 2011 Egyptian Revolution

Cited by 4 publications

References 19 publications

Acts of Disengagement in Border Struggles: Fugitive Practices of Refusal

Acts of Disengagement in Border Struggles: Fugitive Practices of Refusal

The Musicians’ Syndicate and the contradictions of state control over music in Egypt

Making Sense of the Politics of the Egyptian Revolution in and through Popular Culture

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