From:

Sabine Damir-Geilsdorf, Stephan Milich (eds.) Creative Resistance Political Humor in the Arab Uprisings

April 2020, 332 p., pb., Klebebindung

40,00 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4069-4 E-Book: PDF: 39,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4069-8

During the uprisings of the Arab Spring between 2010 and 2012, oppositional move- ments used political humor to criticize political leaders or to expose the absurdities of the socio-political conditions. These humorous expressions in various art forms such as poetry, stand-up comedy, street art, music, caricatures, cartoons, comics and puppet shows were further distributed in the social media.

This first comprehensive study of political humor in the uprisings explores the varieties and functions of political humor as a creative tool for resistance. It analyzes humorous forms of cultural expression and their impact on socio-political developments in diffe- rent countries of the Middle East and North Africa with a special focus on the changing modes of humor.

Sabine Damir-Geilsdorf is Professor for Middle Eastern Studies and Director of the Institute of Middle Eastern and South East Asian Studies at the University of Cologne. She obtained her PhD in Islamic Studies with a thesis on the Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) and received her postdoctoral qualification degree (Habilitation) with a study on Palestinian narratives of the Arab-Israeli war 1948. She has carried out field research in various countries of the Middle East and has published widely on transfor- mations of religious concepts, Islamism, (forced) migration in the Middle East, Islam in Germany, and popular culture in Middle Eastern societies.

Stephan Milich is senior lecturer in Arabic Literature and Islamic Studies the Univer- sity of Cologne. His research interests include contemporary Arabic poetry and prose, culture and ideology as well as representations and concepts of exile and trauma in Ara- bic literature. He has published widely on modern Arab poetry and translated a number of literary works by contemporary Arab authors such as Mahmoud Darwish, Moham- med Bennis, Rosa Yassin Hassan into German. He currently works on representations of trauma in contemporary Arabic fiction with a special interest in ‘trauma politics’ as well as on German orientalism and ‘orient politics’ in WWI.

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Content

INTRODUCTION

Forms and Functions of Political Humor in Arab Societies: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives Sabine Damir-Geilsdorf & Stephan Milich | 9

PART I : MAGHREB

Beyond Tanfis: Performativity and Quotidian Humor in Revolutionary Tunisia Nathanael Mannone | 53

Humor, Mockery and Defamation in Western Sahara: How do Sahrawi Artists use New Media to Perform Political Criticism? Sébastien Boulay & Mohamed Dahmi | 79

PART II: EGYPT, SUDAN

“We started to Celebrate Being Egyptian”: Humor in the Work of Younger Egyptian Artists Fabian Heerbaart | 103

From Equanimity to Agony: Portraits of Soldiers and Police Officers in Two Artwork Series of Egyptian Visual Artist Nermine Hammam Stephan Milich | 131

A Festival of Resistance: Poetic Documents of the Revolution Liza Franke | 153

Towards an Understanding of the Role of Political Satire in Sudan Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann | 171

PART III: SYRIA, PALESTINE, KUWAIT, LEBANON

“Candies from Eastern Ghouta”: Dark Humor in Visualizing the Syrian Conflict Sabine Damir-Geilsdorf | 191

If a Duck is Drawn in the Desert, Does Anybody See It? Humor, Art and Infrastructures of Palestinian Statehood Chrisoula Lionis | 223

Dealing with Politics in Palestine: The Zan al-ʾAn Comics Project in Ramallah Anna Gabai | 243

From Kuwait’s Margins to Tolaytila’s Mainstream: Sheno Ya3ni Challenging Social Positioning through Dystopian Satire Fatema Hubail | 259

A Critique of Religious Sectarianism through Satire: A Case Study of Lebanese Rap Fernanda Fischione | 297

Authors | 327

Forms and Functions of Political Humor in Arab Societies Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

SABINE DAMIR-GEILSDORF & STEPHAN MILICH1

“Cannot install ‘freedom’! Please remove ‘Mubarak’ and try again” CITED IN SALEM/TAIRA 2012

In 1964, the francophone Egyptian writer Albert Cossery published his novel La Violence et la Derision2 whose first English translation appeared shortly before the Egyptian uprising started in January 2011. The three fictive

1 We wish to express our deep gratitude to Yasmina Hedider for her meticulous editorial work patiently assisting the editorial process of this volume. Moreover, we would like to thank Fabian Heerbaart who provided his expertise on graffiti and street art in Egypt and beyond, as well as Susanne Eckstein and Lena Reuter for their assistance in the editorial process, and Angela Zerbe for her thorough proofreading of the articles. 2 The English translation carries the title The Jokers, translated by Anna Moscho- vakis, and published by New York Review Books in 2010, while the title of the Arabic translation is al-ʿUnf wa-l-sukhriyya (Violence and Satire), first published by Dar al-Hilal (Cairo) in 1993. The novel was made into a movie by Egyptian director Asmaa Al-Bakry in 2004. For a comprehensive overview of his oeuvre and an interesting analysis of Cossery’s complex thoughts on revolution, its impasses and (im)possibilities, see Shahin 2011.

10 | SABINE DAMIR-GEILSDORF & STEPHAN MILICH revolutionaries Haykal, Kareem and Taher, fighting the authoritarian regime in the person of a tyrannical governor of an unnamed Middle Eastern provincial capital, decide to abstain from violent means of resistance and to resort to parody and satire instead. Drawing on overstatement and hyperbole, they praise the governor on posters in the streets and in a widely read newspaper in such an exaggerated way that everybody is immediately aware of the inherent, biting satire. Yet no one dares to criticize these expressions of adulation in rhyme and meter for it might imply criticism of the governor. Unable to stop the subversive wave of indignation that originated from these poems and posters, the ‘defenseless’ governor has to step down finally, and the revolution fought with non-violent, carnivalesque means turns out to be successful.3 In reality, of course, it is not as easy as in fiction to overthrow a tyrannical ruler by means of satire or other forms of humorous critique. Although Khalid Kishtainy, author of the classic Arab Political Humor (London: Quartet Books 1986) as well as of several satirical novels, affirms that “encouragement of the development and widespread use of political humor and satirical literature should be an essential part of any strategy of civil resistance”, he concedes that there has been “no record of a regime falling because of a joke” (Kishtainy 2009: 54). Nevertheless, opposition move- ments both in liberal and authoritarian countries have resorted to political humor as a strategy and means of nonviolent resistance (see Shehata 1992; Sorensen 2008; Varol 2014; Stokker 1995; Tsakona/Popa 2011; Tsakona/ Popa 2013). This applies also to the mass protests and upheavals of the so- called Arab Spring, which ignited in late 2010 in Tunisia and quickly spread to other Arab countries like Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, Sudan, Morocco, Iraq and Lebanon. From 2011 onwards, a multitude of actors have heavily drawn on satire, irony and parody to criticize the symbolically charged figure of the president/king and the political system he represents or to shed light upon the shortcomings and absurdities of the social-political conditions in the everyday lives of the citizens. The forms of humorous cultural expression have been as diverse and transgressive as the geographical extension and expansion of the uprisings. Satire and political humor have been used extensively in manifold genres and art forms as well

3 Although the governor has already been brought down by satirical means, Taher decides in the end to assassinate the discharged governor.

INTRODUCTION | 11 as in popular culture such as jokes, films, comedy shows, graffiti and street art, resistance songs and music such as political rap and Egyptian mahragan, protest banners, caricatures and cartoons, user-generated video-clips, remixed memes and mashups. In this situation of ongoing anti-government protest, information and communications technology (ICT) and particularly social media have been considered to be an apt tool to incite, organize and coordinate the uprisings as well as a participatory medium. This has led to the rise of new forms of articulation of dissent and political criticism through the creation of counter-public spaces (cp. El Marzouki 2015; Khamis/ Vaughn 2011; Aman/Jayroe 2013): “Facebook, mobile phones, and Twitter became the primary means of circulating the jokes; jokes thus became one of the revolution’s most crucial weapons.” (Salem/Taira 2012: 192)4 However, the boom of political humor witnessed during the Arab uprisings did not take place only online. At central urban places such as Maidan al-Tahrir in Cairo, Avenue Habib Bourguiba in Tunis, the Martyrs’ Square in Tripoli (Libya) or the Pearl Square in Manama (Bahrain) protestors gathered to create revolutionary communalities and (re)claimed these places as public spaces.5 Occupying these places achieved a significant symbolic power, producing the new, utopian reality of a substantive revolutionary moment.6 Urban places were not only converted into forums for mass organization and mobilization (cp. Sadiki 2015: 4), but also became complex spaces of aesthetic production and democratic conversation, providing opportunities to unlearn civil obedience, rehearse egalitarian and democratic practices and acquire revolutionary capacities. During carnivalesque

