Arab Cultural Studies

History, Politics and the Popular

Anastasia Valassopoulos

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317981046
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book seeks to both showcase and further develop innovative research and debates on contemporary Arab cultural production. Popular culture in the form of cinema, popular music, literature, visual media and cyber-cultures, both local and imported, enjoy a central role in Arab cultural life, and the contributors to this innovative collection showcase the tremendous cultural output emerging from the Arab world. They present sensitive, conceptual readings whilst remaining mindful of the place of this work within a wider framework that seeks to prevent isolationist readings of cultural phenomena. Making sense of the place of culture in the Arab world, and agreeing upon a broadly recognisable and commonly accepted set of terms within which to discuss this output, is a new and urgent challenge. Arab Cultural Studies aspires to understand, communicate and theorise these forms.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal for Cultural Research.

Introduction: Arab Cultural Studies

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Anastasia Valassopoulos

The Arab World is, like the rest of the global south, subject to the dynamics of the global capitalist order and its hegemonic culture. Besides, in today's globalised world, we really cannot afford to conceptualise or theorise an Arab cultural studies through the prism of the local alone. (Sabry 2010, p. 189)

So, how to theorize an Arab cultural studies? What to include, what to leave out, what to give prominence to? When I first started working on the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum in the mid nineties, I thought myself quite the trailblazer. I almost immediately found out that Virginia Danielson had already done a terrific job on this (1991), and she went on to write a book on the subject that became the inspiration for a wonderful documentary by Michal Goldman (1996) entitled Umm Kulthum: A Voice Like Egypt. Years later, in 2010, Laura Lohman published another study on the great singer: Umm Kulthum: Artistic Agency and the Shaping of an Arab Legend, 1967–2007. Geary, Umm Kulthum as subject matter for serious cultural research was here to stay. At the same time, I came across excellent work being done, in English, on entertainers, musicians, dance and also film in the Arab world. It was clear that a discipline was about to emerge but that first some groundwork would have to be done to make the field accessible. Viola Shafik's book Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity, first published in German in 1996 and then in English in 1998, was among the first international books that enabled researchers to form a picture of the history of Arab cinema. It was not that there had been no previous work on the subject, but rather that Shafik's method — to break down the history of film-making in the Arab world into epochs and eras and to bring to the discussion issues of influence, censorship, music and the question of independent auteur cinema — heralded a more conceptual way of looking at world cinema. It was now no longer possible to generalize, as Shafik had shown not only how extensive the field really was, but, more importantly, how much more work would have to be done on individual film-makers, their techniques and influences, the history of cinematic movements and schools, the business of production and distribution, and the transnational element behind all film-making. Using the history of cinema as a way into Arab culture, and therefore as an anchor to Arab cultural studies, looked very productive. After all, the very form and structure of cinema was internationally recognizable: the set-up of film production, the star system and even issues surrounding censorship were all areas that discerning moviegoers would be expected to be familiar with. What Danielson and, subsequently, Walter Armbrust's (1996) seminal work Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt taught me, however, was the extent to which detail was significant: detail and immersion. Where local knowledge was crucial, the framework within which to understand it was paramount. The framework of Arab cultural studies was not yet really formed, and yet Armbrust, Danielson, Shafik, Abu-Lughod and others were beginning to pave the way. In fact, if it were necessary to argue where the discipline of Arab cultural studies in English could locate its beginnings, it would have to be with Lila Abu-Lughod's (1986) Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Here, areas often thought to belong exclusively to anthropology, with its extant methodological boundaries, revealed untold potential. In this dazzling book, Abu-Lughod showed how gendered discourse operated at the level of culture within a community that seemingly disallowed the articulation of personal grievances and pain. Detailed research showed how poetry — both its creation and its verbalization — was a tool used in certain circumscribed and highly controlled moments, and replaced what would otherwise have been tricky altercations between the sexes; a move not traditionally permitted among the community of Bedouins that Abu-Lughod researched. Veiled Sentiments opened the door for a discussion of cultural norms and practices that were sophisticated, creative, nuanced and effective. Similarly, Karen van Nieuwkerk's (1996) book, “A Trade Like Any Other”: Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt, traced the complex history of entertainers in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Egypt, showing how the professionalization of female entertainment enabled native and Muslim women to enter the industry. Van Nieuwkerk's book informed and contextualized the emergence of someone like Umm Kulthum, and gave a voice to the underbelly of the entertainment industry: “On Thursday evenings, employees and labourers rush[ed] back home from work so as not to miss the retransmission of Umm Kulthum's concert” (Le Monde, 12 November 1967).¹ What Abu-Lughod's work had shown was that other means of communication could question the codes of honour of a society: in short, that one had to look deeply into any given culture before making generalizations about its political and social mores and regulations. Indeed, Abu-Lughod (1995, p. 66) went on to claim that popular culture had the capacity to enable what she called the “comforting illusion of equality”, something that no political discourse had hitherto been able to achieve. Similarly, Armbrust's close look at the reach, subtleties and potential of mass culture to revitalize and recalibrate the meaning of the modern and modernity in the Middle East impacted on the entire field of cultural studies in and on the Middle East. Where Shafik and Danielson had engaged with established musicians, film-makers and performing artists, Abu-Lughod, van Nieuwkerk and Armbrust brought to the fore ways in which to talk about popular culture alongside wider national debates on language, westernization, and high and low culture. Here, members of the Al-Alawi tribes jostled for discursive space alongside the vulgar but hilarious Ahmad Adawiya and the performers of Muhammad 'Ali Street — the treatment of these subjects was serious, discerning and insightful, though always attuned to their popular reach. The works did not attempt to co-opt popular artists solely into a Foucauldian framework where “popular” culture served to reflect on wider social paradigms at work. The artists were examined within their own context: the context of production. Thus, their influences, audience, political affiliations, domestic arrangements, class, gender and sexual orientation were all considered worthy of research and debate. Culture, in this sense, was seen to be constituted by persons within a context, for that context — albeit an ever changing one. The term “popular”, by definition, inhabits a transitory space, and so the very popularity of this singer or that, this film or that, tells us as much about the surrounding moments as it tells us about that particular medium. These early works in the field established the language for discussing Arab culture in general, and popular culture in particular.

