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International Journal of Sociology

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Social Change Between Potentiality and Actuality:Imagination in Cairo’s Alternative Cultural Spaces

Mariz Kelada

To cite this article: Mariz Kelada (2015) Social Change Between Potentiality and Actuality:Imagination in Cairo’s 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

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International Journal of Sociology, 45: 223–233, 2015Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0020-7659 print/1557-9336 onlineDOI: 10.1080/00207659.2015.1066181

Social Change Between Potentiality and Actuality:Imagination in Cairo’s Alternative Cultural Spaces

Mariz Kelada

Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology and Egyptology,The American University in Cairo

Through ethnographic fieldwork and personal work experience, I develop new understandingsof the cultural sector in Egypt and its relation to social, political, and economic complexities. Thisresearch explores two spaces: the Nahda Association—a community based cultural nongovernmen-tal organization (NGO), and the Choir Project of Cairo—a placeless informal collective for mainlynonartists that invites participants to sing their everyday hopes and frustrations. Both of these spacesexplicitly define themselves as alternative and critically disengaged from the dominant culturalmachinery in Egypt. In this article, I present possibilities for deconstructing or challenging thehegemonic social, political, or intellectual order of the Egyptian cultural field. The two spaces con-stitute 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 alternative cultural spaces; everyday; non-representational politics; resistance; socialchange

An important focus of scholarly works since 2011 has been the various revolutions in the Arabworld. Many debates and much research have studied these protests and popular uprisings todetermine how successful they were in bringing about social, political, and cultural change. In thisarticle, I explore more subtle manifestations of resistance that might be regarded as mundane andordinary. I find in these nonevents the potential and power for alternative ways of being andbecoming, an alternative way of resistance. Dmitris Papadopoulos, Niamh Stephenson,and Vassilis Tsianos (2008:xii) indicate that to focus on events is to “foreground particularmoments when a set of material, social and imaginary ruptures come together and produce a breakin the flow of history—a new truth.” In other words, the transformative events in a society are, infact, 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 atThe 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 veryoptimistic and active in using and being present in public spaces immediately after theousting 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 culturalexpression. 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. Theconsequent election of the Muslim Brotherhood brought anxieties about the implications forculture and art in terms of fear of extremism and imposing restrictions and censorship thatwould be worse than what already existed. The June 2013 uprising ended with the electionof a former military man as president, and resulted in the suppression of various sites andexpressions of opposition and dissent, including cultural events that were previously authorizedby the Ministry of Culture.

In this research I follow two of the alternative cultural spaces in Cairo of which I have beeninvolved. 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 thatinvites participants to sing about their everyday frustrations. In my analysis, both spaces arealternatives to formal, representational politics, as they embody processual social change,not as an awaited emancipation. I find both spaces living manifestations of the redefinitionby Papadopoulos et al. of social transformation, “[it]is not about cultivating faith in thechange to come, it is about honing our senses so that we can perceive the processes which createchange 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 ofsocial, political, and intellectual transformation. By social change and transformation, I donot mean the groundbreaking victory over a political regime, but instead the everyday momen-tary victories that are performed. Their performativity is the only guarantee that things will con-tinue to be different, at least on a personal level. Following from this, my main goal in thisarticle is to understand the ways, and under what conditions, ordinary people in contemporaryalternative cultural spaces in Cairo can situate both their imagined and actual presence tochange 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 dif-ferences, historical memory and societal organization are inscribed” (1992:11). In this way, theyextend the argument to speak of how spaces are imagined and the conceptual process of turningspaces into places that “are always imagined in the context of political-economic determinationsthat have a logic of their own” (ibid). In a broader sense they offer a new way of thinking aboutspace through connections, and not individuated articulations of space. Doreen Massey ident-ifies space as “social relations stretched out” (1999:2). She directly relates spatiality to thesocial and to power. Meaning-making around space is deployed in intertwined networks of rela-tions. 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 orcontainer of events and relations. Nahda and the Choir Project form multiple avenues of experi-ence and relations that can be analyzed as indicators of their different imaginations of the polit-ical and of resistance through their very everydayness. They constitute stances, structures, andaffiliations that are very different from traditional cultural organizations, which make themavailable and accessible to ordinary people, opening multiple possibilities for art to be beyondartists, and for resistance to reach beyond formal representational politics.