4 One of the numerous jokes circulating in Egypt in 2011 goes as follows: “Nasser and Sadat ask Mubarak: “Poison or assassination?” He replies: “Facebook!” (cited in Salem/Taira 2012: 197) 5 In regard to Saudi Arabia, Asef Bayat (2017: 70) explains that “Saudi youth, constrained by the repressive police, created their own Tahrir in the virtual world, where they came together, communicated, chatted, and discussed the nation’s future.” 6 An insightful discussion on the adequacy and aptness of the term revolution for the respective countries is provided by Bayat in his book Revolution without Revolutionary (2017), coining the term refolution as a ‘mixture’ of revolution and reform. In this context, his critique on the all-pervasive neo-liberal condition is crucial. (see ibid: 21-23)

12 | SABINE DAMIR-GEILSDORF & STEPHAN MILICH festivities which created connectivities across heterogeneous social groups, music, theatre, poetry, paintings and banners were produced and performed. (cp. Wahdan 2014; Sabea 2014; Le Vine 2015:1282) It was “a carnival of conviviality and fun, where people enjoyed the magical energy, the light and sound of those intimate and extraordinary moments.” (Bayat 2017: 70) This explosion of artistic expression during the Arab uprisings attained enormous media attention both within the Arab countries as well as in international media and politics.7 Yet nine years after these mass protest movements which were sparked by the desperate suicide of Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi on December 17, 2010 (who died a few weeks later on January 4, 2011) – leading to the ouster of former president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali some weeks later – enthusiastic hopes of the civil societies in these countries for regime change, democratic transition, social justice, as well as for ending corruption and reducing unemployment have turned into disillusionment.8 In view of the fast return of repression and autocratic rule in countries like Egypt or the ongoing human catastrophes as well as religious and ethnic fragmentation afflicting countries such as Syria, Yemen and Libya, the conditions and potential for humorous political expression have been utterly altered, becoming more restrictive and risky than in 2011 and, in some countries, even before the uprisings. (see for instance in regard to Egypt Elsayed 2016; on Algeria, see Cheufra 2019) Processes of democratic and participatory political structures have been brutally interrupted and have faced backlash and crackdown with the exception of Tunisia, which is still in a fragile state of political transition.

7 It is important to note that while precedent protest movements like the Egyptian Kefaya! (‘Enough!’), the April 6 Youth Movement or, shortly before the uprising, We are all Khaled Said, had received considerable international media coverage, the numerous workers’ strikes and (independent) trade-union activities (see in detail Alexander 2010; Beinin 2009, 2016; for Morocco, see Buehler 2018), recurrently taking place over the last decades, have been rather neglected in the international media. 8 From the numerous publications on the political developments and afterlives of the Arab uprisings, see especially Kienle/Sika 2015; Achcar 2013; Lynch 2012; Beinin 2016; De Smet 2016; Ghanem 2016; Bayat 2017; Demmelhuber et al. 2017; Jumet 2017; Mittermaier 2018; Abi-Mershed 2018; Lacroix/Filiu 2019.

INTRODUCTION | 13

Although the Arab uprisings have neither led to a broader democratic transition nor succeeded in changing entrenched autocratic power structures in the region, a number of scholars consider them to be decisive moments in the emergence of a new democratic culture and a collective realization that breaking down fear-barriers and mobilizing popular movements are possible. Yet it goes without saying that protest and rebellion alone do not create a more just political order. While Sadiki (2015) considers the fact that the Arab uprisings were rather ‘leaderless’ – unlike mass protest in other regions with charismatic or intellectual figures such as Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Ali Shariati or Khomeini – as the sign of a rising “peoplehood” and a button-up process, Bayat (2017) classifies this ‘leaderlessness’ as a general organiza- tional weakness partly responsible for the failure of the revolutions.9 Thus in line with Bayat (ibid: 139) who claims that “the long revolution may have to begin even when the short revolution ends”, a number of scholars and Arab intellectuals perceive the crack-down on the protest movements and the struggle for democracy and social justice to be an interim phase in people’s long-term struggle. (cp. Sadiki 2016; Chalcraft 2016; Makdisi 2016; Lacroix/ Filiu 2019) A significant indicator that this revolutionary process is ongoing became evident with the most recent protests. At the time of finalizing this introduction (October 2019), nationwide anti-governmental protests have broken out again in several Arab countries: in Sudan and Algeria where, in spring 2019, mass protests reemerged to end military rule after the successful ouster of former dictators Omar al-Bashir and Abd al-Aziz Bouteflika; in Iraq where in September and October 2019 thousands of protestors

9 On this point, Bayat adds that “[a]ctivists were distinctly against any ‘ideology’ and militantly disdained solid organization, recognizable leadership, not to mention any blueprint or alternative programs.” (Bayat 2017: 16) He does not mention that the post-ideological concepts of today’s mass movements are partly motivated by previous (socialist and anti-imperialist) revolutions turning even- tually into oppressive regimes after having come to power. Nevertheless, his critical argument is strongly supported by the subsequent developments culmi- nating in the fact that the well-organized Muslim Brotherhood, and of course, the SCAF, both kidnapped the revolution in their own ways. Against the grain of indi- vidualization and post-ideology, mass movements and resistance have to replace ideology with a new (solidary and cooperative) belief system that unites the people, but remains immune to interior oppressive forces.

14 | SABINE DAMIR-GEILSDORF & STEPHAN MILICH demanded the “fall of the regime”, their protests culminating in violent clashes between demonstrators on the one hand and police and army on the other hand; in Egypt where, since the military coup in 2013, waves of arrests of political opponents have been carried out, severely restrictive laws that further curtail freedom of speech have been introduced, and critics of the regime have to fear enforced disappearance (see HRW 2019), protesters started again in September 2019 to march in cities across the country, demanding the resignation of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Since various forms of political humor have been an important element of these protests, the aim of this volume is to examine its forms, functions and dynamics as a means of non-violent (non-physical) resistance in the context of the Arab uprisings. The majority of the contributions to this book are based on papers held by the authors at the international conference Creative Resistance: Political Humor in the Arab Uprisings, which – generously funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation – took place from 27-29 March, 2014, at the University of Cologne. While most of the papers given at the conference focused on the political humor used in mass protests in Arab countries in 2011 and 2012, this edited volume has been enriched by a number of new contributions that widen its thematic and geographical scope. It also includes perspectives on Arab countries in which no large-scale protests took place in the frame of the so called Arab Spring, and which have therefore been less in the spotlight of both international scholarship and the media. Before presenting the contributions to this volume, we will first give an overview of the rich tradition of political humor in traditional and modern Arabic culture, focusing on literature, satire and the political joke. Thereafter, we will introduce central theories and concepts of political humor, discussing them against the backdrop of humorous cultural expressions that occurred in the Arab uprisings. Although much has been written and published on the socio-political, economic and even cultural aspects of the ‘Arab Spring’, there is still a significant lack of research focusing exclusively on political humor as political criticism and resistance. The essays compiled in this volume not only illustrate the remarkable plurality and creativity of Arabic political humor today; they also highlight the great dynamics of change political humor has constantly been subject to, partly due to the extreme political and social developments and ruptures of the past years.

INTRODUCTION | 15

CULTURAL TRADITIONS OF ARAB POLITICAL HUMOR

Mockery, lampooning and derision (tahakkum, hijaʾ), laughter (dahak), jest (hazl), satire (sukhriyya), and jokes and joke making (nukat, duʿaba) as social, cultural and political means of expression have a long and rich tradition in Arabic culture. They can be found across a variety of literary genres and periods ranging from pre- and old Arabic invective poetry with which poets of tribes ridiculed (those of) opposing tribes, to classical Arab poetry, satirical Abbasid and post-Abbasid adab and folk literature in the form of anecdotes, jokes and tales. Classic masters of adab such as al-Jahiz (776- around 868), who not only practiced witty humor, but also reflected theoretically on it10, the humorous ‘medieval’ folk anecdotes and tales attached to figures such as Juha/Nasreddin Hoca, the heroes of the Maqamat (written in rhymed and rhythmically structured prose) by Hamadhani (967- 1007) and al-Hariri (1054-1122) (see Neuwirth 2009), One Thousand and One Nights or subversive humor used by the historian Ibn Arabshah (1398- 1450) (see Leder 2009) are only some of the manifold examples in Arabic literary and intellectual tradition in which wit, irony and (self)mockery were highlighted as a means to challenge power structures and to transgress social norms.11 Surprisingly, even a pious Islamic scholar like Ibn al-Jauzi (d. 1201) penned several books exclusively dedicated to humor. (see Marzolph 1992: 165-180) As an eminently (post)modern master of satire and cultural mediator between the old and the new, Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (1804-1887) has to be singled out. Confronted with emerging modernity/modernism, institutionalized discrimination and European colonialism, he renewed the rich heritage of Arab satire in highly subversive and original ways, creating his unique satirical style which abounds with “linguistic play” (Hamarneh

10 See his epistle Risala fi-l-jidd wa-l-hazl (‘The Treatise on Jest and Earnest’). See also Montgomery 2009: 209-239. 11 For more details on humor in pre-modern Arabic/Islamic literature, see Tamer 2009, Ammann 1993, Marzolph 1992, and Rosenthal 1956. Mention can also be made of an anthology of pre-modern heretical literature in Arabic, entitled Diwan al-zanabiqa (‘Poetry of the heretics’), edited by Jamal Jumʿa (2007), which highlights the key role of mockery and satire among a large number of prominent and less known poets and authors.

