International Journal of Sociology

ISSN: 0020-7659 (Print) 1557-9336 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/mijs20

Social Change Between Potentiality and Actuality:

Imagination in Cairos Alternative Cultural Spaces
Mariz Kelada
To cite this article: Mariz Kelada (2015) Social Change Between Potentiality and Actuality:
Imagination in Cairos Alternative Cultural Spaces, International Journal of Sociology, 45:3,
223-233, DOI: 10.1080/00207659.2015.1066181
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207659.2015.1066181

Published online: 02 Oct 2015.

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Date: 19 November 2015, At: 01:17

International Journal of Sociology, 45: 223233, 2015

Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0020-7659 print/1557-9336 online
DOI: 10.1080/00207659.2015.1066181

Social Change Between Potentiality and Actuality:

Imagination in Cairos Alternative Cultural Spaces
Mariz Kelada

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Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and Egyptology,

The American University in Cairo
Through ethnographic fieldwork and personal work experience, I develop new understandings
of the cultural sector in Egypt and its relation to social, political, and economic complexities. This
research explores two spaces: the Nahda Associationa community based cultural nongovernmental organization (NGO), and the Choir Project of Cairoa placeless informal collective for mainly
nonartists that invites participants to sing their everyday hopes and frustrations. Both of these spaces
explicitly define themselves as alternative and critically disengaged from the dominant cultural
machinery in Egypt. In this article, I present possibilities for deconstructing or challenging the
hegemonic social, political, or intellectual order of the Egyptian cultural field. The two spaces constitute different stances, structures, and affiliations that make them accessible to ordinary people,
opening multiple possibilities for art beyond artists, for development to be understood differently,
and for resistance to reach beyond formal politics.
Keywords
change

alternative cultural spaces; everyday; non-representational politics; resistance; social

An important focus of scholarly works since 2011 has been the various revolutions in the Arab
world. Many debates and much research have studied these protests and popular uprisings to
determine how successful they were in bringing about social, political, and cultural change. In this
article, I explore more subtle manifestations of resistance that might be regarded as mundane and
ordinary. I find in these nonevents the potential and power for alternative ways of being and
becoming, an alternative way of resistance. Dmitris Papadopoulos, Niamh Stephenson,
and Vassilis Tsianos (2008:xii) indicate that to focus on events is to foreground particular
moments when a set of material, social and imaginary ruptures come together and produce a break
in the flow of historya new truth. In other words, the transformative events in a society are, in
fact, dispersed ruptures of different natures that happen to coincide at a certain temporal moment.
The alternative cultural sector in Cairo, including both professionals and amateurs in theater,
dance, and performance or visual arts, witnessed rapid and shifting growth with the unfolding of

Mariz Kelada is a post-MA fellow in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and Egyptology at
The American University in Cairo.
Address correspondence to Mariz Kelada, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and Egyptology,
The American University in Cairo, AUC Avenue, P.O. Box 74, New Cairo 11835, Egypt. E-mail: marizkelada@
aucegypt.edu.

