This paper examines the ongoing struggle among Sunni powers in the Middle East through the lens of popular culture – specifically, through imperial-themed television dramas. Although existing literature examines the appeal of “soft power” in creating affinity, such as that cultivated among MENA audiences by Turkey’s widely popular TV serials, a gap exists in capturing the otherizing power of the genre. How does pop culture serve as an arena for regimes not only to create affinity but also to undercut threats to their own claims to power by “otherizing” and thus delegitimizing their competitors? What advantages does the “everyday” medium of television provide in doing so? To answer these questions, I explore contestation surrounding the 2019 debut of the Saudi-produced TV serial Kingdoms of Fire through the social psychological lens of social identity theory (SIT). Hailed by Arab promoters as exposing Ottoman tyranny, I analyze the motivations behind and impact of the series as a counter-narrative to the “Ottomania” of Turkish imperial dramas such as Muhte?em Yüzy?l (The Magnificent Century), Dirili?: Ertu?rul (Resurrection), and Payitaht Abdülhamid (The Last Emperor), all of which supported the ruling AKP’s efforts to expand Turkey’s influence in former Ottoman territories. Applying the SIT concepts of Ingroup privileging and Outgroup prejudice, I flesh out the vital ontological importance of countering narratives that challenge an Ingroup’s definition of its sense of self as well as its perceived role in the world and thus the motivation to “otherize” those challengers in symbolically meaningful ways. In the realm of imperial-themed soap operas, we find a surprisingly high-stakes contestation among Turkey and Arab states over who is the rightful Sunni regional leader based on perceptions of historical legitimacy. To argue that these “epic battles” are not merely reflections but rather tools of foreign policy shaped by perceptions of role identity, I analyze data gathered through intertextual analysis of series content and audience commentary made via social media, audience surveys, and interviews with series producers and foreign policy officials. In addition to shedding light on Turkish-Arab struggles over Sunni hegemony, the analysis specifies 1) the ontological motivations behind initiatives to disseminate a particular identity narrative through popular TV dramas, 2) the surprising significance states attach to “everyday” platforms of identity contestation, and 3) the powerful “otherizing” role that such dramas play in regional rivalries, and thus the need to look beyond the “soft power” of popular cultural media in foreign policy.

In the last decade, there has been growing interest in popular culture in the Middle East and North Africa, further boosted by the 2011 uprisings. Yet, until now, political scientists have largely ignored popular culture, reflecting a general lack of attention within this scholarly field to ‘the everyday’ as a site of politics. The construction of the boundaries of the category of ‘popular’ in relation to ‘culture’ should be seen as contingent and context-specific, linked to wider political, social and cultural struggles. In this respect, the paper draws on the work of the late sociologist and cultural studies theorist Stuart Hall, who argued that the definition of the ‘popular’ is inextricably linked to the defining of ‘the people’. In the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the famous slogan was, ‘The people want the fall of the regime,’ thereby clearly defining the popular against the regime. However, just over two years later, ‘the people’ were those siding with the army against the Muslim Brotherhood, helping to usher in a return to dictatorship. This paper will argue that popular culture is crucial for understanding the complex and contradictory relations between ‘the people’ and power and how this has determined the dynamics of the revolution and counter-revolution. Toward this end, it will explore shifting constructions of ‘the people’ within popular culture, focusing in particular on its gendered dimensions, in the post-25 January 2011 period. The paper will draw on examples from a range of popular cultural texts, including graffiti, cartoons and music. In the wake of Hosni Mubarak’s resignation, women battled to ensure that the meaning of ‘the people’ would be inclusive of their participation and that their rights would be part of the goals of the revolution. Yet, later, under the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, the issue of women’s rights became constitutive of the boundaries between ‘the people’ and the Muslim Brotherhood, contributing to political polarization and paving the way for the 30 June 2013 protests and the July military coup. In this way, the paper challenges binary categorizations of resistance and domination, focusing instead on the multifaceted and shifting ways in which gender was articulated with the notion of ‘the people’ and their revolution.