16 | SABINE DAMIR-GEILSDORF & STEPHAN MILICH

2010: 322), language masquerade, parody of genres and the characters’ self- images, as well as meta-poetical irony. With the spread of the printing press in the 19th century, poetry and jokes as well as caricatures played a major role in expressing political dissent. Established during the second half of the 19th century in various Arab countries, satirical magazines peppered with the newly emerging art form of the caricature were crucial in promoting a new political culture. Among early Arabic satirical periodicals are the Egyptian Abu Naddara Zarqa (‘The Man with Blue Glasses’), founded in 1877 by Yaʿqub Sannuʿ12 (1839-1912), and al-Tankit wa-l-Tabkit (‘Fun and Reproach’), established by Abdullah al-Nadim (1845-1898) in 1881. (see Booth 1992; Ettmüller 2012) Both magazines employed satire to attack European colonial rule, corrupt local elites, Ottoman repression, political injustice and feudalism, oppression of women and outmoded social customs, often in the form of colloquial poetry (zajal). Furthermore, satire was used in the theatrical traditions of Karagöz/ Karakush, the shadow puppet theatre, as well as the traditional jokes on Karakush (the clown), still popular in 19th century Egypt.13 After World War I, early modern, so called neo-classicist poetry, lampooned and criticized British and French colonial rule and social lacunae in satirical ways, as for instance during and after the Iraqi Uprising of 1920 (thawrat al-ʿishrin) against the British. Prominent Iraqi poets such as Maʿruf al-Rusafi14 (1875- 1945), Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi (1863–1936), Muhammad Mahdi al-Basir (1896-1974) or Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri (1899-1997) exposed power interests among the domestic as well as the British ruling elite, infusing their powerful social or political critique with derision and ridicule. (see Izzidien 1971; Walther 1994) The same applies to poetry in other Arab countries like

12 For more on Yaʿqub Sannuʿ and his pioneering activities in the field of theatre and the satirical press, see Gonzalez-Quijano 2012: 11-13 and Amin 2010: 284- 292. Abou Naddara is also the name of a collective of Syrian filmmakers, see https://www.abounaddara.com/. 13 One of the first Tunisian satirical magazines, founded in 1984 by Stenk Razine, was called Karakouz. For more on Tunisian satirical magazines and caricatures, see ʿAbd al-Raʾuf 2019. 14 On a cynical poem against the British and his own people’s failure, see Kishtainy 2009: 60.

INTRODUCTION | 17

Tunisia, Syria or Egypt with most prominent poets e.g. the Tunisian- Egyptian Bayram al-Tunisi (1893-1961) and Ahmad Shauqi (Egypt, 1868- 1932) who satirized not only the colonial British, but also the domestic rulers. (cf. Kishtainy 2009: 59) After the end of colonial rule, the establishment of independent Arab nationalist regimes was accompanied by satirical critique too. The school of caricature around the Cairo daily al-Akhbar with Muhammad ʿAbd al-Munʿim Rakha stood out in the 1950s and 1960s (see Gonzalez-Quijano 2012: 12), later complemented by the “great Egyptian cartoonists […] Ahmed Hegazi (1936-2011) and Salah Jaheen (1930-1986)” (Guyer 2016: 210-211). Also in post-indepen-dence Egypt, the popular duo Nagm/Imam, with poet Ahmad Fuʾad Nagm (1929-2013) and singer Shaikh Imam ʿIsa (1918-1995), challenged the authoritarianism of Egyptian president Gamal Abd al-Nasser and the political establishment’s corruption and inefficiency, mocking the unjust absurdities common Egyptians had to cope with in daily life.15 Iraqi poets such as Ahmad Matar (born 1954) and Muzaffar al-Nawwab (born 1934) were at the forefront of using satirical poetry in order to challenge and lampoon political rulers, security services and the police. (cf. Milich/ Tramontini 2018; Kishtainy 2009: 56-58; al-Usta 2002; Bardenstein 1997) The Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-ʿAli, a colleague and friend of Ahmad Matar, mixed the sadness about the Palestinian tragedy with a sharp critique of Arab politics, exposing the injustice and selfishness of the reactionary Arab regimes. In Syria, the pioneer of the prose poem (qasidat al-nathr) and playwright Muhammad al-Maghut (1934-2006) created masterpieces of subversive political satire, getting to the heart of the Arab societies’ social and political maladies. (see Hamdan 2006; Milich/Tramontini 2018) Using paradox as a key literary device, he exposed the contradictions, taboos and frontlines he held responsible for the impossibility of political change and revolution, although he continued dreaming of a free and just Arab homeland:

Whenever freedom rained down anywhere in the world, Arab regimes rush out to cover their people with umbrellas, fearing that they would ‘catch cold.’ Why would the Arabs appear to cling to everything and anything? Are they about to drown?

15 See Franke in this volume and Botros 2015.

18 | SABINE DAMIR-GEILSDORF & STEPHAN MILICH

Everything around us is cracking and collapsing. Where are the ruins? Did they sell them already? […]16

While poetry has been the major and most esteemed form of artistic expression for centuries, since the second half of the 20th century, fiction has become increasingly popular and valued.17 Modern Arabic fiction as a narrative genre criticizes social structures, backwardness and political abuse by way of irony or satire. To mention only three of the numerous examples of satirical fiction and prose writing in Arab countries: While Khalid al-Khamissi’s (born 1962) book Taxi (Cairo: Dar Shuruq 2007) prominently highlights Egyptian political humor in conversations with Cairene taxi drivers, revealing the population’s widespread discontent with the government, Palestinian writer Suʿad Amiry (born 1951) in Sharon and my mother-in-law (New York: Pantheon 2004) not only mocked the quotidian absurdities of Palestinian life under occupation (including her Palestinian mother-in-law), but also the mentality and dehumanizing acts of the occupier.18 Another effective strategy of satirical critique is illustrated by

16 See his poem Compulsory reasons, translated by Noel Abdulahad, at: https:// www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-compulsory-reasons/. For the original poem in Arabic, entitled al-Asbab al-mujiba, see Maghut, Muhammad (2001): Sayyaf al-zuhur (‘The Executioner of Flowers’), Damascus: Dar al-Mada. 17 Literature and particularly poetry in both fusha and ʿammiyya have been the main, century-long platform to negotiate social and political concerns and develop- ments, and still form an essential archive and resource for social critique and oppositional movements and actions (see e. g. Pannewick/Khalil 2015; Milich 2012a and b) to this day. Yet while Arabic literature has lost its outstanding position in today’s culture, with globally circulating forms of cultural expression being more relevant in the Arab uprisings, poetry has still played a role in the protests, used in banners, songs and chants, as the contribution of Franke in this volume shows. On Egyptian colloquial poetry in the protests of 2011, see also Radwan 2012: 215-222 and Radwan 2019. 18 Other outstanding satirical novelists include, for example, Sunʿallah Ibrahim (Egypt), Zakariyya Tamer (Syria), and, from the younger generation of writers, Hamdi Abu Golayyel and Ahmad al-ʿAʾidi (both Egypt). Important to note, humor does not seem to dominate the newly emerging genre of the revolutionary

INTRODUCTION | 19

Iraqi-American writer and scholar Sinan Antoon (born 1967) who narrates in his first novel Iʿjam (‘Diacritics’), published by the Beiruti Dar al-Adab in 2004, how the protagonist – in the words of Cameroonian philosopher and cultural critic Achille Mbembe (2001: 105) – “develop[s] ways of separating words and phrases [or even letters and characters] from their conventional meanings and us[es] them in quite another sense”, thus creating a whole vocabulary19, “equivocal and ambiguous, parallel to the official discourse.” Antoon’s novel blasphemously desecrates not only the one-party rule and the ‘leader’, but also exposes the absurd and cruel nature of Baathist culture and politics. According to Mbembe (ibid: 109), the task of the politically subversive writer is first to illustrate how “individuals, by their laughter, kidnap power and force it, as if by accident, to examine its own vulgarity”, a carnivalesque strategy the novel’s protagonist, a young Iraqi student of English literature, superbly masters, turning him into a threat for the regime that allows neither for laughter nor ambiguity; secondly, the novel shows how citizens can resist the colonization of their minds and the imposition “of a new mindscape” (ibid: 111), even though satirical resistance ultimately leads to the regime’s murder of the subversive student. The most common and popular cultural form and domain of laughter might be the joke, however. Political jokes whose authorship can usually not be traced back to its origin have been an important means to expose corruption and political grievances. (see Salem/Taira 2012; Kishtainy 1985, 2009; Shehata 1992) From Shehata’s (1992: 75) point of view “[p]olitical

novel, young authors from Egypt and Tunisia created during the uprisings. Besides their frequent auto-biographical tendency, their testimonial and docu- menttary style and diary form as well as the political analyses inserted in the literary text, one can only find few humorous expressions, often in the form of sarcasm and black humor in their novels. On the other hand, since 2011, and parallel to this former development, satirical literature (al-adab al-sakhir), mainly written in the vernacular (ʿammiyya) has been clearly on the rise, but a large part of this genre is not directly political in expression. (see Haland 2017; Jacquemond 2016) 19 al-Qaʾid (‘leader’) becomes al-qaʿid (‘the sitting one’); wizarat al-thaqafa (‘ministry of culture’) becomes wizarat al-sakhafa (‘ministry of abjectness’ or ‘absurdity’); al-baʿth (‘renaissance, mission’ – meant is the Baath Party) becomes al-ʿabath (‘absurdity’) etc.

