This article analyses how a creative writing workshop in 2017 Cairo dynamically engaged with cultural memories of the 1967 defeat of the Arab armies. The article first situates 1967 as a crucial... Show moreThis article analyses how a creative writing workshop in 2017 Cairo dynamically engaged with cultural memories of the 1967 defeat of the Arab armies. The article first situates 1967 as a crucial reference point in discursive attempts to tie personal life stories to national history and in making sense of a widespread feeling of postcolonial disenchantment. It is in the ruinous aftermath of the 2011 uprisings, when a view on a political horizon beyond the stifling present temporarily was reopened, that the workshop critically examined the relations between cultural memory, family history, and everyday life with, at its center, the notion of defeat in all its shapes and intensities. The article argues that the workshop can be seen as ‘an intimate public,’ carving out a space for survival lying largely outside of the sphere of politics. Nevertheless, in its affective plurality that stimulated modes of irreverence, the workshop tentatively opened up new political dispositions under the strenuous conditions of post-2013 Egypt. Show less
This article analyses how innovative narrative techniques operate in the movie 74 (The Reconstitution of a Struggle) by Rania and Raed Rafei (2012). The film is a reenactment of an historical event... Show moreThis article analyses how innovative narrative techniques operate in the movie 74 (The Reconstitution of a Struggle) by Rania and Raed Rafei (2012). The film is a reenactment of an historical event: the student occupation of the American University of Beirut one year before the start of the Lebanese civil war. The use of improvised reenactment, testimonials and the voiceover all strengthen the film’s approach to the event as an embodied transformative experience, even as it descends into its defeat. While a cynical spectator might argue that the focus on “revolutionary becoming” reduces collective action to individual experience, the article argues that it is precisely this affective and embodied approach that allows the film to resonate with other times and places and to evoke a speculative state of agitation beyond closed narratives of defeat.Cet article analyse les techniques narratives innovatrices utilisées dans le film «74 (La reconstitution d’une lutte)» de Rania et Raed Rafei (2012). Le film présente, comme son nom l’indique, une reconstitution d’un événement historique: l’occupation de l’Université Américaine à Beyrouth, par le mouvement étudiant, un an avant le début de la guerre civile libanaise. L’utilisation de reconstitutions improvisées, de témoignages offerts face à la camera, et de voice-over, renforcent la démarche du film envers l’événement en tant qu’expérience incarnée transformatrice, même lorsqu’il dégénère vers sa défaite. S’il est vrai qu’un spectateur cynique pourrait soutenir que « le devenir révolutionnaire » réduit la lutte collective à l’expérience individuelle, cet article soutient que c’est précisément cette approche affective et incarnée qui permet au film de résonner en d’autres temps et lieux, ainsi que d’évoquer un état d’agitation spéculatif au-delà des récits cloisonnés de la défaite. Show less
This chapter seeks to tease out the intersection of displacement and reconstruction in a specific urban setting: The shopping mall in post-Civil War Beirut. Drawing upon cultural critique of late... Show moreThis chapter seeks to tease out the intersection of displacement and reconstruction in a specific urban setting: The shopping mall in post-Civil War Beirut. Drawing upon cultural critique of late capitalist urbanism, the chapter argues that its design inspires a sense of loss and disorientation that resembles a condition of displacement. In the specific context of Beirut, this is entangled with other, often more violent, forms of displacement.The chapter proceeds to confront this bleak picture of the amnesiac mall with ethnographic studies that describe modes of conviviality in shopping malls in the wider Middle Eastern region. Far from denying their decontextualized architecture and exclusivist class dynamics, these studies show that shopping malls also form sites where social life can thrive. Attention to social liveliness in an otherwise alienating environment will subsequently be used as a ground for the analysis of literary representations of Beirut's consumerist urbanism. The chapter argues that in these works, written by Rabee Jaber and Hassan Daoud, the liveliness of spaces of consumption are presented as a source of solace in the face of loss. The narratives thus offer a glimpse of what urban recovery may look like, even if situated within an exclusive urbanism that continues to deserve our critique. Show less
This study aims to better understand how international cultural funding shapes opportunities for organizations to grow as generators of creativity able to provide transformative experiences for... Show moreThis study aims to better understand how international cultural funding shapes opportunities for organizations to grow as generators of creativity able to provide transformative experiences for local audiences. It analyzes the experiences of four cases located in the Middle East and North Africa region, namely L’Atelier de l’Observatoire (Morocco), Clown Me In (Lebanon), Bantmag (Turkey), and Volunteer Palestine (West Bank). Although the Prince Claus Fund, Hivos, and European Cultural Foundation (ECF) have sought alternatives to the neoliberal instrumentalization of their funding measured according to the rubrics of impact, our research shows that organizations still struggle with the need to appeal to international funding bodies while also focusing on their work as embedded in local conditions. Show less
