This paper looks at the short history of the Cairo Ultras in Egypt as a collective movement who became part of the momentous uprising that overthrew an autocratic ruler. Formed in 2007, the Ultras membership became key actors in the street protests against Hosni Mubarak’s thirty-year rule. His dramatic removal in Spring 2011 was part of a tidal wave of popular revolt across the Middle East & North African region. However, in the violent turmoil since this time, the Ultras have been locked into a bitter conflict with the Egyptian security state. This led to the horrific deaths of seventy-two fans in the Port Said massacre alone, and the on-going imprisonment of Ultras in Egypt’s notorious prison system. Football remains a popular force in Egypt and world famous players, such as Mo Salah, inspire a younger generation beyond the quagmire of national politics. This paper will discuss how the Cairo Ultras, as a grassroots social collective movement, formed new solidarities. The presentation sets out to consider the Ultras football fans as a counter-hegemonic force in opposition to ‘capitalist realism’ (Fisher, 2009). Cultural practices are at the core of the Ultras collectivity bond and their group activities can be seen as a form of resistance to rethink sport communities. This fan phenomenon in Cairo has, in remarkable ways, challenged the football media spectacle and the rigid social structures of Egypt. Embodying a visceral imagination, human and libidinal, the Cairo Ultras pulsated stadium terraces with group displays of banners, flares, chanting and dancing. On the football terraces choreographed body movements unify the Ultras in Sufi-like rituals as the collective experience transforms soccer into an ecstatic event. The Ultras phenomenon is part of a global youth movement of marginal communities operating in a precarious age of reactionary politics. Ultras football groups across the world vibrate stadium terraces with creative displays to reclaim the spectacle event from the ideology underpinning sports media networks. This break with the representational form situates the body in the live event to create a collective experience. This paper uses aesthetic arguments to consider the capacity of sport to emancipate and how the Ultras events, Tifos, disrupt the meditated vision of the stadium space. This paper research is part of a new monograph book on the Cairo Ultras to be published by AUC Press in 2019.

Much has been written about street art and graffiti during and after Egypt’s January 25 revolution, and there has also been a great deal of photo-documentation of these art forms as they emerged at various times between 2011 and 2014. Scholars and journalists have explored this art as “a faithful barometer of the revolution;” a dramaturgical performance of revolutionary events and discourses (Abaza 2013; 2015); a mode of resistance, dissent and political commentary for youth (Boskovitch 2014; Ismail 2013; Lennon 2014), and as a poignant although impermanent form of memorialization of those who lost their lives in conflicts with the police and security forces of the Mubarak, Morsi and el-Sisi regimes (Main 2014; Morayef 2012). Other authors have described the art as a way in which citizens re-set their understanding of their national identity and citizenship and begin to reclaim public space (Saunders 2012; Nicoarea 2014; Zakareviciute 2014). All of these approaches have brought important perspectives to bear on the understanding of the artistic efflorescence in revolutionary and post-revolutionary Cairo. However, there have been very few in depth analyses of this art work as aesthetic and creative productions. This paper addresses this lacunae by effecting an in depth analysis of two large works on the famous walls of Muhammed Mahmoud street. Because these works were produced during highly charged political circumstances, I do not divorce them from their political content. Rather, I effect a multi-dimensional approach that acknowledges the socio-political meanings of the works while at the same time paying careful attention to form, style and aesthetic innovation. This approach draws upon scholarship in anthropology, art criticism and post-colonial theory (el-Ariss 2013; Kraidy 2016; Scheid 2010; Winegar 2006). The paper focuses on two pieces that have received little if any scholarly attention, The Egyptian Citizen by a lesser known street artist HeMa AllaGa, and a portrait of Hisham Rizq by well-known artist Ammar Abo Bakr. I chose these pieces because they integrate insightful socio-political commentary with skillful—albeit very different—aesthetic styles, and because they speak to each other in interesting ways. I argue that each piece incorporates elements of Egyptian history and mythology along with international artistic images and trends to invite new ways of thinking about contemporary Egyptian realities. My readings of these works are based on photographs I took in July 2015.

The Secular Shift in Values in the Post-Arab Spring Sparked by the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor on December 17, 2010, the peaceful revolutionary movements of the Arab Spring managed to overthrow entrenched dictators in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya in less than one year. While the survey of nationally representative samples of Egyptians and Tunisians showed that the majority of respondents believed that the goals of the Arab Spring were democracy and economic prosperity, the movements for democratic change failed in these countries, except for Tunisia. Despite this failure, this paper argues that the liberal ideas that shaped the Arab Spring have continued to expand not only in Egypt and Tunisia, but in Turkey, a non-Arab country, as well, as shown by findings from two waves of a panel survey in these countries. In Egypt, of a nationally representative sample of 3,496 adults interviewed in 2011, 2,430 of the same respondents were re-interviewed in 2016 (70% response rate). In Tunisia, of a nationally representative sample of 3,070 respondents interviewed in 2013, 2,395 were re-interviewed in 2015 (78% response rate). In Turkey, of a nationally representative sample of 3,019 adults interviewed in 2013, 1,682 were re-interviewed in 2016 (56% response rate). The data from the two waves revealed a pattern of change in respondents’ cultural outlooks toward secular politics, religious tolerance, gender equality, and national identity across the three countries. A significantly higher percentage of the respondents in the second wave supported the separation of religion and politics, considered Western form of government desirable for their country, were less favorable toward Islamic government and the Sharia, displayed a greater religious tolerance, indicated greater support for gender equality and national identity than they did in the first wave of the survey. This paper concludes by entertaining the possibility for the rise of liberal nationalist movements as a serious alternative to the existing polity in these countries.

Affect was an essential component of the Arab uprisings, and it remains an important medium for shaping everyday politics in the Middle East and beyond. Yet endeavors to control individual and collective affect are understudied in contestations of power and the praxis of statecraft—despite robust evidence that affect and emotion are intimately entwined with political behavior, motivation for collective action, and decision-making on a range of issues spanning from voter preference to foreign policy. This paper examines how such control takes effect, situating the sensory body as a bridge and key site of interaction and contestation for diverse projects that seek to influence behavioral outcomes via the manipulation of public space. From among the bodily senses, it singles out the auditory realm as a particularly potent generator of affect and examines the entanglement of sound, hearing, and power to foreground ways the sensory body is routinely engaged in state projects. Drawing on examples from the protests that ricocheted loudly across Egypt and Tunisia from 2010-2012, and contextualizing these with evidence from Algeria as well as historical antecedents from original archival work, this article generates a framework that links phenomenological experience and political behaviors. I demonstrate how sensory inputs such as sound are engineered for political effect by elite and subaltern actors alike and argue that the ambient environment represents an important site of everyday political control.