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English edition
May
2008
416 pp.
48 illus. incl. 16 color
Paperback
15X23 cm
$27.95
LE 150.00
ISBN
978 977 416 178 0
For sale only in the Middle East
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Creative Reckonings
The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt
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Jessica Winegar
Winner of the 2007 Albert Hourani Book Award
The Egyptian art world is the oldest and largest in the Arab Middle East. Its artists must reckon with the histories of ancient Egypt, European modernism, anti-colonial nationalism, and state socialism—all in the context of a growing neoliberal economy marked by American global dominance. At this crucial intersection of culture, politics, and economy, Egypt’s art and artists provide unique insight into current struggles for cultural identity and sovereignty in the Middle East.
This book examines the heated cultural politics in today’s Arab world, and tells how art-making has become an unexpectedly central part of that. It offers a lively analysis of the battles between artists, curators, and audiences over cultural authenticity, cultural policy, public art in a changing urban Egypt, and the new global marketing of Egyptian art. The art world it shows powerfully exemplifies how people in the Middle East reckon with global transformations that are changing how culture is made in societies with colonial and socialist pasts.
Jessica Winegar is assistant professor of anthropology at Fordham University.
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Reviews
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“Through the perspective of the social institutions where art is produced and discussed, sold and collected, this book presents an exciting and smart account of modern Egyptian culture. It will immediately become the most important work on the subject.”—Elliott Colla, Brown University
“Through this rich account of the practice of modern art in a postcolonial setting, Jessica Winegar offers a brilliant analysis of how an art world is fashioned as an arena of cultural politics and a means of reckoning with the multiple experiences of modernity.”—Tim Mitchell, New York University
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