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political events following the 2011 Egyptian revolution. At first, the cultural sector was very
optimistic and active in using and being present in public spaces immediately after the
ousting of Mubarak. Then, during the rule of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF)
in 2012, violent confrontations were accompanied by vivid outbursts of artistic and cultural
expression. Examples include extensive bursts of graffiti art, coalitions of independent artists,
street art festivals such as Fan Maidan, film screenings on the streets, and much more. The
consequent election of the Muslim Brotherhood brought anxieties about the implications for
culture and art in terms of fear of extremism and imposing restrictions and censorship that
would be worse than what already existed. The June 2013 uprising ended with the election
of a former military man as president, and resulted in the suppression of various sites and
expressions of opposition and dissent, including cultural events that were previously authorized
by the Ministry of Culture.
In this research I follow two of the alternative cultural spaces in Cairo of which I have been
involved. Nahda Association, a community-based cultural nongovernmental organization
(NGO) that strives to be more of social movement attempting to manage without hierarchy,
and the Choir Project of Cairo, a placeless informal collective mainly of nonartists that
invites participants to sing about their everyday frustrations. In my analysis, both spaces are
alternatives to formal, representational politics, as they embody processual social change,
not as an awaited emancipation. I find both spaces living manifestations of the redefinition
by Papadopoulos et al. of social transformation, [it]is not about cultivating faith in the
change to come, it is about honing our senses so that we can perceive the processes which create
change in ordinary life (2008:iix).
This article offers a different understanding of the dynamic relations between spaces,
imagination, and everydayness, and how they could potentially manifest in different forms of
social, political, and intellectual transformation. By social change and transformation, I do
not mean the groundbreaking victory over a political regime, but instead the everyday momentary victories that are performed. Their performativity is the only guarantee that things will continue to be different, at least on a personal level. Following from this, my main goal in this
article is to understand the ways, and under what conditions, ordinary people in contemporary
alternative cultural spaces in Cairo can situate both their imagined and actual presence to
change the intellectual, social, or political status quo.
ALTERNATIVE: WHY AND HOW
Spaces are constituted and configured by relations, but they are also imagined. For example,
Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson describe how space is not a neutral grid where cultural differences, historical memory and societal organization are inscribed (1992:11). In this way, they
extend the argument to speak of how spaces are imagined and the conceptual process of turning
spaces into places that are always imagined in the context of political-economic determinations
that have a logic of their own (ibid). In a broader sense they offer a new way of thinking about
space through connections, and not individuated articulations of space. Doreen Massey identifies space as social relations stretched out (1999:2). She directly relates spatiality to the
social and to power. Meaning-making around space is deployed in intertwined networks of relations. These relations are not just spatial, but also temporal and they are expressions of political

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and power relations. Hence space in and of itself is not a mere inconsequential surrounding or
container of events and relations. Nahda and the Choir Project form multiple avenues of experience and relations that can be analyzed as indicators of their different imaginations of the political and of resistance through their very everydayness. They constitute stances, structures, and
affiliations that are very different from traditional cultural organizations, which make them
available and accessible to ordinary people, opening multiple possibilities for art to be beyond
artists, and for resistance to reach beyond formal representational politics.
The first space I discuss is Nahda Associationthe Jesuits Cultural Center in Cairo. The
Jesuits are a well-known Catholic organization founded in 1540 that is active in 112 countries.
On their official Web site they identify their activities as concerned with education, culture,
intellectual work, spiritual activities, and, most important, with enhancing social justice. This
last component is most evident in the foundation of liberation theology by Latin American
Jesuits who played a large role in the struggle against military rule in the late 1980s. The organization started its work in Egypt through the establishment of schools. According to the associations official vision and mission, the association focuses on the role of culture in human
development, therefore promoting the discovery and exploration of energies in each person.
The association works with marginalized children, local residents, and young artists, to develop
a thinking, critical mind and a compassionate being (Nahda 2014). Activities are designed to
push individuals to be creative and original, and to imagine different realities for their futures,
based on Nahda objectives that I have experienced and observed in most of the work we do. The
activities and programs help participants to develop tools and create opportunities that enable
them to express themselves freely, and to creatively reach their full potential. In addition, the
association provides a space for integration between different forms of art in a way that contributes to the cultural growth of the local community in the Faggala district in Cairo. I have
worked in Nahda since 2010 and have observed its attempts to implement a nonhierarchical system designed in opposition to the dominant hegemonic systems of management and administration. Work in Nahda is not the same as work in corporate or governmental jobs. The majority
of the staff has one or two other jobs besides their part-time job in Nahda. Instead of being
identified as a space of work, it is more like a space where individuals get to do what they
are passionate about.
The second space is the Choir ProjectMashroua Koralwhich was first established in
Egypt under the name of The Complaints Choir. It was the opening act for Invisible Publics, a performance and art exhibit curated by the Townhouse Gallery in May 2010.1 The
Complaints Choir began in 2005 as a project by two Finnish artists and has spread to different
cities around the world. The main concept behind this choir is to turn complaints into songs
reflecting everyday concerns. The choir of Cairo decided to go beyond complaining and to
expand to other issues, and therefore, workshops extended to other themes. For example, a
workshop invented TV commercials to address and critique other everyday issues like traffic,
microbuses, and the hypocrisy of TV talk shows.2 Another workshop had cultural proverbs as a
theme, where they would use a common proverb to build on and make variations of it to comment or voice an unpleasant opinion of issues like relationships, poverty, and violence.
The choir is a collective workshop geared toward composing songs that are then performed
for the public usually in a free performance. Today the Choir Project in Egypt has over 200
participants mainly from Cairo and Alexandria, with hundreds more from around the world.
The choir has 2 dimensions in terms of space. It has a virtual space, a group for members on