The first space I discuss is Nahda Association—the Jesuits’ Cultural Center in Cairo. TheJesuits 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. Thislast component is most evident in the foundation of liberation theology by Latin AmericanJesuits who played a large role in the struggle against military rule in the late 1980s. The organi-zation started its work in Egypt through the establishment of schools. According to the associa-tion’s official vision and mission, the association focuses on the role of culture in humandevelopment, therefore promoting the discovery and exploration of energies in each person.The association works with marginalized children, local residents, and young artists, to developa thinking, critical mind and a compassionate being (Nahda 2014). Activities are designed topush 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. Theactivities and programs help participants to develop tools and create opportunities that enablethem to express themselves freely, and to creatively reach their full potential. In addition, theassociation provides a space for integration between different forms of art in a way that contri-butes to the cultural growth of the local community in the Faggala district in Cairo. I haveworked in Nahda since 2010 and have observed its attempts to implement a nonhierarchical sys-tem designed in opposition to the dominant hegemonic systems of management and administra-tion. “Work” in Nahda is not the same as work in corporate or governmental jobs. The majorityof the staff has one or two other jobs besides their part-time job in Nahda. Instead of beingidentified as a space of work, it is more like a space where individuals get to do what theyare passionate about.

The second space is the Choir Project—Mashrou’a Koral—which was first established inEgypt under the name of “The Complaints Choir.” It was the opening act for “Invisible Pub-lics,” a performance and art exhibit curated by the Townhouse Gallery in May 2010.1 “TheComplaints Choir” began in 2005 as a project by two Finnish artists and has spread to differentcities around the world. The main concept behind this choir is to turn complaints into songsreflecting everyday concerns. The choir of Cairo decided to go beyond complaining and toexpand to other issues, and therefore, workshops extended to other themes. For example, aworkshop 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 atheme, where they would use a common proverb to build on and make variations of it to com-ment 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 performedfor the public usually in a free performance. Today the Choir Project in Egypt has over 200participants 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 anystable place to meet, rehearse, or perform—it is therefore temporary. This placelessness makesthe choir a unique site for research on the possibilities for emergent cultural production. SalamYoussry, the artistic director of the choir, best describes the experience: “suddenly there is aclear and living example that asserts the possibility to organize and be creative without beinginstitutionalized, without waiting for funds, permanent place, marketing strategy or advertise-ment.”3 The choir continues to have open workshops for whomever is interested and is com-pletely volunteer-based. The choir is a continuous and always unfinished process offormation and re-formation through its members and members to be. The choir’s song aboutthe choir that is sung at the beginning of each performance says it best:

A choir’s project, a choir legitimate… a choir working and isn’t forbidden… no beautiful voicesbut heard voices… you’re not required to pay anything… because the moment needs your voiceand our voices in the matter.

Nahda and the Choir Project are alternative in the way they are openly inventive of how theychoose to function and to position their potential collectives. I look at these processes throughthe lens of daily struggles and happenings, because it is in the subtle daily and repetitive actionsthat I find possibility for continuing change and transformation. I do not necessarily suggest thereification of these two spaces and I intentionally do not compare them so much as I connecttheir experiential commonality. I trace the seemingly incoherent, insignificant, everyday detailsthat 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 timeis itself a social product. Like any other product (like space, for instance)” (1999:6). Space thenis a social product that is both lived and exchanged in everyday interactions. In earlier work heargued “the concept of everydayness does not designate a system, but rather a denominatorcommon to existing systems including judicial, contractual, pedagogical, fiscal, and police sys-tems” (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 ofruptures remain conceivable, I argue. This excess is the messiness and chaos of the unpredict-able, that which flees the surveillance of hegemonic orders.

