Walter Armbrust | An Immoveable Object and an Irresistible Force: ‘Adil Imam in the January 25th Revolution

Katedra Blízkého východu FF UK srdečně zve všechny zájemce na přednášku prof. Waltera Armbrusta z Oxfordské univerzity s názvem „An Immoveable Object and an Irresistible Force: ‘Adil Imam in the January 25th Revolution“. Přednáška se bude konat v úterý 25. 3. od 17:45 v místnosti P300 na hlavní budově FF UK, náměstí Jana Palacha 1/2. Přednáška proběhne v angličtině.

Walter Armbrust působí jako profesor blízkovýchodních studií se zaměřením na moderní období na Fakultě asijských a blízkovýchodních studií Oxfordské univerzity. Mezi obory jeho hlavního výzkumného zájmu patří masmédia a populární kultura Blízkého východu, revoluce, Egypt nebo antropologie.

Anotace přednášky

My paper explores Egypt’s January 25th Revolution through the figure of ‘Adil Imam, a famous Egyptian actor who, in 2011 when the revolution began, was openly sympathetic to the Mubarak regime. From the mid-1960s to 2020 Imam was a star in theatre, film and television, media which make his persona and works lend themselves easily to visualisation. Widely circulated recordings of Imam’s works became an archive, readily at hand to be used in political discourse, and uniquely suited to both comprehension and disputation by publics steeped in Imam’s substantial oeuvre. My premise is that at a time when so much that was familiar had been thrown into question, manifestations of ‘Adil Imam—in political graffiti, memes, Imam’s own revolution-era productions, or simply quotations from one of his works at an opportune moment—connected revolutionary experiences rhizomatically. Imam popped up in one’s peripheral vision, yet he or his works served to express an underlying spread of vital political contestation. In the public sphere and in public space Imam’s works were used to trace relations between places, persons, objects and events in revolutionary time. As an accessible political idiom, Imam’s films, plays and television serials (and sometimes Imam himself) instantiated experiences of revolution that are translatable to the terms of such “arborescent” categories of analysis as economy, protest and political mobilisation, yet also strikingly nuanced in contrast to conventional ways of understanding revolution.