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Facebook, and a second, physical space that is a nonplace because the choir does not have any
stable place to meet, rehearse, or performit is therefore temporary. This placelessness makes
the choir a unique site for research on the possibilities for emergent cultural production. Salam
Youssry, the artistic director of the choir, best describes the experience: suddenly there is a
clear and living example that asserts the possibility to organize and be creative without being
institutionalized, without waiting for funds, permanent place, marketing strategy or advertisement.3 The choir continues to have open workshops for whomever is interested and is completely volunteer-based. The choir is a continuous and always unfinished process of
formation and re-formation through its members and members to be. The choirs song about
the choir that is sung at the beginning of each performance says it best:
A choirs project, a choir legitimate a choir working and isnt forbidden no beautiful voices
but heard voices youre not required to pay anything because the moment needs your voice
and our voices in the matter.

Nahda and the Choir Project are alternative in the way they are openly inventive of how they
choose to function and to position their potential collectives. I look at these processes through
the lens of daily struggles and happenings, because it is in the subtle daily and repetitive actions
that I find possibility for continuing change and transformation. I do not necessarily suggest the
reification of these two spaces and I intentionally do not compare them so much as I connect
their experiential commonality. I trace the seemingly incoherent, insignificant, everyday details
that are missed because we are so used to seeing them.
Henri Lefebvre suggests that to study everyday life is to examine how and why social time
is itself a social product. Like any other product (like space, for instance) (1999:6). Space then
is a social product that is both lived and exchanged in everyday interactions. In earlier work he
argued the concept of everydayness does not designate a system, but rather a denominator
common to existing systems including judicial, contractual, pedagogical, fiscal, and police systems (Lefebvre and Leivich 1987:9). This means that the everyday will always have excess
that cannot be part of these systems. It is in that excess of the everyday where the possibilities of
ruptures remain conceivable, I argue. This excess is the messiness and chaos of the unpredictable, that which flees the surveillance of hegemonic orders.
Thus, I use the concept of everydayness as a lens through which I explore and explain the
lives of my interlocutors. In this research it is not that I consider the visible moments or
the event of the revolution to be insignificant, but rather to avoid the tendency to reduce
the entire and much larger process of social transformation to these particular moments
(Shukaitis 2009:16). Papadapoulos et al. argue that everyday experiences are imperceptible
moments of social life [that] are the starting point of contemporary forces of change (2008:xiii).
This concept of the everyday opens up multiple possibilities that Lefebvre and Leivich define as
a set of functions which connect and join together systems that might appear to be distinct
(1987:9).

METHODS
Ethnographically, I follow the practices of the members of two cultural spaces and I analyze
what their practices entail in terms of alternative resistance and transformation. The main