Thus, I use the concept of everydayness as a lens through which I explore and explain thelives of my interlocutors. In this research it is not that I consider the “visible” moments orthe “event of the revolution” to be insignificant, but “rather to avoid the tendency to reducethe entire and much larger process of social transformation to these particular moments”(Shukaitis 2009:16). Papadapoulos et al. argue that everyday experiences are “imperceptiblemoments 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 analyzewhat 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 consti-tutes these spaces, experiencing the spaces, their structures and details. My ongoing involve-ment with Nahda and the Choir Project made my presence easier and more familiar duringthe research. It was also a challenge to step beyond my familiarity with the two spaces to makethe ordinary visible in my research.

I used semistructured interviews with 15 people involved in the 2 spaces, whose ages variedbetween 18 and 30 years old. I chose them because they are “less structured” in how they dealwith each other and the spaces, and I felt that with them there would be a greater possibility foranalysis of our common experiences. I conducted these interviews after establishing a differentpositionality. This was a continuous process of telling different groups about the research andwhat I was thinking about both spaces and engaging them in thinking with me of possibilitiesabout what the research process could be like.

After this phase, I selected five key interlocutors for in-depth interviews. I did this in bothspaces, but the depth and the orientation of my interview depended upon my interlocutors’ pos-ition and how long I had known them. I also include interpretations of the discourse that thesongs 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 notchronological or linear as in a cause–effect relationship but rather are woven together in anirregular or nonlinear pattern, at least with regard to time. I will attempt to map how imagin-ation, subjectivity, and cultural spaces have a dynamic relation that might, or might not, initiatesocial change and transformation. I argue that the processes of forming social imaginaries res-onate with what Raúl Zibechi and Ramor Ryan define as “the internal dynamic of social strug-gle” 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 dynamicsin 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 theparty-body of the nation-state, the market-body of capital, or the territorial-body of the van-guard? Under what conditions would such a political body operate?” (2012:110). I hypotheti-cally consider the conditions in these two cultural spaces as a possibility where suchnonconventional political bodies emerge. Nail further argues that “in order to understand thestructure and function of participation in this revolutionary body politic we need to understandthe unique relationship it articulates between three different dimensions of its political body: itsconditions, elements and kinds of subjects” (Nail 2012:111). These three elements are what Iexplore in these cultural spaces.

NONREPRESENTATIONAL POLITICS AND RESISTANCE

Nail brings forth an important aspect of an antirepresentational body politic. It “avoids the staticcharacter 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 trans-formation. But without a pre-given unity of subjectivity” (Nail 2012:15). In many aspects theChoir Project is a manifestation of such politics and resistance. Thus, let me address Nail’spoints. 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 consti-tuting the choir over the years are formed randomly through an open call on social media andthrough friendships and contacts with previous choir members. For example, Ahmed who is aWeb developer, was sitting at a coffee shop next to Rawabet Theater where one of the choirworkshops was held. It was for only one day unlike other workshops. When Ahmed saw thecall for participation poster hanging on the wall in the area, he thought, “Well that is right here,I’ll go in and see what happens.” He goes on telling the story:

I went in; it’s a garage like space and nobody is asking me where am I going or stopping me, Iwent in and there were about a hundred people, jamming to music and there is a long queuelining behind the microphone to suggestively sing a tone for the new song—What is goingon? I sneaked into the queue and all the sudden I was in front of the microphone, I sang thewords in my own melody and every one repeated after me. I was stunned. It’s the first time Iever sang, and I could not imagine that such a huge number of people would sing and repeatafter 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, singingstanding 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 alreadyexist. Indeed, there is an unspoken practice of selection that takes place through the socialgeography of people and their networks of association. But there will always be a completestranger 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 volun-teers. They might remain so. Becoming a staff member is not conditioned on their level ofexpertise or professional capabilities as much as by how well they perceive the spirit of theplace and form good relations with the rest of the members. For example, Nahda’s project,the Independent Cinema school was founded in 2005 with a young independent filmmaker,which was very questionable and was opposed by Nahda’s board. But the founders insistedon that experimentation with great faith, and it continues to the present. The independent cin-ema school is an outcome of certain ruptures in the sociohistorical, economic, and certainlypolitical configurations. Back then, the only two spaces to learn cinema were the NationalCinema Council, which accepted a limited number and a person would thus need very goodconnections to get accepted, and the American University in Cairo, which was expensive andexclusive to certain classes. These configurations have in many ways influenced how the schoolis structured in ideology, skills, and practices. In my analysis this is because the school was oneof the very first long-term projects Nahda implemented, and it thus sort of replicated theimmediate centrality that was configured around the values of Nahda’s founders. However, Ido not regard this centrality as an intentional authoritative configuration of structure becausethis 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 interms 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 résumé and experience, not your friendship and potentialcapabilities. A choir would choose the talented musician and beautiful voices. Because thegroups 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 constitutethese 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 religiousbackground and subjectivity; however, in the various processes, infusion of ideas, collectiveplaying, singing, and laughter, those “selves” ease away from being a representational bodyenduring all these aspects of their subjectivities. I do not mean that they completely abandontheir subjective selves, but this division is one that I believe from personal experience is basedon an unspoken consensus. I view this decision of joining the choir’s workshop or workingprecariously at Nahda as an act of escape, an escape from the strictness of the job or the socialtraditions or just the usual routine of life. This act implies a willingness to step out of the selfinto the collective. Words that my interlocutors uttered during the interview are very telling ofthat 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 familygathering. Nevine explains how she was mostly raised in the United Arab Emirates with a veryconservative religious upbringing. She says:

The choir experience certainly changed my personality… before I made friends with only thepeople who were of my class and religious background, I was somewhat classist… the ideaof coexisting with so many different people was unthinkable to me. When I first came to thechoir, I felt like I have been very wrong in avoiding everyone who is different, the space wasvery welcoming and felt safe to mingle and know everyone… now I have friends who areway younger than me, from different religions and classes, they don’t bite… . I also could neverever think that I would take the underground metro or public transportation but with the groupand the openness they inspired in me, now I make it intentional to at least walk the streets aroundthe workshop place.

In Nahda there are two vivid examples. One is Mariam, the receptionist who is 21 yearsold 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 elsewere belittling my ability to do anything, if I’m young in age, then my mind is not capableof anything. Here in Nahda it feels like a family, I enjoy my time here and I get to do differentthings and our decisions are taken collectively, I, as an individual am cared for by my colleaguesand if I need help I will find it. I know for sure that I will not find this environment elsewhere.

In my analysis, Mariam’s version of the work status in Nahda is indicative of how most ofthe Nahda staff feel and even the volunteers who come to help sometimes. The sociality createdis 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 theanimation school. He studied graphic design and had in previous years worked in advertisingthat, 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 amateursand professionals from different backgrounds. He says, “I feel like I have a life now, being inNahda makes up for the misery I endure at work, it is liberating and my creativity is revivedsomehow.” Experiences like these either in a paid job or through volunteering set Nahda apartas an attempt to escape from the hegemonic forms that work imposes, with many difficulties inpracticality but with immense possibilities for a different everydayness. This leads to Nail’ssecond point: that the “self” is in continuous transformation without being prescribed into “apre-given unity of subjectivity,” the choir project’s “self” as an entity is continuously trans-formed through the changing groups that constitute it and they also constitute the narrativethe choir produces in its songs in every workshop. Similarly, Nahda, as a space and a processof continuous relations, houses and enables multiplicities and does not assume or push for aunity of subjectivities of its members. What both spaces embody is best explained in the lan-guage of a multitude that does not reduce difference into sameness or even assume or supposetheir similarity in the first place.

