In My Name and the Name of All People Who Live in Misery: Rap in the Wake of Revolution in Tunisia and Egypt

Abstract

Rap and mahragan were the sound of youths that demanded freedom and social justice in Tahrir Square and in Tunisia Parliament Square sit-ins during 2011. It may have been, not merely the soundtrack of the revolution, but a motivating factor in bringing people into the streets and reshaping their basic political subjectivity: a core process of any revolutionary change in a country’s social and political structures. On the one hand, rap and mahragan are used by young people as a way of calling into question the processes of marginalization. On the other hand, young people use it as a way of participating in public life. Despite its differences, from a mixed analysis using the data collected in the SAHWA project, both qualitative and quantitative, this article proves how rap and mahragan music scenes (re)produce informal spaces as an alternative to their social marginalization and positioned them into Tunisian and Egyptian political arenas in different places according to environmental political dialectics.