Research into all areas of Arab culture was soon to become publically prominent. Alia Arasoughly's (1996) often-referenced edited collection, Screens of Life, brought a new edge to discussions on Arab film. Here, historiography jostled for space alongside discussions on genre, national cinemas, political ideology through film, and the difficult topic of periodization and its usefulness. Arasoughly's edition privileged the specifics of Arab film — details that belonged to one cinematic lineage and not another. Reading the various concerns of Egyptian, Lebanese, Algerian and Syrian cinemas alongside each other made it clear that each had been enabled by a tradition that referenced particular cultural and historical concerns. Cinema, here, was read as an engaging and engaged tool able to fully respond to socio-political as well as aesthetic debates, and also to contribute to emerging opinions on the role of cinema in the Arab world. The “central social role that film plays in the Arab world” (Arasoughly 1996, p. xi) was contextualized and explored, as were the clear links between early Arab cinema (on both technical and thematic fronts) and foreign occupation. Such coverage enabled later scholars to participate in an ongoing project of historicizing Arab film. This level of detail, both on the factual and critical level, is also present in a number of other works, without which the field of Arab cultural studies would be difficult to navigate. I am thinking specifically of Nurith Gertz and George Khleifi's (2008) Palestinian Cinema: Landscape, Trauma and Memory, a book intimately connected to a particular critical viewpoint on the Israeli/Palestinian question. Here, sophisticated theoretical arguments are brought to bear on the volatile existence of a Palestinian cinema at all; its emergence as an important factor in the internationalization of the Palestinian cause; and a repository of serious auteur cinema where issues such as exile, memory, pain and nostalgia are creatively reconceptualized.

