Resistance in Contemporary Middle Eastern Cultures

<p>This study highlights the connections between power cultural products resistance and the artistic strategies through which that resistance is voiced in the Middle East. Exploring cultural displays of dissent in the form of literary works films and music the collection uses the concept of 'cultural resistance' to describe the way culture and cultural creations are used to resist or even change the dominant political social economic and cultural discourses and structures either consciously or unconsciously. The contributors do not claim that these cultural products constitute organized resistance movements but rather that they reflect instances of defiance that stem from their peculiar contexts. If culture can be used to consolidate and perpetuate power relations in societies it can also be used as the site of resistance to oppression in its various forms: gender class ethnicity and sexuality subverting existing dominant social and political hegemonies in the Middle East.</p>