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method I use is participant observation, as I wanted to be immersed in the process that constitutes these spaces, experiencing the spaces, their structures and details. My ongoing involvement with Nahda and the Choir Project made my presence easier and more familiar during
the research. It was also a challenge to step beyond my familiarity with the two spaces to make
the ordinary visible in my research.
I used semistructured interviews with 15 people involved in the 2 spaces, whose ages varied
between 18 and 30 years old. I chose them because they are less structured in how they deal
with each other and the spaces, and I felt that with them there would be a greater possibility for
analysis of our common experiences. I conducted these interviews after establishing a different
positionality. This was a continuous process of telling different groups about the research and
what I was thinking about both spaces and engaging them in thinking with me of possibilities
about what the research process could be like.
After this phase, I selected five key interlocutors for in-depth interviews. I did this in both
spaces, but the depth and the orientation of my interview depended upon my interlocutors position and how long I had known them. I also include interpretations of the discourse that the
songs and practices constitute and discuss how they vary with different temporality, spatiality,
and the group dynamics involved.
ANALYSIS OF SPACE AND IMAGINATION
Describing space, imagination, and everydayness is complex since their interrelations are not
chronological or linear as in a causeeffect relationship but rather are woven together in an
irregular or nonlinear pattern, at least with regard to time. I will attempt to map how imagination, subjectivity, and cultural spaces have a dynamic relation that might, or might not, initiate
social change and transformation. I argue that the processes of forming social imaginaries resonate with what Ral Zibechi and Ramor Ryan define as the internal dynamic of social struggle that intertwines social relations between social groups, as ways of guaranteeing survival
both materially and spiritually (Zibechi and Ryan 2010:4). I trace these internal dynamics
in the seemingly incoherent details of the lives of the members of Nahda and the Choir Project.
Thomas Nail asks, Is there a new type of body politic that would no longer be predicated on the
party-body of the nation-state, the market-body of capital, or the territorial-body of the vanguard? Under what conditions would such a political body operate? (2012:110). I hypothetically consider the conditions in these two cultural spaces as a possibility where such
nonconventional political bodies emerge. Nail further argues that in order to understand the
structure and function of participation in this revolutionary body politic we need to understand
the unique relationship it articulates between three different dimensions of its political body: its
conditions, elements and kinds of subjects (Nail 2012:111). These three elements are what I
explore in these cultural spaces.
NONREPRESENTATIONAL POLITICS AND RESISTANCE
Nail brings forth an important aspect of an antirepresentational body politic. It avoids the static
character of the representational subject who can never change the nature of its self, but only

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by diffusing the self into an endless multiplicity of impersonal drives: a self in perpetual transformation. But without a pre-given unity of subjectivity (Nail 2012:15). In many aspects the
Choir Project is a manifestation of such politics and resistance. Thus, let me address Nails
points. First is: avoiding a static character that positions itself as the representative subject,
one that claims an authority and legitimacy to speak for and of a certain group. The choir,
since its initiation, has not had a singular group per se to represent because the groups constituting the choir over the years are formed randomly through an open call on social media and
through friendships and contacts with previous choir members. For example, Ahmed who is a
Web developer, was sitting at a coffee shop next to Rawabet Theater where one of the choir
workshops was held. It was for only one day unlike other workshops. When Ahmed saw the
call for participation poster hanging on the wall in the area, he thought, Well that is right here,
Ill go in and see what happens. He goes on telling the story:
I went in; its a garage like space and nobody is asking me where am I going or stopping me, I
went in and there were about a hundred people, jamming to music and there is a long queue
lining behind the microphone to suggestively sing a tone for the new songWhat is going
on? I sneaked into the queue and all the sudden I was in front of the microphone, I sang the
words in my own melody and every one repeated after me. I was stunned. Its the first time I
ever sang, and I could not imagine that such a huge number of people would sing and repeat
after me, a complete stranger.

This quote shows how spontaneous and random the formation of the choir members is.
Ahmed is now one of the funniest performers in the choir to the extent that, for me, singing
standing next to him is sort of a magnified experience of the joy and fun of being in the choir.
Yet this randomness is also not so random in terms of the networks of association that already
exist. Indeed, there is an unspoken practice of selection that takes place through the social
geography of people and their networks of association. But there will always be a complete
stranger like Ahmed who just walks in without previous calculations or associations and his/
her presence will remake the dynamics of the choir.
To link this process of formation to Nahda, members, as mentioned, usually start as volunteers. They might remain so. Becoming a staff member is not conditioned on their level of
expertise or professional capabilities as much as by how well they perceive the spirit of the
place and form good relations with the rest of the members. For example, Nahdas project,
the Independent Cinema school was founded in 2005 with a young independent filmmaker,
which was very questionable and was opposed by Nahdas board. But the founders insisted
on that experimentation with great faith, and it continues to the present. The independent cinema school is an outcome of certain ruptures in the sociohistorical, economic, and certainly
political configurations. Back then, the only two spaces to learn cinema were the National
Cinema Council, which accepted a limited number and a person would thus need very good
connections to get accepted, and the American University in Cairo, which was expensive and
exclusive to certain classes. These configurations have in many ways influenced how the school
is structured in ideology, skills, and practices. In my analysis this is because the school was one
of the very first long-term projects Nahda implemented, and it thus sort of replicated the
immediate centrality that was configured around the values of Nahdas founders. However, I
do not regard this centrality as an intentional authoritative configuration of structure because
this centrality is systematically diffused into the various activities that have complete autonomy