Cinema is not, of course, the only, or even the most important, visual medium to have taken hold of the imagination of the Arab people. Television and the media industry have been ubiquitous and ever expanding over the last several decades. The last few years have seen a significant number of publications, all attempting to critique and theorize this fascinating phenomenon. Abu-Lughod's Dramas of Nationhood: The Politics of Television in Egypt (2005) went beyond an examination of how television reflects experience or how experience is influenced by viewing practices. Instead, Abu-Lughod provocatively suggested that state-run television in Egypt, in particular television dramas, “promoted a stance of moral and social development based on ostensibly shared values that unanimously and unquestionably relate[d] to all persons” (Abu-Lughod 2005, quoted in Valassopoulos 2007, p. 205). This, Abu-Lughod argued, ensured that the viewing audience collectively came to accept a predominant ideology that appears to be safeguarding them (rather than being openly hostile or critical). This study on production values, state ideology and critical interpretive frameworks alerts us to the powerful potential of mass media. Not only does effective television reflect particular prominent social and political views, it can also engage on a plethora of levels: inform, shape, predict. Indeed, several books on new Arab media are testament to the centrality of television to the Middle East. Arab Media (Ayish et al. 2011), Arab Television Today (Sakr 2007) and Arab Television Industries (Kraidy & Khalil 2009) form part of a group of books that seek to explore the robust presence of television and wider media outlets, including the Internet, radio and printed press. Arab Media is keen to reveal the potential of mass media to open up new ways of viewing the Arab world as complex and dynamic in its interaction with global informatics, “news” and the entertainment industry. The particularly fascinating role of satellite channels and their engagement with the Arab diaspora and, in turn, with an ever changing Arab identity paves the way for a cultural studies that is in tune with the transformative power of cultural products across national boundaries. In Arab Television Today, Naomi Sakr shows how international television formats have been combined with local interests to form hybrid programming. These choices echo economic and business decisions; decisions that often reflect socio-political pressure and expectation. Rather than being led purely by the financial market, Arab media appears to be quite sensitive to issues of pan-Arab identities, political allegiances, gender and nationalist stances. In Arab Television Industries, Marwan M. Kraidy and Joe F. Khalil compellingly narrativize the establishing of television as a complex and multilayered industry aimed at 300 million viewers. Showing it to be a competitive and “internally contested” industry (Kraidy & Khalil 2009, p. 3), the authors perform a thorough investigation into how television came to prominence in the Arab world, talking into account cultural, economic and political reasons for its rise. Here, news channels are discussed alongside reality television and Ramadan drama series. The issue of pan-Arabism, once thought a dead political issue, is here revealed as having a second and third life virtually through the careful organization of television programming across the region. Kraidy and Khalil perform fully contextual readings of their case studies, showing cultural studies at its best as a questioning discipline, throwing the net ever wider. Their study has also shown us how cultural products engage with wider issues such as the understandings of freedom, the meaning of individualism and community, and the multiple definitions of “information” and “reality”. The issue of who controls the airwaves is a crucial one — from state-owned or state-controlled to privately owned, what appears on television is as important as what does not.

