Beyond the ‘Arab Spring’

New Media, Art and Counter-Information in Post-Revolutionary North Africa

Abstract

The ‘Arab Spring’ possesses an unexplored discoursive dimension made of stratified stereotypical approaches and assumptions linked to the ‘Arab’ world and its horizons of political agency. In the aftermath of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, in a period of renewed censorship and instability, multiple actors coming from citizen journalism and activist/artistic backgrounds collaborate in experimenting post- revolutionary counter-power.

The drive to re-appropriate the revolutionary narrative and give continuity to its legacy in the ‘transitional’/post-dictatorship period is marked by an all pervading intertwining of art and counter-information, in collectives focusing on media (such as the Egyptian Mosreen), street art (such as the Tunisian Ahl al Kahf), journalism (Inkyfada) or theatre (Corps Citoyen) projects, as well as for the emerging independent video-makers (such as Ridha Tlili). My article intends to interrogate their interaction with the dominant representation of the uprisings.