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over how they run and construct their actions. In this way, centrality is better understood in
terms of mentorship that inspires intellectual guidance, not supervision and control.
Both cases, whether random or selective, are different than mainstream formation processes.
A regular NGO would look at your rsum and experience, not your friendship and potential
capabilities. A choir would choose the talented musician and beautiful voices. Because the
groups of the choir are not formed through a selection process, accordingly there is no self
to be maintained and represented in that sense. In both spaces even the selves that constitute
these spaces are diffused into collective multiplicities of energies. In other words, each self
of the group comes in with its social status, professional, ideological, political, and religious
background and subjectivity; however, in the various processes, infusion of ideas, collective
playing, singing, and laughter, those selves ease away from being a representational body
enduring all these aspects of their subjectivities. I do not mean that they completely abandon
their subjective selves, but this division is one that I believe from personal experience is based
on an unspoken consensus. I view this decision of joining the choirs workshop or working
precariously at Nahda as an act of escape, an escape from the strictness of the job or the social
traditions or just the usual routine of life. This act implies a willingness to step out of the self
into the collective. Words that my interlocutors uttered during the interview are very telling of
that act: welcoming, openness, confidence, safe-place, judgment-free, shielded and supported,
heard. These words are barely used to describe a job or a political party or a usual family
gathering. Nevine explains how she was mostly raised in the United Arab Emirates with a very
conservative religious upbringing. She says:
The choir experience certainly changed my personality before I made friends with only the
people who were of my class and religious background, I was somewhat classist the idea
of coexisting with so many different people was unthinkable to me. When I first came to the
choir, I felt like I have been very wrong in avoiding everyone who is different, the space was
very welcoming and felt safe to mingle and know everyone now I have friends who are
way younger than me, from different religions and classes, they dont bite . I also could never
ever think that I would take the underground metro or public transportation but with the group
and the openness they inspired in me, now I make it intentional to at least walk the streets around
the workshop place.

In Nahda there are two vivid examples. One is Mariam, the receptionist who is 21 years
old and also the youngest of the staff members. When I asked her why she works in Nahda,
she said:
I study accounting and when I worked in an accounting office the director and everyone else
were belittling my ability to do anything, if Im young in age, then my mind is not capable
of anything. Here in Nahda it feels like a family, I enjoy my time here and I get to do different
things and our decisions are taken collectively, I, as an individual am cared for by my colleagues
and if I need help I will find it. I know for sure that I will not find this environment elsewhere.

In my analysis, Mariams version of the work status in Nahda is indicative of how most of
the Nahda staff feel and even the volunteers who come to help sometimes. The sociality created
is unique and refreshing, especially to those who had previous corporate jobs.
A second example is illustrated by Momtaz, who is a volunteer in the recent project of the
animation school. He studied graphic design and had in previous years worked in advertising
that, as he says, sucked all the creativity I had and turned me into an Adobe Photoshop

