Amāra: Concept, Cultural Practice and Aesthetic

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

“…It demonstrates how both these approaches were built upon pre-revolution street arts practices while each manifesting a different relationship to ‘the political’ in a revolutionary moment. They thus demonstrate how long-standing debates among Arab intellectuals – regarding whether the artist’s role is ‘social’ or ‘political’, the artist’s relationship to the state, and whether artists view themselves as speaking from within the people’s collective knowledge or to it – manifest in artistic practice on the ground and today are questions resurfacing with fresh relevance (see El-Desouky, 2014).…”

“…In sum, a primary reason that existing street arts practices were not already considered revolutionary was that for most cultural elites these practices occurred in the realm of what literary theorist Ayman El-Desouky (2014) refers to as ‘the politicized . .…”

“…These debates became all the more urgent when, in the context of the 2011 revolution, many intellectuals positioned themselves prominently as speaking to power the truth of the people, but now these same people, in the context of a return to military rule, ‘seem to have spoken’ (El-Desouky, 2014, iix). In an article posted online in 2015, musician and former FM organizer Ayman Helmy, asks for example:Why didn’t FM’s audience continue organizing the event themselves after state security forced it to cease?…”

“…The issue is thus how intellectuals situate themselves within the knowledge production of the collective. He argues that the ‘social’ and ‘cultural’ themselves must become ‘the political’ in a way ‘beyond functionary politics’ (El-Desouky, 2014, ix–x). Challenges remain in understanding artists’ aversion toward ‘the political’ as more than only a surrender to state power, and in taking seriously the epistemologies of the poor and peripheral without romanticizing them.…”