Revolutionary Art and Politics in Egypt - (Political Communication and Media Practices in the Middle East and North Africa) (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This book examines the role of artists in Egypt during the 2011 revolution, when street art from graffiti to political murals became ubiquitous facets of revolutionary spaces. Through interviews, personal testimonies, and accounts of the lived experience of 25 street artists, the book explores the meaning of art in revolutionary political contexts, specifically by focusing on artistic production during 'liminal' moments as the events of the Egyptian revolution unfolded. The author privileges the perspective of the actors themselves to examine the ways that artists reacted to events and conceived of their art as means to further the goals of the revolution. Based on fieldwork conducted in the years since 2011, the book provides a narrative of Egyptian artists' participation in and representations of the revolution, from hopeful beginnings to the subsequent crackdown and election of al-Sisi.

Review Quotes

"This book is for me, and people like me: academics and their ilk of 'the Latin West' who over-romanticise and over-celebrate the Egyptian revolution, and the 'Arab Spring' more generally, because we are uneducated in history, context, and veracity. We are ignorant of any real sense of the particularities of the political-cultural event that is the 25 January revolution in 2011 (as well as its genealogies and its aftermath), of the local, of the street, of protest and dissent and commemoration, of community and solidarity, of a time when all art was revolutionary art, of cautious hope and inevitable disenchantment. Rounwah Adly Riyadh Bseiso's Revolutionary Art and Politics in Egypt is a necessary corrective." --Marquard Smith, UCL, University of London, UK, Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Visual Culture

About the Author

Rounwah Adly Riyadh Bseiso is an educator and researcher who holds a PhD from SOAS, University of London, UK. Her main interests lie in issues relating to media and political practices, human rights law & international development, and the decolonization of knowledge in the S.W.A.N.A. (South West Asian/North African) region. Her academic writing has been published in peer review collections such as Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image and Communications Practices in Lebanon and Palestine (I.B.Tauris, 2013).