It is important to stress that new media have not necessarily overtaken other forms of cultural expression. In his comprehensive study Popular Culture in the Arab World: Art, Politics and the Media, Andrew Hammond (2007) explores these various forms and their points of convergence. Keen to stress the proliferation and sheer quantity of cultural phenomena, Hammond is nevertheless able to provide an understanding of what renders these events “Arab”. Religion, politics, gender norms and class issues are all negotiated on a daily basis through such diverse trends extending from plastic surgery and nightlife to Arab pop and Al Jazeera. Hammond reveals the complex nature surrounding many of the so-called “life choices” made by today's contemporary Arabs. Tarek Mahfouz's (2011) remarkable book Arab Culture: Exploring the Arab-Speaking World through Cartoons, Satire and Humour goes a long way in directing the non-specialist towards a broad but complex understanding of some of the more prosaic concerns of the Arab-speaking world. Here, ordinary situations such as marriage, divorce, sex, the place and role of women, veiling, soccer and Al Qaeda are all examined through their representation in what is conceivably the most popular cultural medium of them all: the satirical cartoon. Mahfouz reminds us that this medium has remained popular through its ability to diversify and be real to the present moment. Not only are cartoons written in “colloquial Arabic … expressing the dialect of a particular region” (Mahfouz 2011, p. iv), but also the wide circulation of cartoons ensures and maintains their popularity. Mahfouz also uses a very original format: placing the translation of the cartoon within a detailed contextual frame allows the reader to gain unparalleled knowledge into the mores and expectations in Arab societies, what is considered humorous and appropriate, and also, of course, how opinions and views contradict each other in a lively and opinionated society. Likewise, Stein and Swedenburg's (2005) edited collection Palestine, Israel and the Politics of Popular Culture is keen not only to foreground the crucial role of popular culture in understanding the preoccupation of nations, but also to reframe the reception of popular culture within a wider political framework. Like Stein and Swedenburg, Mahfouz takes a very popular medium and reveals the complex depths at work. Graphic novels, such as those by Lebanese artist Zeina Abirached and a recent publication by Palestinian cartoon artist Naji al-Ali (2009), A Child in Palestine: The Cartoons of Naji- al-Ali, all show the continued interest in this popular format.

Print culture as a site for testimony and as a medium for the preservation of history is also in evidence. A recent example is A Biography of Disappearance: Algeria 1992 (Mara 2007). This indescribably affective book attempts to capture, through photographs, the elusive and painful aftermath of disappearance. The photographs are predominantly of family members, of spaces, both empty and crowded. Specifically, the book takes as its subject matter the political victims of the Algerian events of 1992 which saw the cancellation, by the army, of the Islamists' victory in legitimate elections. This collection deals with the trauma of absence, of non-accountability, of the suffering and void in the aftermath of abduction and killing. The book itself is a testimonial, an archive. Nowhere else are these photographs brought together; nowhere else is there an attempt to narrativize this loss. It is a highly experimental work that also reminds me of Zeina Maasri's (2009) Off the Wall: Political Posters of the Lebanese Civil War and Suzanne Cotter's (2006) Out of Beirut. Where Off the Wall seeks to fully represent the street art of the civil war in terms of its relationship to the contested themes of the strife, Out of Beirut showcases contemporary art that has come to aesthetically reflect on the various forms of destruction which the conflict wrought. Fresh understandings and conceptualizations of the experience of space have spurred some very exciting work led by geopolitical debates. Here, the edited collection Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, Culture, and Urban Space in the New Globalized Middle East (Singerman & Amar 2006) has helped t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword
• 1. Introduction: Arab Cultural Studies
• 2. Arab Cultural Studies – Thinking Aloud: Theorizing and Planning for the Future of a Discipline
• 3. Impossible Witness: Israeli Visuality, Palestinian Testimony and the Gaza War
• 4. A History of New Media in the Arab Middle East
• 5. Impossible Intimacies: Towards a Visual Politics of “Touch” at the Israeli-Palestinian Border
• 6. Consuming Palestine: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in Metropolitan Popular Culture
• 7. Broken Heart of the City: Youssef Alanine's Bab al-Hadid (Cairo Station)
• 8. Satellite Arcades: Three-Dimensional Puppets and the Coin-Operated Interface
• 9. Popular Culture and Nationalism in Egypt: 𠄬Arab Lotfi and Egyptian Popular Music
• 10.Life Is Like a Bowl of Fish: The Aquarium, the French New Wave and the Urban Reflection of the Cairene Self
• 11.The Moderation of Creative Dissidence in Syria: Reem Ali's Documentary Zabad
• Index