20 | SABINE DAMIR-GEILSDORF & STEPHAN MILICH jokes are an integral part of Egyptian life and can be heard in government offices by bureaucrats passing the time, in local coffee houses, among friends, and in the homes of millions of urban Egyptians.” Some scholars have elaborated on the thematic shifts Egyptian political jokes were subject to, exposing people’s current dissent and dissatisfaction with political circumstances. While in Nasser’s era jokes often criticized the secret police and the absence of freedom of expression, during the presidency of Sadat jokes were cracked on his clashes with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Church. For the three decades of Mubarak’s rule, hundreds of jokes varying in manner and matter were directed at him personally and his policies (Hammoud 2014: 20; Shehata 1992: 87-88), often comparing him to a monkey, a donkey (Shehata 1992: 84-86) or a “laughing cow” (baʾara dahika; see Salem/Taira 2012). Since the early 2000s, when Mubarak was in his mid-70s, many jokes arose about scenes on his deathbed and his never- ending presidency, often with bitter sarcasm. (see El Amrani 2011) El Amrani (2011) quotes for example the following joke which depicts even God as being afraid of Mubarak:

God summons Azrael [the archangel of death] and tells him, ‘It’s time to get Hosni Mubarak.’ ‘Are you sure?’ Azrael asks timidly. God insists: ‘Yes, his time has come; go and bring me his soul.’ So Azrael descends from heaven and heads straight for the presidential palace. Once there, he tries to walk in, but he is captured by State Security. They throw him in a cell, beat him up, and torture him. After several months, he is finally set free. Back in heaven, God sees him all bruised and broken and asks, ‘What happened?’ ‘State Security beat me and tortured me,’ Azrael tells God. ‘They only just sent me back.’ God goes pale and in a frightened voice says, ‘Did you tell them I sent you?’

Badarneh (2011: 318) identifies three major themes – besides ridiculing the leader cult and authority of the ruler – of contemporary Arab political jokes: economic reforms, lack of democracy and free elections. However, although political jokes on the ruler were widespread in all Arab countries, they were usually told in secret, since direct mocking of the president or king was either a social taboo or considered an illegal act, as in Syria or Libya where

INTRODUCTION | 21 mockery was only expressed openly during the Arab uprisings.20 As Shehata (1992) has convincingly shown, jokes – particularly in countries with autocratic rule – are significant indicators of current political and societal sentiments, complementing, adjusting or even negating the highly manipulated state-controlled discourse in the media and other channels of public expression.21 As Salem and Taira (2012: 208) note, “[t]he feelings of hope and dramatic mood changes throughout the eighteen days of the revolution and beyond can be traced through these jokes.” Even more, jokes allow anyone to participate in creating new ones or producing new variations of already existing jokes: “In such a public space, all Egyptians can be editors and can participate in updating jokes with their own concerns.” (Salem/Taira 2012: 208) No wonder then that jokes circulate widely across national borders in social media, being adapted time and again to other regional contexts and specifics. Some puns however are limited to the local surroundings, as in the case of Syrian presidents Hafiz and Bashar al-Assad to whom numerous jokes with a lion (asad) as protagonist or, in the ridiculed form, a cat (qitta) were dedicated.22

20 In regard to Egyptian cultural productions and especially drama, Abou El Naga (2009: 298) specifies: “Egyptian theatre never resorted to the figure of the ‘president’”, using the historical figures of the king or sultan instead in order to elude censorship. 21 A differently directed, but highly interesting observation in regard to Egyptian political jokes, the conditions of their production and reception and the relation to political culture is reported by Samer Shehata (1992: 80) who writes: “Publishing Egyptian jokes would be like taking the country’s internal problems and exhibiting them publicly for the whole world to see. This group saw my [Shehata’s] research as tantamount to a criticism of Egyptian society. One person, trying to explain why he felt that publishing jokes would be wrong, said, quite oblivious to the importance of his comment, that the jokes reflected the lack of democracy in the country and the inability of the Egyptian people to be democratic. Quite differently, I do not believe the jokes signify the inability of Egyptians to be democratic. Rather, I interpret the jokes to reflect the Egyptian people’s continuous yearning and desire for democracy.” 22 On culture-bound humor in Lebanon, see Kazarian 2011: 339-341.

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HUMOR THEORIES

Scholarly works on functions and types of humor often categorize three different theories of humor: 1) superiority theories, 2) incongruity theories and 3) relief theories. Superiority theories see humor driven by feelings of superiority of an individual or group against other individuals or collectives; laughter, then, results from disparaging or degrading others. (cp. Billig 2005: 37-56) According to this theory, one of its main functions is to foster a sense of unity derived from a collective feeling of superiority over outgroup members who are laughed at. (cp. Meyer 2000: 315) Incongruity theories, in turn, focus on cognitive aspects of humor and conceptualize it as a social phenomenon, depending on the violation of what is socially and culturally perceived as normal. From this perspective, the cause of laughter is based on the perception or recognition of incongruities and ambiguities, e.g. the discrepancy and gap between what is expected and what is surprisingly happening or suddenly revealed. (cp. Üngör/Verkerke 2015: 83; Dormann/ Biddle 2009: 805; Meyer 2000: 312-313.) The juxtaposition of mismatched elements in this context often involves the “transgression of social norms, or the breaking of established social patterns”. (Kuipers 2009: 221; see also Sorensen 2008: 171) Relief theories regard humor as a means for releasing tension, e.g. a kind of emotional and mental liberation and catharsis. This is supported by psychological and psychoanalytical investigations in humor and laughter which stress humor as an “emotion regulating mechanism that can improve mental health” (Martin/Ford 2018: 27). From this viewpoint, humor, comedy and laughter can acquire a healing effect, “enhanc[ing] the production of hormones called endorphins, which act as natural painkillers, thereby increasing vitality and reducing stress” (Papazoglou 2012: 316). As Martin and Ford (2018: 27) argue, emotion-regulating mechanisms and relief are also indicated by studies of survivors of extreme adversity such as the brutal conditions of concentration camps. In such situations, humor, in the form of joking about the oppressors as well as the hardships endured, can often be an important means for “maintaining group cohesion and morale; preserving a sense of mastery, hope, and self-respect; and thereby enabling individuals to survive in seemingly hopeless circumstances” (ibid). Similarly, Ostrower (2015, 2014) shows how survivors of the Holocaust explained to her in interviews how humor helped them in coping with the terrible realities. Thus, in particular so-called gallows humor or dark humor

INTRODUCTION | 23 can be perceived as a vital resource for dealing with violence, destruction and oppression, since it can mitigate anxiety, fear and pain or enable a distancing from one’s reality. As one current example, the Working Group on Jokes, War, and Genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, founded by Damir Arsenijevic in 2012, points out, jokes facilitate speaking about a terrifying past or a violent present, or help people regain insights and the truth of something they had “already known but chose to be silent about” (Arsenijevic 2019). In humor theories, this discharge of tension is one of the main functions humor is believed to fulfill, but as Kuipers (2008: 362) stresses, the functions and types of humor can intersect and mingle, often serving two or more func- tions at the same time. In any case, a shared humor obviously plays a crucial role for social relationships, community-building processes, mutual under- standing and group cohesion. (cp. Terrion/Ashforth 2002) Yet humorous expressions not only foster group solidarity and cohesion, they can also create boundaries for the targeted “others”. Some scholars therefore hint at these negative aspects of humor that transcend the usual scope of superiority theories. Lefcourt (2001: 72), for instance, distinguishes “positive humor” that encourages group solidarity, from negative or “hostile humor” that separates and excludes. Not only can humor be morally objectionable when it treats something that should be taken seriously as a subject for play; it can also keep sexist and racist stereotypes in circulation, thereby supporting prejudice, aggression and unjust power formations. (see Morreall 2016; Weinstein/Hodgins/Ostvik-White 2011) Moreover, as Billig (2005: 23) points out, “negative” forms of humor can cause harm and suffering by humiliating its victims. Jokes or humorous expressions of extremely violent events can be experienced as a renewed or repeated form of aggression for the afflicted people. Mocking the afflicted can trivialize victims’ suffering or make people sympathize with the victimizer. However, since humor is a social phenomenon, determining what is funny always depends on the specific social and cultural context, thus varying from person to person within a society. While some people might identify certain themes or expressions as humorous, others might consider them as odd, offensive or off limits. Adding a further aspect, Kuipers (2008: 370) sees humor’s revolutionary potential as strongly depending on power structures and divisions as well as status relations between jokers and their targets. While in very repressive and unequal conditions the political humor of those

