Leaks, Hacks, And Scandals: Arab Culture In The Digital Age

Description

How digital media are transforming Arab culture, literature, and politics In recent years, Arab activists have confronted authoritarian regimes both on the street and online, leaking videos and exposing atrocities, and demanding political rights. Tarek El-Ariss situates these critiques of power within a pervasive culture of scandal and leaks and shows how cultural production and political change in the contemporary Arab world are enabled by digital technology yet emerge from traditional cultural models. Focusing on a new generation of activists and authors from Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula, El-Ariss connects WikiLeaks to The Arabian Nights, Twitter to mystical revelation, cyberattacks to pre-Islamic tribal raids, and digital activism to the affective scene-making of Arab popular culture. He shifts the epistemological and historical frameworks from the postcolonial condition to the digital condition and shows how new media challenge the novel as the traditional vehicle for political consciousness and intellectual debate. Theorizing the rise of “the leaking subject” who reveals, contests, and writes through chaotic yet highly political means, El-Ariss investigates the digital consciousness, virality, and affective forms of knowledge that jolt and inform the public and that draw readers in to the unfolding fiction of scandal. Leaks, Hacks, and Scandals maps the changing landscape of Arab modernity, or Nahda, in the digital age and traces how concepts such as the nation, community, power, the intellectual, the author, and the novel are hacked and recoded through new modes of confrontation, circulation, and dissent. Cover......Page 1 Title Page......Page 4 Copyright Page......Page 5 CONTENTS......Page 10 Acknowledgments......Page 12 Note on Translation and Transliteration......Page 16 Introduction......Page 20 Writing Codes......Page 22 Digital World- Making......Page 27 Theoretical Framework: The Leaking Subject......Page 36 Trials of Adab in the Digital Age......Page 41 Bookmarks......Page 46 1. On Leaking: From The Arabian Nights to WikiLeaks......Page 49 Registers of the Leak......Page 52 Marked Bodies......Page 57 “L’art ne cédera pas à vos règles!”: Rupi Kaur and Aliaa Elmahdy......Page 59 Leak contra Lack......Page 62 Exploiting Security Holes: Manning, Assange, Snowden......Page 64 The Wiki in WikiLeaks......Page 71 Untaming the Leak......Page 73 Conclusion......Page 75 2. What Is in My Heart Is on My Twitter......Page 77 Wael Abbas: Adab Violations......Page 80 Equality in Insult......Page 82 Exposure, Scene-making, Scandal......Page 89 Affective Transparency......Page 91 Digital Consciousness......Page 95 Regime in Fragments......Page 98 Ideal Past, Concrete Present......Page 103 Conclusion......Page 106 3. The Infinite Scroll......Page 108 Tweets, Leaks, Akhbār......Page 110 Glass House of Twitter......Page 117 Mujtahidd: A Jinn from Arabia......Page 119 Leakaesthetics......Page 125 Mystery of Knowledge......Page 129 Canonizing Exposure......Page 133 Serial Gutter......Page 137 Conclusion......Page 142 4. Fiction of Scandal Redux......Page 146 Digital Fascination, Literary Anxiety......Page 148 Girls of Riyadh: Hacking the Bestseller......Page 152 Scandal in Translation......Page 155 Taxi: Leaking while Driving......Page 157 Shaking the Regime......Page 160 Conclusion......Page 163 5. Cyber- Raiding......Page 165 Twitter: All the Rage!......Page 167 The Blasphemous Author......Page 169 Ghazwa: A Hashtag Raid......Page 175 Displacement of Knowledge......Page 180 Can the Mawʾ ūda Speak?......Page 182 In the Name of the Youth......Page 187 Conclusion......Page 189 Conclusion......Page 192 Notes......Page 200 Glossary......Page 222 Bibliography......Page 224 Index......Page 234