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technician. Joining the school, he got to attend lectures and various workshops with amateurs
and professionals from different backgrounds. He says, I feel like I have a life now, being in
Nahda makes up for the misery I endure at work, it is liberating and my creativity is revived
somehow. Experiences like these either in a paid job or through volunteering set Nahda apart
as an attempt to escape from the hegemonic forms that work imposes, with many difficulties in
practicality but with immense possibilities for a different everydayness. This leads to Nails
second point: that the self is in continuous transformation without being prescribed into a
pre-given unity of subjectivity, the choir projects self as an entity is continuously transformed through the changing groups that constitute it and they also constitute the narrative
the choir produces in its songs in every workshop. Similarly, Nahda, as a space and a process
of continuous relations, houses and enables multiplicities and does not assume or push for a
unity of subjectivities of its members. What both spaces embody is best explained in the language of a multitude that does not reduce difference into sameness or even assume or suppose
their similarity in the first place.
The third aspect Nail brings forth elaborates the previous one. He argues how antirepresentational political bodies alter the representational politics that are based on an unchanging identity. Antirepresentational political bodies instead leave the political domain radically open to
potential political transformations and peoples yet to come (Nail 2012:114). I use this understanding to elaborate on the positionality of the choir as a project that is always open to remakings and transformation of the peoples who constitute it as an entity and as a narrative. The
most evident example for such openness is the situation that arose in the last workshop, Three
Years. Directly after the January 25 revolution in 2011, the choir produced a song called The
Life of the Square, which was a compilation of the chants and slogans of the 2011 revolution.
Understandably, these came out of the participants urge to document and commemorate the
struggle and the demands of the revolution. For example: tell the ruler in his palace, youre
thieves who exploit Egypt; in the parliament there are businessmen who exploited the workers rights; change, freedom and social justice; and the prices soared till we sold our furniture. When I first listened to the song I thought its purpose was to keep the motivations
of the revolution alive and to act as a reminder. But among these chants was one that said, they
taught us in schools that our Egyptian Army is the protector they taught you in the military to
protect the people and freedom. Since 2011, when SCAF ruled Egypt and violently dispersed
sit-ins and attacked demonstrations, killed large numbers of Egyptians, and arrested activists, it
has become challenging for a considerable number of the choir members to keep singing that
line. Salam (Youssry, the director) told us that a narrative is open to interpretations, singing that
line does not necessarily mean glorifying the army or forgetting what this institution did. It
could, instead, be understood as farce, speaking of illusions about the army or a supposition
of what armies should do. In the end we decided to sing the song as it is and let the audience
make up their own minds about it, especially since the song contains other lines that have
different political positions, such as, where is the tank, who killed us and No to long live
the president and we will not go down without a fight. The peoples yet to come to the choir
might have something different to say in the narratives they will produce, and thus, even if the
choirs narrative is viewed as a representation, it will only be a result of certain configurations
of time, space, and events, which are forever changing as do the peoples.
To link and relate Nahda to this process, Nail also explains that a participatory political
body [is] a set of political practices constitutive of a social order that incorporates a maximal

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degree of mutual and conflictual transformation. A participatory body politic is a social order
that both transforms the subjects and objects that constitute it and is equally transformed by
them (Nail 2012:116). Practice of politics that is participatory combines the optimum extent
of both mutual and conflictual transformations, where transformation does not have to be unified and standardized, and within that kind of transformation multiplicities will always be there.
They will not be forced and reduced to sameness. These practices are evident in Nahda, in the
way each coordinator chose to run or moderate their activity differently. Some would deploy an
informal centrality or hierarchy, as in the cinema school and the theater case, and some positioned themselves as one among the group and adopted collective management, as in the animation school. In other words, Nahda as an institution does not force or presuppose an ideal
way of coordinating and managing the activities, since some coordinators strongly oppose
the others way of coordination, some think collective management is a myth, and some think
that centrality hinders the potential of the activities growth because it relies on a single person.
In my analysis, each discourse of these has its own advantages and limitations. The most significant thing is that no people are forced or instructed to do other than what they see fit for their
activities, and in this multiplicity lies its very strength and revolutionary stance as nonhegemonic and heterogeneous that holds together despite disagreements. As for the choirs case, the
same point is apparent especially in the previous example of conflicting narratives and their
transformation.
Nail adds that these practices of participatory politics form a social order that both
transforms the subjects and objects that constitute it and is equally transformed by them
(2012:116). It becomes evident that the two spaces are continuously open to transforming
the individuals who constitute them and to being transformed endlessly by the changing
flow of these individuals. Nahda and the Choir Project are consistently transformative
and transforming. Nail insightfully explains: consistency is not just another word for static
predictability, it is precisely the opposite. A revolutionary body politic is consistent insofar
as it sustains a constructive rupture or break from the intersection of representational processes is continually transformed by the various elements and agents that compose it
(Nail 2012:116).
CONCLUSION
Conversations about hegemony, resistance, transformation, imagination, and possibilities
always end up in the realm of what can be done in actuality. Simply and sometimes passionately asking, How can we make things change? and Why do we keep failing? Despite my
deepest respect for the seriousness of the quests to discover how to turn potentiality into
actuality, I have attempted in this article to illuminate what is not necessarily a practical,
failure-proof way of changing realities, but is potentially capable of doing so. Individuals exist
in a space, or rather multiple spaces, and each spaces structures and relations are impacting the
individual in various ways. People form imaginations that contextualize and signify these
spaces differently, but also simultaneously reshape the relations and structures they create. In
that persons everyday life all these networks unfold and entangle to form the basic act of living
day to day in different ways, deploying imaginations. If these networks and relations form in an
alternative way, they might or might not lead to a different day-to-day living, that in its turn or

