Art Against Authoritarianism in Southwest Asia and North Africa

"Discussing various art forms, from street art to performance art, and from music to theatre, this book examines forms of aesthetic resilience at the heart of the political struggle against authoritarianism in Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. The authors investigate ongoing aesthetic activism after the Arab Uprisings in four ways: examining visibility and speech in the public space; the creation and sustaining of collective solidarities; and the representation of suppressed identities and narratives and the creation of alternative modes of producing and circulating art. The book questions the aesthetic frame of politics that obscures social struggles from below in favour of the political theatre of the state apparatus on the one hand and discusses how activist aesthetics cultivate a transformative imaginary of a just world, on the other"--