This article analyses how the film essay Taste of Cement by Ziad Kalthoum portrays Syrian construction labourers in Lebanon. It shows that the film’s evocation of sensory experience makes two... Show moreThis article analyses how the film essay Taste of Cement by Ziad Kalthoum portrays Syrian construction labourers in Lebanon. It shows that the film’s evocation of sensory experience makes two important contributions to the way we conceive of cities in general, and of post-civil war Beirut in particular. First, Taste of Cement succeeds in representing the workers as subaltern subjects without participating in their erasure. Second, the film presents a view that I call “oscillating urbanism,” thus challenging conventional narratives of (post-)conflict cities. Show less
This article argues that the intersection of time and space in large parts of the Levant is, above all, precarious. With a close analysis of two meaningful places in Beirut – the shrine of Rafic... Show moreThis article argues that the intersection of time and space in large parts of the Levant is, above all, precarious. With a close analysis of two meaningful places in Beirut – the shrine of Rafic Hariri and the nightclub B018 – the article seeks to tease out how such a precarious chronotope is given form, meaning and value through narratives, practices and spatial design. Moreover, the article builds upon Walid Sadek’s conceptualisation of shared mourning as a possibility for a new sociality under Lebanon’s precarious conditions. It argues that despite their engagement with loss, the two sites under scrutiny here do not allow for such an ethical position. The findings of the analysis are relevant for the Levant more broadly as the flows of refugees in recent years have produced new and particularly precarious geographies inscribed with a profound sense of loss and grief. Show less
This article addresses the ways in which the Syrian author Khaled Khalifa describes and invokes feelings of shame as a literary strategy in the novel No Knives in the Kitchens of this City (2016).... Show moreThis article addresses the ways in which the Syrian author Khaled Khalifa describes and invokes feelings of shame as a literary strategy in the novel No Knives in the Kitchens of this City (2016). It argues that the author capitalizes on shame’s peculiarly unstable nature in expressing the unbearable subjugation to a system that is as brutal as it is banal under Syria’s president Hafez Al-Asad and later his son Bashar. Shame in this novel travels from character to character and from characters to readers in uncontrolled ways. The article teases out these trajectories in order to argue that the affective nature of shame is particularly suitable for addressing the conditions of living in Syria under the Asads. Show less
From user-generated images of streets to professional architectural renderings, and from digital maps and drone footages to representations of invisible digital ecologies, this collection of essays... Show moreFrom user-generated images of streets to professional architectural renderings, and from digital maps and drone footages to representations of invisible digital ecologies, this collection of essays analyses the emergent practices of visualizing the street. Today, advancements in digital technologies of the image have given rise to the production and dissemination of imagery of streets and urban realities in multiple forms. The ubiquitous presence of digital visualizations has in turn created new forms of urban practice and modes of spatial encounter. Everyone who carries a smartphone not only plays an increasingly significant role in the production, editing and circulation of images of the street, but also relies on those images to experience urban worlds and to navigate in them. Such entangled forms of image-making and image-sharing have constructed new imaginaries of the street and have had a significant impact on the ways in which contemporary and future streets are understood, imagined, documented, navigated, mediated and visualized.Visualizing the Street investigates the social and cultural significance of these new developments at the intersection of visual culture and urban space. The interdisciplinary essays provide new concepts, theories and research methods that combine close analyses of street images and imaginaries with the study of the practices of their production and circulation. The book covers a wide range of visible and invisible geographies — From Hong Kong’s streets to Rio’s favelas, from Sydney’s suburbs to London’s street markets, and from Damascus’ war-torn streets to Istanbul’s sidewalks — and engages with multiple ways in which visualizations of the street function to document street protests and urban change, to build imaginaries of urban communities and alternate worlds, and to help navigate streetscapes. Show less
