Description
Although there has been increasing interest in popular culture in the Middle East over the last decade or so, particularly in the wake of the 2011 uprisings, nonetheless, popular culture remains marginalised in the study of politics in the Middle East and North Africa. In this paper, I argue that the study of popular culture can contribute toward broadening the concept of politics and ‘the political’ to include the struggle over cultural meanings that are constitutive of politics and political dynamics. Drawing on Stuart Hall’s theory of representation and examining a range of popular cultural texts produced by Egyptians after 2011, including, music, graffiti, satirical TV programmes, cartoons and films, the paper will explore the cultural meanings of the 2011 revolution and how these informed competing political projects and power dynamics in the wake of former president Hosni Mubarak stepping down. Specifically, the paper will reveal the complex relationship between popular culture, power and politics in revolutionary and counterrevolutionary contexts, which does not conform to the binary of domination versus resistance.