The third aspect Nail brings forth elaborates the previous one. He argues how antirepresen-tational political bodies alter the representational politics that are based on an unchanging ident-ity. Antirepresentational political bodies instead “leave the political domain radically open topotential political transformations and peoples yet ‘to come’” (Nail 2012:114). I use this under-standing to elaborate on the positionality of the choir as a project that is always open to remak-ings and transformation of the “peoples” who constitute it as an entity and as a narrative. Themost evident example for such openness is the situation that arose in the last workshop, “ThreeYears.” Directly after the January 25 revolution in 2011, the choir produced a song called “TheLife 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 thestruggle and the demands of the revolution. For example: “tell the ruler in his palace, you’rethieves who exploit Egypt”; “in the parliament there are businessmen who exploited the work-ers’ rights”; “change, freedom and social justice”; and “the prices soared till we sold our fur-niture.” When I first listened to the song I thought its purpose was to keep the motivationsof the revolution alive and to act as a reminder. But among these chants was one that said, “theytaught us in schools that our Egyptian Army is the protector —they taught you in the military toprotect the people and freedom.” Since 2011, when SCAF ruled Egypt and violently dispersedsit-ins and attacked demonstrations, killed large numbers of Egyptians, and arrested activists, ithas become challenging for a considerable number of the choir members to keep singing thatline. Salam (Youssry, the director) told us that a narrative is open to interpretations, singing thatline does not necessarily mean glorifying the army or forgetting what this institution did. Itcould, instead, be understood as farce, speaking of illusions about the army or a suppositionof what armies should do. In the end we decided to sing the song as it is and let the audiencemake up their own minds about it, especially since the song contains other lines that havedifferent political positions, such as, “where is the tank, who killed us” and “No to long livethe president and we will not go down without a fight.” The “peoples yet to come” to the choirmight have something different to say in the narratives they will produce, and thus, even if thechoir’s narrative is viewed as a representation, it will only be a result of certain configurationsof 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 politicalbody [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 orderthat both transforms the subjects and objects that constitute it and is equally transformed bythem” (Nail 2012:116). Practice of politics that is participatory combines the optimum extentof both “mutual and conflictual transformations,” where transformation does not have to be uni-fied 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 theway each coordinator chose to run or moderate their activity differently. Some would deploy aninformal centrality or hierarchy, as in the cinema school and the theater case, and some posi-tioned themselves as one among the group and adopted collective management, as in the ani-mation school. In other words, Nahda as an institution does not force or presuppose an idealway of coordinating and managing the activities, since some coordinators strongly opposethe others’ way of coordination, some think collective management is a myth, and some thinkthat 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 sig-nificant thing is that no people are forced or instructed to do other than what they see fit for theiractivities, and in this multiplicity lies its very strength and revolutionary stance as nonhegemo-nic and heterogeneous that holds together despite disagreements. As for the choir’s case, thesame point is apparent especially in the previous example of conflicting narratives and theirtransformation.

Nail adds that these practices of participatory politics form “a social order that bothtransforms 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 transformingthe individuals who constitute them and to being transformed endlessly by the changingflow of these individuals. Nahda and the Choir Project are consistently transformativeand transforming. Nail insightfully explains: “consistency is not just another word for staticpredictability, it is precisely the opposite. A revolutionary body politic is consistent insofaras it sustains a constructive rupture or break from the intersection of representational pro-cesses… is continually transformed by the various elements and agents that compose it”(Nail 2012:116).

CONCLUSION

Conversations about hegemony, resistance, transformation, imagination, and possibilitiesalways end up in the realm of what can be done in “actuality.” Simply and sometimes passion-ately asking, “How can we make things change?” and “Why do we keep failing?” Despite mydeepest 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 existin a space, or rather multiple spaces, and each space’s structures and relations are impacting theindividual in various ways. People form imaginations that contextualize and signify thesespaces differently, but also simultaneously reshape the relations and structures they create. Inthat person’s everyday life all these networks unfold and entangle to form the basic act of livingday to day in different ways, deploying imaginations. If these networks and relations form in analternative 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 reachingbeyond that of formal politics.

