In the wake of the 2011 Arab uprisings, there was an increased interest in the role of popular culture, as various forms of creativity flourished against a back-drop of unprecedented freedom. Following the outbreak of the 25 January 2011 uprising, ordinary people as well as artists used music, poetry, graffiti, satire, talk shows and citizen journalism to tell their stories and express their viewpoints. Comedy and, in particular, political satire were used to criticize and ridicule the authorities. Citizen journalism became prominent in correcting the omissions or distortions of state-owned media and creating a revolutionary narrative. The figure of the martyr of the revolution (that is, those individuals who died at the hands of the security forces in political protests) was ubiquitous in various forms of popular culture and served to create public sympathy not merely for those individuals but, more importantly, for the cause of the revolution. Unsurprisingly, scholars of the Egyptian revolution have tended to conceptualize popular culture as a medium for expressing popular opposition to the authorities (for example, Abaza 2013a and 2013b, El Hamamsy and Soliman 2013a, 2013b, Mostafa and Valassopoulos 2014, Swedenburg 2012). However, popular culture was also an arena for pro-regime voices, such as the TV presenter Tawfiq Okasha, who used his show to whip up hostility to the revolution and support for the military (Armbrust 2019).

Popular Culture and Identity

However, popular culture has not only been a vehicle for expressing opposition to the ruling regime but to dominant relations of power more broadly. Specifically, popular culture, such as graffiti, challenged dominant notions of gender identities and expressed demands for women’s rights – particularly rights to bodily integrity in the face of sexual violence and harassment of women protesters. In this way, women insisted that their rights be part of the revolution. Popular culture was also used to express Egyptian identity and define who are the Egyptian people. Whilst in the 18 days of the Tahrir Square sit-in, Egyptian identity was expressed in an inclusive way, later on, Egyptian identity came to be represented in more exclusive and divisive ways. In this respect, popular culture both reflected and created divisions between supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and their opponents. Various popular culture artists portrayed the Muslim Brotherhood as un-Egyptian and deployed long-standing anti-Muslim Brotherhood prejudices (that members of the group are ‘backward’, whilst the leaders are treacherous) in their criticisms of the presidency and government. These depictions of the Muslim Brotherhood contributed towards demonizing the group and justifying the unprecedented levels of state violence against them after July 2013.

In light of the multiple roles of popular culture, we view it as a ‘site of struggle’ over meanings – specifically, the definition of ‘the people’ and of the revolution that they created. This notion of popular culture builds on the work of Stuart Hall and others within the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies (for example, Bennett 1986, Hall 1982, Hall and Jefferson 1976) and is influenced by Antonio Gramsci’s concept of ‘hegemony’, which refers to the ways in which the ruling class mobilizes certain ideas and meanings as ‘common sense’ in order to persuade ordinary people to accept the status quo. In other words, this is a conceptualization of politics as not merely a process that occurs within political institutions (such as, elections and parliaments) but as a form of ideological work that is conducted through culture.

The concept of 'representation' is a crucial tool for understanding the relationship between popular culture and power. 'Representation' refers to the construction of meaning through language, signs and/or images (Hall 1997: 15). The choice of language, signs and/or images is meaningful in a particular cultural context because of the way that it mobilizes existing ideas that may resonate with large numbers of people because they are already dominant (for example, the idea that there exists a unified 'Egyptian people'). However, existing ideas can be subverted or reformulated ('resignified') as part of and in response to new political and social movements, as occurred in the Egyptian revolution. 

However, whilst the Birmingham School viewed the struggle over meaning as one primarily between dominant and subordinate groups within society, the items in this archive reveal multiple struggles along different axes of social and political differences and tied to competing notions of the revolution as well as of Egyptian identity. Moreover, during the first couple of years following the 2011 uprising, there were no clearly dominant groups –although there were many groups who could be viewed as subordinate in light of gender and class relations and other social inequalities.

In light of the importance of popular culture as a terrain upon which the politics of meaning plays out, it is unsurprising that the authorities have clamped down on this sphere, particularly after the military coup of July 2013. Initially, those cultural figures targeted were individuals heavily associated with the 25 January revolution, such as comic Bassem Youssef, musician Ramy Essam, who were forced to leave Egypt, and journalist and TV presenter Reem Maged, who was forced off Egyptian TV. The circle of repression rapidly widened to include those deemed to express any sort of position independent of the authorities. This is not only limited to those whose opinions were deemed to be at odds with the authorities, such as political satirists. It also included those expressing culturally ‘liberal values’, which the authorities considered to violate ‘morality’, such as novelists writing scenes of sex to female pop singers dancing in sexually suggestive ways. More generally, any sort of direct representations of the 25 January 2011 revolution and, specifically, any criticism of the security forces and military, in popular culture became red lines for the authorities. As the regime of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has tried to script the official narrative of the 2011 revolution and its aftermath, it has become increasingly important to document the revolution’s diverse histories and capture popular voices threatened with repression and erasure from the historical record.

• To cite: Pratt, Nicola (2020) An Introduction to Popular Culture and the Egyptian Revolution, in Politics, Popular Culture and the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, https://egyptrevolution2011.ac.uk/exhibits/show/introduction/introduction