24 | SABINE DAMIR-GEILSDORF & STEPHAN MILICH without power tends to be more clandestine and toothless, in more open societies it is likely to transcend boundaries or mobilize people. (cp. ibid) There is much scholarly disagreement about the potentially subversive effects of political humor in oppressive regimes and dictatorships. Many authors argue that because expressions of political humor remain largely clandestine and anonymous in oppressive regimes (such as the so called Flüsterwitze or ‘whispered jokes’ in Nazi Germany), internal tension relief and morale-boosting are more important than the effects on the targeted “outgroup”. (see Kuipers 2008: 369) Benton, for example, who investigated political humor in the former Soviet Union, maintains that political jokes in oppressive regimes “change nothing and will mobilize no one” but only “create sweet illusions of revenge” (Benton 1988: 54). Similarly, Swart (2008: 898) argues that political jokes can offer a brief respite from the realities of everyday life and a “reduction ad absurdum by means of which the regime, the hardships, the duplicity and even the fear and the humiliation are domesticated”. Although jokes might create a separate space a regime cannot infiltrate, the triumphs emerging from laughter hidden behind the hand to the mouth are usually transitory and restricted to individual psychological effects, rather exercising maintenance of self-esteem and good morale than provoking political changes. Even more, according to some theorists of humor and the political joke, expressions of political humor are not rebellious but foster further resignation, preserving the status quo and thus functioning as a “substitute for the political action that could otherwise effect change” (ibid: 899). Other authors in turn consider political humor in authoritarian regimes as a means which can make “people critically reflect on their situation, allow them to express hostility against those in power, create an alternative space, or even give people the courage to take up some more concrete actions” (Kuipers 2008: 396-397). Sorensen (2008: 185) equally stresses positive aspects by maintaining that although the role of political humor should not be exaggerated, it can play a crucial role in setting a different agenda and challenging fear and apathy. Literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1984: 90) had already pointed to the effect of laughter “overcome[ing] fear, for it knows no inhibitions, no limitations”. In the context of revolution and radical political change, the notion of the carnivalesque, developed by Bakhtin, has proven particularly relevant and productive. As Bakhtin (ibid: 66) put it, “certain essential aspects of the world are accessible only to laughter”. For the Russian scholar

INTRODUCTION | 25 of French and comparative literature, during the limited temporal frame of carnivalesque acts and festivities, the official hierarchies of power are turned upside down: the ruler and his commandment become the subject of ex- posure, while the ruled uncover the hidden truth about their social situations and conditions. (cp. Bakhtin 1984: 92) The creation of these inverted roles in a newly-produced space of gay and free expression allows for “speaking truth to power”, thus enacting a radical subversion of the socio-political order. Even more so, it can present a new perspective on reality, envision new social norms and a new societal order, turning an unjust world ‘from its head unto its feet again’. One particular dimension of the carnivalesque for challenging power and exposing its defects is what Bakhtin calls “grotesque realism” (ibid: 18; see also on “grotesque satire” ibid: 303-304). Presenting the ruler in a vulgar, bodily degraded or dirty state – often in combination with pun and language play – radically undermines his authority and works counter to attempts at glorifying and aestheticizing power and sovereignty. While reflecting on the applicability of Bakhtin’s notion of the carnivalesque to Arab societies, Badarneh (2011: 309) states that the main features of the carnivalesque “all manifest themselves in the data”, providing evidence of the high relevance of carnivalesque forms of humor for the Arab societies. His argument is supported by the observation that the concept of the carnivalesque might be much better situated in societies with a more ‘traditional’ hierarchical order than, for instance, in liberal democracies, in which citizens’ rights allow – at least to a larger extent – for the free expression of opinion and free speech. In the Arab region where a ruler’s glorification and divinization by nationalist discourse has been so omni- present, subverting and mocking the tyrant’s hubris has offered rich – albeit dangerous – grounds for carnivalesque attacks. As the contributions of this volume show, Arab heads of state such as Hosni Mubarak, Saddam Hussein, Hafez and Bashar al-Assad, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali or Muammar Gaddafi were all subject to extreme glorification (madih) and iconization and, in consequence, to subversive acts of parody and mocking (hijaʾ). However, moments of carnivalesque festivity in urban places where protestors gathered during the Arab uprisings, and the demonstrators’ usage of humorous artistic production are not unique to the MENA-region, since beyond sticking to an East-West binary, in a globalized world there are strong similarities between social movements and their cultural production, regardless of place and time, as for instance Eid (2019: 3) stresses and Werbner/Webb/Spellman-Poots

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(2014) show in the political aesthetics of global protests, e.g. in the ‘Arab Spring’ and beyond. Although 2011 meant a deep rupture in the political culture of Arab countries, this kind of glorification and political propaganda continues in countries like Egypt, where in 2013, “Sisimania” spread. A large number of prominent figures of public life, the media as well as ordinary citizens – mention can be made of chocolates (see figure 1) fabricated by several patisseries in Cairo and showing nascent president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on its upper side – joined in in the chorus of glorification. A journalistic eulogy that reads like a masterpiece of parodying the leader, is former actress Lubna Abdel Aziz’ article “Catch the El-Sisi mania”, published 17 September, 2013, in Al-Ahram Weekly:

He stands straight and tall, impeccably attired and starched from head to toe. His freshly washed countenance and youthful zeal shield a Herculean strength and nerves of steel. He wears the feathers of a dove but has the piercing eyes of a hawk. During our thousand days of darkness, dozens of potential leaders pranced and boasted, to no avail. […] He responded to the 33 million voices clamouring in the streets. Yes, the Eagle had landed.

Figure 1: Sisi chocolate

Source: Authors’ own photography

In view of the ongoing dictatorship and the brutal violation of human and citizens’ rights in Egypt under al-Sisi, Abdel Aziz’ eulogy reads like a particularly macabre example of gallows humor – yet it is meant seriously.

INTRODUCTION | 27

This strategy of an almost carnivalesque spectacle, officially encouraged by the state, is all the more dangerous and might be all the more successful since it correlates with the desire of the ruled to become part of the spectacle, “to take part in celebrations [...] fed by a desire for majesty on the part of the people” (Mbembe 2001: 131). Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe provides an especially intriguing reading of Bakhtin’s notion of the “carnivalesque” in its grotesque, obscene and vulgar forms, applying it to the socio-cultural-political context of Sub Saharan African authoritarianism, with a focus on Cameroon. Mbembe (ibid: 103) aims at overcoming “binary categories [...] such as resistance vs. passivity […] state versus civil society, hegemony vs. counter- hegemony [...]”, since for Mbembe, postcolonial relations are too ambivalent and complex to be put in a dualist conceptual framework. The postcolonial type of governance he calls “commandement” (ibid: 134, footnote 5), which he takes from Bakhtin, can indeed be transferred – with modifications – to the context of autocratic Arab governance, as for instance Mannone does in his contribution on Tunisia in this volume when he quotes from an earlier article by Mbembe (1992: 10) explaining that “the official world mimics popular vulgarity, inserting it at the very core of the procedures by which it takes on grandeur”. Thus, enacting carnivalesque forms of cultural expression are not restricted to the masses, but have to be considered as “essential characteristics that identify postcolonial regimes of domination”, in order to better understand “how state power organizes for dramatizing its own magnificence […]” (Mbembe 2001: 103-104).23 The coming-to-power of the new ruler of Egypt is staged as the advent of a superhuman, but genuinely humble, savior, stressing both his local embeddedness, his deeply rooted Egyptianhood, and – through quotations from Shakespeare, Lao-Tzu (sixth century Chinese philosopher), Napoleon and other prominent figures

23 With western politicians such as Donald Trump, this form of the grotesque must be expanded to liberal democracies as well, since we observe that while “in their desire for a certain majesty, the masses join in the madness and clothe themselves in cheap imitations of power to reproduce its epistemology, [...] power, in its own violent quest for grandeur, makes vulgarity and wrongdoing its main mode of existence.” (Mbembe 2001: 133).

