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Al Šar'a Alna? (the street is ours?): Writing the street in Beirut
Malmö University, Faculty of Culture and Society (KS), School of Arts and Communication (K3).ORCID iD: 0000-0002-0627-6636
2025 (English)In: Art Against Authoritarianism in South West Asia and North Africa / [ed] Tijen Tunali; Josepha Wessels, London: I.B. Tauris, 2025, 1, p. 11-28Chapter in book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

Lebanon represents an interesting case study of the relationship between art and authoritarianism, as it has never been under the rule of a dictator or even a singular particular party. And although Lebanon did not take part in the Arab uprisings per se, like many urban centres across the region, Beirut has a history of street art that long predates the revolutions. In this chapter, I draw on fieldwork conducted in Beirut from 2009 to 2017 to consider the role of what I will call street writing in demarcating and documenting the spatial boundaries and histories of various publics. Street writing can reveal much about the spatial, political and social histories of Beirut’s myriad publics and public spaces. Where does this writing appear? Who is allowed to write, and what are they allowed to say? Locating street writing in the neighbourhoods and in-between spaces of Beirut, I argue that while such interventions in Lebanon, and especially in Beirut, might be ubiquitous, they are not always democratic nor indicators of intercommunal togetherness. While in some ways they mirror the revolutionary and community-centred ethos of street art related to the Arab revolutions, they also visually mark out different territories and trace the contours of spatially distinct publics that experience various degrees of privilege and poverty, access and denial, and mobility and stasis.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
London: I.B. Tauris, 2025, 1. p. 11-28
Series
Political Communication and Media Practices in the Middle East and North Africa
National Category
Media and Communications
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-72781DOI: 10.5040/9780755650682.0009Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85211412711ISBN: 9780755650675 (print)ISBN: 9780755650682 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-72781DiVA, id: diva2:1921634
Available from: 2024-12-16 Created: 2024-12-16 Last updated: 2025-08-20Bibliographically approved

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Cory, Erin

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Citation style
  • apa
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