 | Resistance in Contemporary Middle Eastern Cultures: Literature, Cinema and Music Subjects: Arts; Humanities; Language & Literature; Music; Media & Film Studies; Literature; Film Studies; Post-Colonial Studies; Interdisciplinary Literary Studies; Literature by Geographic Area; This study highlights the connections between power, cultural products, resistance, and the artistic strategies through which that resistance is voiced in the Middle East. Exploring cultural displays of dissent in the form of literary works, films, and music, the collection uses the concept of 'cultural resistance' to describe the way culture and cultural creations are used to resist or even change the dominant political, social, economic, and cultural discourses and structures either consciously or unconsciously. The contributors do not claim that these cultural products constitute organized resistance movements, but rather that they reflect instances of defiance that stem from their peculiar contexts. If culture can be used to consolidate and perpetuate power relations in societies, it can also be used as the site of resistance to oppression in its various forms: gender, class, ethnicity, and sexuality, subverting existing dominant social and political hegemonies in the Middle East. Karima Laachir is Lecturer in literary and cultural studies in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Saeed Talajooy is Lector in Persian language and culture at the University of Cambridge. |