The common thread that weaves all these simultaneous nontangible relations and networkstogether is the fact that this might or might not happen, and there is nothing that can be countedon or might ignite hope except potentiality. The recognition of that potential is the manifestationof human power (potenza), whether it materializes or not. Giorgio Agamben elaborates on therelation between “capability” and “potentiality.” He suggests that “For everyone a momentcomes in which she or he must utter this ‘I can,’ which does not refer to any certainty or specificcapacity but is, nevertheless, absolutely demanding” (Agamben 1999:103). In a sense this “Ican” carries possibilities of both doing and not doing, a power of choice. Doing or not doingmeans that the necessity to achieve or not achieve “actuality” is rendered equally powerfulin their potentiality. As Agamben insightfully puts it, “To be potential means: to be one’sown lack, to be in relation to one’s own incapacity” (1999:182). This realization and awarenessthat our “lacks or incapacities” are still potentialities of capability is important.

Repetition is about revisiting and reiterating different moments. Even the repetition of failureand co-optation back into hegemony is different every time. For example, Nahda’s cinemaschool came to a halt for a year and needed to be reinvented and reimagined, even though itwas for years the most inventive place to learn cinema; or how the choir stopped performingin the streets but still persisted on meeting and singing to defy the physical limitation of thecurrent political state, and how all along it had no money for places to perform or rehearsebut managed and maneuvered formal economy and continued against all odds. This repetitionof failing again and again and failing better is really the most revolutionary thing we can do. Forme the slight and continuous accumulation of difference can actually make a difference. I fur-thermore draw on Agamben’s insights on living and life. He states that “a life—human life—inwhich the single ways, acts, and processes of living are never simply facts but always and aboveall possibilities of life, always and above all power (potenza)” (Agamben 1996:51). I saw inNahda and the Choir Project those possibilities of life that are powerful in their attempts to con-stantly 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, notbeing 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 generalunpredictability” (Law 2004:7),

Through this article I have exposed how two very ordinary spaces house much more mean-ingful politics than the Egyptian parliament, politics that do not fall into the conventional cate-gorizations 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 know-ing that there will be a few days every once in a while where individuals escape their demand-ing 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 withouthaving the skill or the talent, laughing and enjoying without having every troubling issue oftheir 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 conditionsand circumstances. Through these cases, I find it plausible that a new way of imagining anddoing things differently is very much possible, but it is not necessarily an act of radical revol-ution. Instead, it is the internalized process that slowly works within the people that leads them

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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 withincommunities, spaces, and time.

NOTES

1. Townhouse Gallery was established in downtown Cairo in 1998 as an independent, nonprofit art space with agoal 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.

REFERENCES

Agamben, Giorgio. 1996. “Form-of-life.” Pp. 150–156 in Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics. Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press.

Agamben, Giorgio. 1999. “On potentiality.” Pp. 84–177 in Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy. Palo Alto,CA: Stanford University Press.

Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson. 1992. “Beyond Culture: Space, Identity and the Politics of Difference.” CulturalAnthropology 7(1):6–23.

Jesuits’ Web site. 2014. Retrieved February 2014 (http://www.jespro.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&layout=item&id=28&Itemid=53)

Law, John. 2004. After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. New York: Routledge.Lefebvre, Henri, and Christine Levich. 1987. The Everyday and Everydayness. New Haven, CT: Yale French Studies.Lefebvre, Henri, Catherine, Régulier, and Mohamed Zayani. 1999. “The Rhythmanalytical project.” Rethinking Marx-

ism 11(1):5–13.Massey, Dorreen B. 1999. Space, Place, Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Nail, Thomas. 2012. “Returning to Revolution.” Pp. 110–151 in Deleuze, Guattari and Zapatismo. Edinburgh:

Edinburgh University Press.Nahda Association. 2014. Retrieved February 2014 (http://www.el-nahda.org/%D9%85%D9%86%20%D9%86%D8%

AD%D9%86.html).Papadopoulos, Dmitirs, Niamh Stephenson, and Vassilis Tsianos. 2008. Escape Routes: Control and Subversion in the

Twenty-first Century. London: Pluto Press.Shukaitis, Stevphen. 2009. Imaginal machines: Autonomy and Self-Organization in the Revolutions of Everyday Life.

Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia.Zibechi, Raúl, and Ramor Ryan 2010. Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces. New York: AK

Press.

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