28 | SABINE DAMIR-GEILSDORF & STEPHAN MILICH of world history – his allegedly cosmopolitan character and experience.24 These writings are therefore textual enactments of the many “spectacles”, offered “for its subjects (cibles) to watch” (ibid: 104). In Abdel Aziz’ article, a “loss of limits or sense of proportion” (ibid: 119) clearly manifests itself. What the ruler and his followers quite seriously intended – as superbly illustrated by Abdel Aziz in al-Sisi –, namely to foster the larger strategy of stabilizing power constellations, can be perceived by other individuals or groups in society as comic, cynical or grotesque, always depending on the social position, political orientation, set of values and (critical) attitude towards glorifying the ruler and other symbols and representations of (state) power. While venerating the leader is, for some, an act of duty or a common social habit, for others, it is a derisory, awkward and illegitimate expression of power that has to be ridiculed and desecrated.

POLITICAL HUMOR IN THE ARAB UPRISINGS

As has been shown above, mocking the ruler or representatives of the ruling class has a rich tradition and history in Arab societies. With regard to the protests in Egypt, Salem and Taira (2012: 191) write that “[t]hroughout the eighteen days leading to the resignation of Mubarak, an incredible number of jokes were instantaneously and consistently produced while being embedded in, and interwoven with the Egyptian cultural narrative at large”. Yet during the period of the Arab uprisings and even more so in their aftermath, important shifts in the use of political humor can be observed. Anagondahalli and Khamis, comparing political jokes in Egypt before, during and after 2011, point out that while before 2011 telling political jokes in public was extremely risky for one’s safety, the revolution “created an atmosphere that transformed the use of humor from the private to the public sphere” (Anagondahalli/Khamis 2014: 13). Although jokes on former president Mubarak were told for many decades and provided a platform for people to express dissent and discomfort with the government, since early

24 Unpublished conference paper by S. Milich: “Commemorating the absurd, re-framing the real: Literary and visual satire and parody between the grotesque and the carnivalesque”, held at the International Conference Creative Humor, Cologne, 27-29 March, 2014.

INTRODUCTION | 29

2011 they were no longer covert or indirect. As Anagondahalli/Khamis (ibid) conclude, „relief humor made way for superiority humor. People were done cracking jokes to make light of the situation; the goal now was to openly deride and ridicule Mubarak to get him to leave”. Egyptian poet Iman Mersal [Iman Mirsal] (2011: 669) explains the new use of humor in this way: Egyptians “have resisted humiliation by humiliating the sources of oppres- sion; perhaps humor helped us survive the nightmare”. And Salem and Taira (2012: 191) note that “Egyptians overcame fear with jokes that called on the subversive powers of the carnivalesque”. In Syria where political oppression was even more brutal and total than in Egypt, one had to be extremely cautious, since telling a joke about the president could result in long years of imprisonment. This however changed during the protests of 2011 – at least in zones and spaces no longer controlled by the dictatorship – when humor was turned into a confrontational means by which activists and protesters attacked the dictator verbally, aiming to make him leave as it had happened in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen. In these contexts of political struggle, humor has been used less as a means of relief and relaxation, than to fight arbitrary oppression and physical repression, infiltrating hitherto “prohibited zones” (El Ariss 2017: 142). In Arab television, in particular since the 1990s, more and more comedy and satire shows have been broadcast addressing societal and political grievances in a humorous way, though its producers had (and still have) to be careful not to cross the red lines of censorship.25 The most popular and successful were Egyptian comedian (and physician) Bassem Youssef’s [Basim Yusuf] show El-Barnameg (2011-2014, with interruptions) and his Daily Show (2012) with millions of viewers across Arab countries and even beyond. Yet when Adly Mansur became interim-president (July 2013-June 2014) and Abdel Fatah al-Sisi president in June 2014, continuing any satirical critique of political circumstances somehow directed at the new dictator proved impossible, since censorship and legal prosecution by state authorities had become increasingly harsh. Before al-Sisi came to power,

25 Indicating the practice of autocratic regimes and rulers to circumvent or ignore the rule of existing laws, Jonathan Guyer (2016: 210) writes: “The red lines [of censorship] have less to do with laws and more to do with how far a cartoonist is willing to go to critique the powerful.” On the effect of the uprisings on current developments in the Arab media, see e.g. Lynch 2018.

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Youssef had thanked former president Mohammed Morsi for providing him with such rich and ready-made material for satire. (see e. g. Jones 2017: 138) Months before the presidential elections in 2014, Youssef mocked al-Sisi and Sisimania in his comedy show, by trying to avoid mentioning his name, which nevertheless came up time and again in barely hidden words like the Spanish “si, si”, meaning “yes, yes” (see Naharnet 2014; Stack 2013). In autumn 2013, Youssef was accused of insulting the Egyptian military. After attempting to continue with private TV channel MBC Masr, the comedian resigned in June 2014, declaring that critical political comedy would no longer be possible in Egypt. Having then moved to the United States, he has had numerous appearances and performances in the USA and beyond with his own YouTube channel, addressing an international Arab and non-Arab audience. (see Montasser 2011; Gordon/Arafa 2014) In the Syrian context, the series Buqʿat Dawʾ (‘Spotlight’; 2011) even dared to ridicule the intelli- gence services. While some scholars argue that the Syrian authoritarian regime allowed a “commissioned criticism” (Cooke 2007: 72; see also Haugbolle 2009) in order to offer a democratic façade and a kind of safety valve for popular frustration which would hinder insurrection, others hint at the constant balancing act of Syrian artists and TV producers to not transgress shifting governmental red lines (cp. Joubin 2014)26, for limited freedom of expression is “fluid, evolving, and responsive to new political events” (Guyer 2016: 210). However, due to the boundaries of censorship, YouTube and other social media have turned into increasingly important platforms for political humor in the MENA-region. Independently made, improvised shows were released in great numbers (see e.g. Hammond 2017: 142-144), although in countries like Bahrain, even “Twitter parody accounts of high-ranking Bahraini officials […] were targeted by the government security services – who used IP spying techniques in an attempt to uncover the identity of those operating the account” (Jones 2017: 137). Besides online satirical shows like 3al6ayer or the Saudi sketch show La Yekhtar (‘Put a lid on it’; 2010-2016) whose episodes received up to three millions views, particular mention must be made of the Jordanian start up al-Kharabeesh (‘Scribbles’). Launched in 2008, al-Kharabeesh has meanwhile developed

26 For a more detailed discussion of limits and challenges in oppositional messages of Syrian drama production see also Wedeen 2019; Salamandra 2015; Della Ratta 2015.

INTRODUCTION | 31 into a big company with several YouTube channels featuring Arab satirists and stand-up comedians. Having gained even more popularity during 2011, it ridiculed Arab leaders and commented on the political events with satirical means. (see Elsayed 2016) In regard to Lebanese comedy and TV satire shows, Kazarian (2011: 335) states that theatrical productions and “TV comedy shows as Sl Shi, Irbat Tinhal (It will be resolved soon), La yumal, (Never boring), Bas Mat Watan27 (BMW, Haugbolle, 2007), and 8, 14, and Us have been ongoing, aiming at portrayal of the prevailing political dissonance in the country”. In Saudi Arabia, the comedy series Tash Ma Tash (‘No Big Deal’; 1993-2011) first aired on the Saudi state-owned channel (later bought and broadcast by MBC), mocking in several episodes short- comings and defects of Saudi society. Although avoiding almost any criticism of the king and the royal family, its producers received death threats after ridiculing the clergy. The Saudi state reacted in September 2018 to this development by announcing via its public prosecutor that producing and distributing online satire and any social media material that “ridicules, mocks, provokes and disrupts public order, religious order and public morals” (Khaleej Times 2018) will be punished by up to five years in prison and a fine of three million Riyals (approximately 800.000 US dollars). The government’s fear of political satire appeared also recently, when Netflix bowed to its pressure and took down in Saudi Arabia an episode of a satirical comedy show in which the American comedian Hasan Minhaj mocked the kingdom’s account of what happened to the dissident journalist Jamil Kashoggi who was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. (see Busby 2019) As Jones (2017: 137) states, “work on political satire in the Gulf States is still relatively non-existent”; this volume aims to reduce this research gap with a contribution by Fatema Hubail on a Kuwaiti satirical TV show. At the same time, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and YouTube provided new platforms for the dissemination of political humor not only in the respective countries but also for an international audience, while political public expression not only drew from local contexts, but also referred to elements and motifs of a shared global culture. The transnational dimension of the protests became visible through the diffusion of protest imaginaries, motifs and practices that inspired activists in different regions of the world (cp.