This paper considers the politics of identity and affect articulated in the music and lyrics of Lebanese band, Mashrou’ Leila, which is one of the most successful independent music bands in the Middle East. Independent music has received little scholarly attention in the context of the Middle East. Its dramatic growth over the last decade indicates shifting aesthetics amongst youth in the region. This paper explores the significance of the band and its music in critically and creatively opening up spaces to reimagine belonging and identity and subvert hegemonic identities, particularly with regard to gender and sexuality. Drawing on feminist and queer theories, I conduct a critical reading of the band’s musical lyrics, contextualize them and analyze their implications politically, socially and emotionally. I particularly focus on their questioning and (re)imagining of the everyday experiences of history, language, and pop culture, which are typically employed to reinforce and justify the erasure, exclusion and oppression of certain gendered and sexual bodies within predominantly Arabic-speaking societies. Through this critical reading, I unpack how the binarization of assimilation and resistance is complicated and blurred to include the reality of contradictory and intersecting identities, and to then make use of these contradictions and intersections productively and creatively, in a way that balances working towards long-term shifts and changes while also acknowledging the need and desire to continue to function and survive within these structures. I also highlight the ways in which their songs center and express the complexity, frustrations, uncertainties and struggles of trying to survive and exist day-to-day within repressive and oppressive structure, without identifying an immediate or clear solution. In this way, the band’s music not only acknowledges, but also demands the personal and collective emotional struggles required to exist and survive on a daily basis as abject subjects within repressive structures, while also trying to challenge and resist those structures by attempting to creatively make the unthinkable thinkable, and the impossible possible. I argue that Mashrou Leila’s music enables identity reconfigurations that, over time, can move beyond the creative space and enter the public and private spheres to support a more inclusive politics of gender and sexuality.

One of the most striking aspects of Egypt’s January 2011 uprising was the proliferation of eye-catching, politically motivated street art across Cairo and other cities. Although analysed as new phenomena of the uprising, Egypt in fact has a long history of street art and graffiti. Prior to the uprising, they were representative of an everyday politics, reflecting ‘mundane’ concerns over the cost of living, religious beliefs or romantic love. The 2011 uprisings seemed to result in a rupture in the overarching regime of power. Therefore, we see the emergence of a new form of street art, one with a far more pronounced political angle that narrated and followed the trajectories of the revolutionary moment. It was also vital to ‘capturing’ urban spaces as belonging to the revolution. Graffiti and street art have not yet been studied systematically as sites of politics; instead, they have been understood as a by-product of the uprising, as an example of a newly found freedom of expression. This paper explores the relationship between politics and popular culture through the case of graffiti and street art, highlighting how these not only reflect or represent political struggles but rather are constitutive of them. To do so requires viewing street art in a way that is attentive to art’s political potential. I draw on Jacques Rancière’s concept of ‘dissensus’, a term referring to a political and aesthetic process that creates new modes of perception and novel forms of political subjectivity. As a spatially bound practice, street art can also produce public spaces, allowing a visible ‘dissensus’ to take place. This paper therefore seeks to analyse post-January 2011 Egyptian revolutionary murals, using visual methods and art history approaches, as a spatial and aesthetic practice that contributes to political movements. Specifically, it focuses on the murals of Mohamed Mahmoud Street, by artists such as Ammar Abu Bakr and Alaa Awad.I will argue that street art engages in an interaction with audiences, altering their aesthetic experiences and enabling ways of being in public space that question and disrupt its everyday uses. In this way, it creates new perceptions of the political and the social that challenge existing relations of power.

It is almost a decade since the start of the Arab Uprisings. At the time, the cities of the Arab World became centre stages for rethinking hopeful politics (Butler 2011; Gordillo 2011; Gregory 2013; Harb 2017). These revolutionary cities attracted significant attention to the ways in which local artists and activists were appropriating the public spaces (Tripp 2012, 2013; Abaza 2013). It is, therefore, curious that this academic interest started to wane as the promise that sustained the early years of the decade failed to materialise. This is because the generation of activists, artists and writers that witnessed the revolutionary years, continue to navigate the aftermath of revolutionary hope in their everyday spaces and in their creative practice. Their experience tends to be overlooked, or — at best— understood through the lenses of trauma and despair. Beyond the two images of revolutionary hope and the affective politics of despair, this paper investigates the political aesthetics and poetics deployed by filmmakers and writers to grapple with a world after the revolution. In other words, this paper asks: how do we endure disappointment and maintain attachments to spaces that seem to be perpetually betraying their political promise? Focusing on two films "Villa 69" (2013) and "In the Last Days of the City" (2016), this paper will aim to investigate the role of poetics and aesthetics of space in reckoning with political disappointment. It focuses particularly on the materiality of architectural dilapidation and the desire for preservation and/or documentation of built environment. The aim of this focus is to investigate the ways in which contemporary politics of urban ruination in Cairo are negotiated, challenged or reckoned-with in artistic practice. Theoretically, the paper develops a framework that engages the material space of cities as narrative devices; geopoetics. It will use this framework to uncover alternative practices of storytelling the city as deployed by its inhabitants, writers and artists. As such, it does not only challenge contemporary readings of revolution and affect in the Middle East, but also challenges what is often offered up as a postcolonial critique of orientalist representations of rebellion and the place of the city.