/The Naked Blogger of Cairo: Creative Insurgency in the Arab World/
Harvard University Press, June 2016
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/
Uprisings spread like wildfire across the Arab world from 2010 to 2012, fueled by a desire for popular sovereignty. In Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria, protestors flooded the streets and the media, voicing dissent through slogans, graffiti, puppetry, videos, and satire that called for the overthrow of dictatorial regimes.
Investigating what drives people to risk everything to express themselves in rebellious art, /The Naked Blogger of Cairo/ uncovers the creative insurgency at the heart of the Arab uprisings. While commentators have stressed the role of social media, Marwan M. Kraidy shows that the essential medium of expression was not texting or Twitter but the human body. Brutal governments that coerced citizens through torture and rape found themselves confronted with the bodies of protestors. Activists challenged authority in brazen acts of self-immolation, nude activism, and hunger strikes. The bodies of dictators became a focus of ridicule. Syria’s Bashar al-Assad was rendered as a pathetic finger puppet, while Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak became a regurgitating cow. As Kraidy argues in 38 short, punchy and accessible chapters, technology publicizes defiance, but the body remains the vital nexus of physical struggle and digital communication, destabilizing distinctions between “the real!
world” and virtual reality, spurring revolutionary debates about the role of art, and anchoring Islamic State’s attempted hijacking of creative insurgency.
/Reviews/
“The Naked Blogger of Cairo is yet another testament to the range and ingenuity of Marwan Kraidy’s scholarship. He is without a doubt our most insightful critic of Arab media, and this book is essential reading for our times.”—Michael Curtin, University of California, Santa Barbara
“In The Naked Blogger of Cairo, Marwan Kraidy offers a fascinating account of the workings of power and resistance in a digitally connected Middle East that will shake confidence in conventional narratives about the cultural dynamics of the Arab uprisings. It is an original contribution and essential reading for those who want to move beyond clichéd frames and facile analyses.”—Mohamed Zayani, Georgetown University
/Contents/
List of Illustrations
I. In the Name of the People: The People Want/ The Dictator’s Two Bodies/Creative Insurgency
II. Burning Man: Protest Suicide/Viral Pain/The Defender/A Bad Rap/Down and Out in Tunis/Loaves of Contention/A Better Future
III. Laughing Cow: Pharaoh’s Health/A Digital Body Politic/Living Martyr/Funny Men/Laughing Cow/The Poodle and the Bear/The Lion and the Eagle/The Dictator’s Tear
IV. Puppets and Masters: An Eye for an Eye?/The Upper Hand/Sprayman/Stencil Standstill/Top Goon/Giving Bashar the Finger/In Sickness and in Health
V. Virgins and Vixens: The Naked Blogger of Cairo/The Aesthetics of Disrobement/Dutiful Daughter/Blue Bra Girl/Vigilance and Virulence/Sextremism and Islamophobia/The “Liberals”’ Dilemma /Abstract Bodies?
VI. Requiem for a Revolution?: Concept Pop?/The Creative-Curatorial-Corporate Complex/The Daesh Stain/Another Pharaoh?/The Specter of Death Notes/Acknowledgments/Index
/Bio/
Marwan Kraidy is Anthony Shadid Chair in Global Media, Politics and Culture and Founding Director of the Project for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, USA. His books include /Hybridity, or the Cultural Logic of Globalization/(Temple University Press, 2005) and /Reality Television and Arab Politics/ (Cambridge University Press, 2010), which won three major prizes.
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