27 The title of this extremely popular comedy TV show means both ‘The homeland’s smile’ and ‘Yet a homeland just died’.

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Porta/Mattoni 2014), between Egyptian Tahrir, Occupy Wall Street, Istanbul’s Gezi Park, the Martyr’s Square in Beirut, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Political jokes, memes, photographed texts from graffiti, posters, caricatures and cartoons were translated28 into English and even other languages such as, for example, the Syrian puppet show Top Goon – Diaries of a Little Dictator by Massasit Mati. The authors of the satirical posters from Kafranbel29 (Syria) alluded to Game of Thrones and Hollywood Films alike to reach a wider audience and gain international support for their struggle against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Asad. (cp. Anagondahalli/Khamis 2014) As Werbner, Webb and Spellmann-Poots (2014: 15) argue, protests in the Arab World and beyond used a wide range of visual and audio citations and intertextuality which was both “historical and spatial, fusing past images, tropes, slogans, musical refrains or images reproduced from events elsewhere with current images in new bricolages and assemblages.” Novel forms of political humor and irony can also be tracked in other recently emerging genres of Arabic cultural production. In post- revolutionary Egypt, for instance, a highly dynamic comic scene evolved. Several years before the outbreak of the Egyptian Uprising, Magdy El Shafy’s graphic novel Metro (2007), although censored by the state, had already attracted a large number of readers. Soon after the uprisings, new comics and comic magazines were published, such as Kharig al-saytara

28 On the problem of translation and translatability of humor and especially political cartoons and critical comics, see Mohamed 2016. 29 The internationally renowned posters by political Syrian activists in Kafranbel adamantly called for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. They initiated their campaign when Syrian media refused to show any coverage of the demonstrations in Kafranbel, using social media and their creativity and humor to sharply criticize the regime as well as international politics. As in the case of other initiatives, their satirical voice has been brutally silenced by the war and the regime (unpublished conference paper The caricatures of the city of Kafranbel as a mirror of international politics by Larissa Bender at the International Conference Creative Humor, Cologne, 27-29 March, 2014). For more on Kafranbel, see Dibo, Mohammad (2013): “Kafranbel: The Conscience of the Revolution”, December 21, http://syriauntold.com/2013/12/kafranbel-the-conscience-of-the-revolution/; and Hanano, Amal (2013): “Rising Up and Rising Down.” In: Foreign Policy, October 18, https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/10/18/rising-up-and-rising-down/.

INTRODUCTION | 33

(‘Out of control’), Tuk Tuk, Autostrad, Thawragiyya (‘revolutionaries’) and Doshma (see Khallaf 2012: 14), the last one with the clear aim to spread knowledge about civil and human rights. Most of these new magazines are published by art collectives in independent publishing companies. Similar developments in other Arabic countries have been noted. (see Hoigilt 2019) As for street art30 and graffiti, both have often been used in the Arab revolutions as an effective means for discussion, reflection and document- tation. Exposure in public spaces ensures access for a broad and wide audience, while at the same time their presence can (re-)appropriate, reclaim and reframe (urban) space. Such written or drawn interventions can offer important insights into the social and political life of a society. (cp. Youkhana/Förster 2015: 7) In Egypt as well as in Syria, graffiti and street art visualized the often erratic emotions many people felt in times that were marked by quickly changing situations. In Cairo, for example, Muhammad Mahmoud Street, which leads to Tahrir Square and was thus the epicenter of the protests of 2011, became a prominent site for artistic expression. Martyr portraits turned the site into a quasi-memorial ground, explicit images of soldiers on skulls criticized the military interim-regime, a woman carrying gas bottles depicted the economic hardship large parts of the society underwent and satirical pieces dealt with various social and political topics. Painter Ammar Abo Bakr, who created many artistic works in this street, described the painted walls as a newspaper which constantly reflects the country’s development.31 Ammar resorted to wit, thus combining two important functions that street art and humor have in common: to disturb, challenge and impact patterns of perception. Both might also undermine and attack power structures. And finally, the life of street art is – similar to a joke – not confined to the area it has been generated

30 The definition of the term street art is subject to controversies and has varying forms. Völker (2009: 8) for example argues that it describes a relatively new phe- nomenon which began spreading significantly from around the year 2000 in mainly urban areas. While some define graffiti and street art as different fields, others find it difficult to establish both as clearly separate categories as its practices are often similar and inspire each other reciprocally. In fact, they date back long into history. The practice of scratching names and images into surfaces is for example documented for Ancient Pharaonic Egypt. (cp. Architektur 2016) 31 Cp. interview with Ammar Abo Bakr by Fabian Heerbaart, March 20, 2013.

34 | SABINE DAMIR-GEILSDORF & STEPHAN MILICH in. Its discursive aftermath often continues in photos that go viral on the internet, spreading quickly as the latest good joke does. Politics try to shape public and private behavior and thought by discursive as well as architectural and design policies. Street art and humor have proved to be solid tools of counter-action although they seem to have lost momentum in Egypt and other countries for now. Nevertheless, they can take over walls and minds at any moment. In the Syrian city of Idlib, a local civil society organization called Kesh Malek (‘checkmate’) started the campaign Syrian Banksy Project in March 2019. (see Rizik 2019) Refe- rencing international events, brands and elements of global popular culture, the collective brilliantly links a global audience to their local problematics. One of their pieces depicted the iron throne from the Grammy-winning series Game of Thrones, rephrasing one of the series’ trademark sentences “Winter is coming” to: “Game of Freedom – Arab spring is here”. As this example shows, humor can be used not only as a trigger to initiate change but also to keep spirits up. Whereas humor had initially served the protestors to overcome the wall of fear the politicians in power had tried to build, at later stages humor was increasingly used to keep up the morale of resistance despite setbacks, while finally, during and after the year 2013 humor became a means to express despair, pain and shock. These later forms of political humor can be perceived as channels for coping with and reflecting on the disastrous developments shaped by counter-revolution, autocratic rule and extreme political violence. As a tendency, the character and spirit of humor in those countries in which protests took place transformed from a self-confident, defiant, and rebellious tone into a more defensively oriented device to express the disgrace and outrage about the failure of the revolutions or, as Nohia Rashwan (2019) has shown in the case of the Egyptian musician and song writer al-Manahwaly, moved from satirizing regimes to satirical self- critique. In some cases, laughter has mingled with expressions of traumatic shock or deeply-rooted despair or even disgust. This kind of dark, cynical or grotesque humor and sarcasm is essential for coping with deteriorating situations in which nothing else seems to be left. At the same time, various Arab satirical websites and online shows have emerged since 2011, using humorous elements to critically comment on political events and expose their absurdities. Another example like the above mentioned is the Jordanian

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Website al-Hudood (‘Limits’)32 whose co-founder Isam Uraiqat defines the aim of satire as “to deliver an idea in a different way, if it’s too difficult or painful to say” (Stuart 2016). While the satire on the website covers a wide thematic scope, including biting sarcastic lampooning of Arab politicians and leaders, it is always careful to adhere to red lines, which Kamal Khoury, the other co-founder of al-Hudood, explains as follows: “We don’t offend God or the [Jordanian] king.” (ibid) In many countries, in particular Lebanon, a vivid stand-up comedy scene has emerged with increasingly dark and taboo- bunting humor. For Egypt for instance, Richard Jacquemond (2016: 366) observes that “satire remains a privileged form of expression of the Egyptian youth’s discontent with the current state of affairs as well as a way to cultivate the spirit of freedom they experienced during the years 2011-2013”. Several of the articles in this volume address transformations of the usage and function of political humor, showing a great diversity of perspectives from which humor tells us about shared values and attitudes, critical thinking and collective patterns of political judgment. Arranged according to different regions, the contributions shed light on the specific local developments and characteristics of a wide range of forms and genres of political humor, opening up deeper comparative perspectives about them. The diverse humorous forms expressing current political critique must be read as significant indicators of the state of affairs and changes in a country’s political culture. To evaluate political and social changes from an economic, social or strictly political perspective will remain limited unless it is complemented by a thorough analysis of the cultural dynamics and structures at work (including their historical developments and references). For humorous art forms like the political cartoon “offer analysis and criticism of actors and institutions often absent from Western media, a deep dive into local concerns that go beyond news reportage” (Guyer 2016: 210) and economic-political analysis. Although some countries like Libya, Yemen, Bahrain or Algeria as well as some art forms relevant to political humor could not be included in this edited volume, the wide regional scope and diversity

32 See https://alhudood.net/. Some contents on the website are translated into English and provided at https://en.alhudood.net/. Another prominent example with millions of Arab viewers is for instance the Joe Show (see https://www. youtube.com/channel/UCVlAsbQEG1yvoAYzt1TEo0Q) by the Egyptian Yous- sef Hussein, who lives in exile.

