Revolutionary Graffiti in Tunisia Lecture

  • Tuesday, September 30, 2014
  • 2:00-4:00 p.m.
  • 1 Devonshire Place, Room 208N

 

Four years after the popular uprisings that have shaken the Middle East and North Africa, graffiti remain as one of the most visible marks of the region’s dynamics.  They reveal changes that have been fostered by the opposition movements that have swept away the autocratic leaders of the region in 2011. Far from being mere cosmetic accessories, the graffiti lie at the very heart of an oppositional strategy aiming at extending the contestation by challenging counter-revolutionary narratives, both on and off the ground, especially through their re-use of socio-digital networks.

Based on excerpts from a large corpus of photographs from Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, this lecture aims at situating graffiti in the historical context of their emergence in 2011 up to the present. It will demonstrate that the walls of the largest cities in the Middle East-NMorth Africa region have been used as heterotopies of the revolutionary visions that have been fueling political opposition.

Enrique Klaus holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Sciences Po Grenoble.  His my main research interests are media reform and political communication in the Middle East-North Africa region — and he has been traveling continuously in Egypt (2003-2011), Morocco (2011-2013) and Tunisia (2013 through the present).

Lecture co-sponsored by the Munk School of Global Affairs, the Centre for the Study of France and the Francophone World / Centre des Études de la France et du Monde Francophone, and the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies.

Those interested in attending this lecture should register on the Munk School of Global Affairs website. Contact: Ron Pruessen, Munk School Director for International Partnerships & Research

For more information about this lecture, please click here.