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perhaps simultaneously embodies a nonrepresentational body politics that is capable of reaching

beyond that of formal politics.
The common thread that weaves all these simultaneous nontangible relations and networks
together is the fact that this might or might not happen, and there is nothing that can be counted
on or might ignite hope except potentiality. The recognition of that potential is the manifestation
of human power (potenza), whether it materializes or not. Giorgio Agamben elaborates on the
relation between capability and potentiality. He suggests that For everyone a moment
comes in which she or he must utter this I can, which does not refer to any certainty or specific
capacity but is, nevertheless, absolutely demanding (Agamben 1999:103). In a sense this I
can carries possibilities of both doing and not doing, a power of choice. Doing or not doing
means that the necessity to achieve or not achieve actuality is rendered equally powerful
in their potentiality. As Agamben insightfully puts it, To be potential means: to be ones
own lack, to be in relation to ones own incapacity (1999:182). This realization and awareness
that our lacks or incapacities are still potentialities of capability is important.
Repetition is about revisiting and reiterating different moments. Even the repetition of failure
and co-optation back into hegemony is different every time. For example, Nahdas cinema
school came to a halt for a year and needed to be reinvented and reimagined, even though it
was for years the most inventive place to learn cinema; or how the choir stopped performing
in the streets but still persisted on meeting and singing to defy the physical limitation of the
current political state, and how all along it had no money for places to perform or rehearse
but managed and maneuvered formal economy and continued against all odds. This repetition
of failing again and again and failing better is really the most revolutionary thing we can do. For
me the slight and continuous accumulation of difference can actually make a difference. I furthermore draw on Agambens insights on living and life. He states that a lifehuman lifein
which the single ways, acts, and processes of living are never simply facts but always and above
all possibilities of life, always and above all power (potenza) (Agamben 1996:51). I saw in
Nahda and the Choir Project those possibilities of life that are powerful in their attempts to constantly create moments of rupture that make living go beyond its material facts and limits.
Potentialities, possibilities, potenza. The power of living in a state of constant becoming, not
being one identity or the other. To give up desires for certainty, and for stable conclusions
(Law 2004:9) and to reinvent an understanding that takes on the world in tide, flux and general
unpredictability (Law 2004:7),
Through this article I have exposed how two very ordinary spaces house much more meaningful politics than the Egyptian parliament, politics that do not fall into the conventional categorizations of laws and policies and voting boxes. Through the individuals who constitute them,
a new mode of resistance is practiced on a daily basis. Their presence becomes living and knowing that there will be a few days every once in a while where individuals escape their demanding jobs, the comfort of their own families and friends, and constraints of their economic,
political, or religious backgrounds, and dwell in an alternate world. Writing and singing without
having the skill or the talent, laughing and enjoying without having every troubling issue of
their lives solved, becoming what they imagine: powerfully, forcefully, and against all odds,
happy for a while in a space/time that is carved out from the hegemony of their conditions
and circumstances. Through these cases, I find it plausible that a new way of imagining and
doing things differently is very much possible, but it is not necessarily an act of radical revolution. Instead, it is the internalized process that slowly works within the people that leads them

IMAGINATION IN CAIROS ALTERNATIVE CULTURAL SPACES

233

to rediscover and interrogate their perception and imagination of themselves and the world.
This is a complex process because it is not just about the individual, but it is interwoven within
communities, spaces, and time.
NOTES

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1. Townhouse Gallery was established in downtown Cairo in 1998 as an independent, nonprofit art space with a
goal of making contemporary art and culture accessible to all without compromising creative practice.
2. For a video of the performance, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNNvmsRK2k4/.
3. This description was from an interview conducted with Youssry in December 2012 in downtown Cairo.

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