36 | SABINE DAMIR-GEILSDORF & STEPHAN MILICH of forms of cultural expression analyzed in this book contributes significantly to a deeper understanding of the social and political role of humor and satire in the MENA-region. In the first part, which addresses the Maghreb region, Nathanael Mannone (Beyond Tanfis: Performativity and Quotidian Humor in Revolutionary Tunisia) highlights the situation of recent Tunisian satirical practice and performance by giving examples of humor and its function as a political, albeit ambivalent, weapon during two distinct political periods: Ben Ali’s government and the aftermath of the revolution in 2010/11. While the presented comic statements are made by Tunisians for a Tunisian audience, the metaphors being evoked are often universal. As indicated by its title, Mannone’s chapter lucidly transcends the discourse on humor as relief (tanfis), stressing rather the intricate ambivalences of the recent Tunisian politics of humor. Sébastien Boulay and Mohamed Dahmi’s article, entitled Humor, Mockery and Defamation in Western Sahara: How do Sahrawi Artists use New Media to Perform Political Criticism?, is about satire and comedy in the Sahrawi community in Western Sahara and the diaspora, engendered by a war between the Moroccan government and the Polisario Front. By outlining the history of colloquial poetry in the Sahrawi community, the authors explore recent forms of mocking the leaders, which they describe as “politically correct violence”. However, it is important to note that this mockery might be quite controversial depending on the “target”, as it can be considered treason even within the community. In the second section on Egypt and the Sudan, Fabian Heerbaart in his chapter on political humor in Egypt (‘We celebrated to be Egyptian’: Humor in the work of younger Egyptian artists) examines various forms of art production such as street art, caricature, cartoon and stand-up comedy. He persuasively shows how humor is intertwined with the medium it is used in, uncovering the threatening aspect: it is not so much about the image itself as how it “acts”, and this agency challenges the monopoly of representation and interpretation – and, by doing so, the shaping of political power itself. While humor functioned as a moral resource during the revolution to strengthen one’s own positions and weaken the opposition, there is, as Heerbaart puts it, “nothing funny about politics right now”. In Stephan Milich’s contribution From equanimity to agony: Portraits of soldiers and police officers in two recent artwork series by Egyptian visual artist Nermine Hammam, the focus shifts towards different forms of humor in contemporary Egyptian visual arts

INTRODUCTION | 37 about the revolution, as exemplified by Egyptian photo artist Nermine Hammam. While in 2011 her art series Upekkha on young police officers still had an ironic, carnivalesque stance, 2012 witnessed a shift from the carnivalesque to the grotesque, expressing emotions of fright and terror in scenes of military violence against civilians put into the foreground of Japanese landscapes of beauty and silence. Liza Franke’s article, entitled A festival of resistance: poetic documents of the revolution, is about the influence of poetic language and topics on new feelings of identity and nationalism. She presents protest poetry created by the young generation of poets succeeding the leading “rebel” of political poetry in colloquial Egyptian, Ahmed Fuad Nagm. The author emphasizes their importance for the political resistance against authoritarianism and corruption. Shifting from Egypt to its southern neighbor Sudan, Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann gives an overview of Sudan’s recent history of civil unrest and its (dis-)connection with the uprisings in other countries of the Middle East and North Africa by focusing on political satire. In her chapter Towards an understanding of the role of political satire in Sudan, she identifies important similarities and differences between the Sudanese movement of political satire and those with greater media coverage like the Egyptian. Fuhrmann shows how collectives, formed via social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter, not only documented, but accelerated protests in Sudan – and therefore changed the rules of political satire in terms of content, control and censorship. Like the previous articles on Egypt, this article too is defined by its complex articulation of the diverse creative ways the artists choose to get people out in the streets to demonstrate, a point which the Sudanese artists have in common with their Egyptian neighbors. The third section of the volume deals with forms of political humor in Syria, Palestine, Kuwait and Lebanon. Sabine Damir-Geilsdorf’s contribu- tion ‘Candies from Eastern Ghouta’: Dark humor in visualizing the Syrian conflict focuses on the creative resistance of Syrian artists and activists during the civilian uprising which has now turned into one of the most terrible human catastrophes. Her chapter provides an overview of the forms and functions of political humor used by Syrian oppositional individuals and manifold, newly-established artist collectives between 2011 and 2013. At the beginning of the protests in 2011, political humor often ridiculed and derided the cult of personality around the formerly untouchable president Bashar al- Asad and his father Hafez al-Asad, in order to break down existing fear-

38 | SABINE DAMIR-GEILSDORF & STEPHAN MILICH barriers and mobilize protests. However, soon after the brutal crackdown on the protesters, humorous artistic expression was increasingly infused with forms of black humor. At the same time, the shock-effects created by turning atrocities and threats into objects of satire were used as a way to present and negotiate different perspectives and opinions on the revolution/war, docu- ment events and reveal the absurdities and paradoxes of social reality. Palestine, which has not been a central stage in the Arab uprisings, can nevertheless be perceived as being in a constant state of uprising due to the Arab-Israeli conflict that has been going on for more than 70 years, and the increasingly heavy tensions between citizens and state institutions. The perception that the merit of a work is measured by its usefulness is a burden long-shouldered by artists operating across diverse zones of conflict. This is particularly pronounced in Palestinian artistic production, as Chrisoula Lionis illustrates in her chapter entitled If a duck is drawn in the desert, does anybody see it? Humor, art and infrastructures of Palestinian statehood. As part of the nation-building project artists have long been charged with the responsibility of validating collective identity and narrating the Palestinian ‘story’. Her chapter investigates the way in which humor is employed in contemporary Palestinian art as a means to temper both this aforementioned burden, as well as the political, cultural and social impact of the failed ‘peace process’ and the continuous denial of a Palestinian sovereign state. Providing a conceptual framework of humor in contemporary art built around the key terms of the burden of proof, anticipatory aesthetics, over-identification and futurity, this chapter aims to shed light on the ways in which contemporary Palestinian art offers a space in which to enact infrastructures of Palestinian statehood and, in turn, mediate understandings of Palestine’s past, present and future. Anna Gabai (Dealing with Politics in Palestine: The Zan al-ʾAn Comics Project in Ramallah) discusses comics as a means of initiating political debate and satirical self-reflection. After giving an overview of the history of comics in Palestine, the author shows how comics and cartoons have contributed to its (ongoing) nation-building process and, at the same time, how they manage to raise controversial inter-Palestinian issues, addressing rather sensitive problems and grievances in humorous ways. Focusing on one recent example, Gabai highlights how Palestine’s popular artists in the Zan al-ʾAn Studio depict the Israel-Palestine conflict as a central theme by using irony to express the contrast between ideology and daily life struggles. In her article entitled From Kuwait’s Margins to Tolaytila’s

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Mainstream: Sheno Ya3ni Challenging Social Positioning through Dys- topian Satire, Fatema Hubail discusses a TV series called Sheno Ya3ni (‘So what!’) broadcast on a YouTube channel run by a group of young Kuwaiti comedians. Playing with the discrepancy between appearance and reality, the setting of the series is a place called Tolaytila (‘Toledo’) suggesting a “welcoming space, one that engages the same culture as the ancient city of Toledo once did” (Hubail). However, Tolaytila emerges as an uncanny, dystopian state of repression. Performed in colloquial Kuwaiti dialect, the comedy show addresses not only the Kuwaiti, but also a larger khaleeji audience. Hubail convincingly draws on French critic Jacques Rancière “to explore the ways in which Sheno Ya3ni creatively (re)negotiate[s] the boundaries of their social positionings as Kuwaiti citizens and khaleejis through dystopian satire” (Hubail). Last but not least, Fernanda Fischione’s chapter with the title A Critique of Religious Sectarianism through Satire: A Case Study of Lebanese Rap explores the concept of irony in Lebanese rap and the self-positioning of artists and musicians. While concentrating on rap as oral poetry and a form of storytelling, its social dimension in war-torn Lebanon is reflected on in terms of religious heterogeneity and perceived individual hybridity. Thus, humor and ironic criticism in rap music are often linked to the central issue of religion and taʾifiyya (‘sectarianism’, ‘confessionalism’), many times embracing a taboo-breaking direction. The authors of this volume wish to address the need for more compre- hensive research on the various forms of political humor and its embeddedness in daily social and political struggles and practices. While much still needs to be done on the contents and conditions of production of humorous cultural expressions as well as its aesthetics, future research on political humor might concentrate more extensively on the manifold ways of reception and the effects political humor unfolds socially, culturally and politically. One crucial question for the present moment might be whether humor, the comic and laughter remain limited to their uses as a political weapon, as a tool for satirical critique and for coping with despair and restored repression (“relief”), or whether current forms of political humor can unfold a ‘positive’ potential to “cultivate” (Bayat 2017: 137) new forms of egalitarian sociality and practice that emerged during the mass protests, envisioning alternative social worlds. A better understanding of the social dynamics and more generally the political culture in the respective societies

40 | SABINE DAMIR-GEILSDORF & STEPHAN MILICH requires deeper insights into the logic, nature, social contexts and effects of Arab political humor.

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