Legacy, legitimacy and compromise: Baghdad’s visionary Yusuf Al-Ani and postcolonial Iraq

Abstract

Yusuf al-Ani’s influence on the development of popular theatre and his desire to convey his art through a deliberative expression of contemporary popular understandings of how Iraqis saw themselves are explored. Insights into some of his interactions with other artists and the social milieu of the period prior to the overthrow of the monarchy are established as a way of exploring the social context in which al-Ani worked. Reflections on the devastation of Iraq’s civil society broadly – and its intellectuals in particular – emerge from al-Ani’s insights into the social and political demise of the Iraqi state and its comparison with the overthrow of the monarchy. Al-Ani’s impact is referenced through direct contemporaneous accounts and multiple formal interviews from 1986, 2005, 2007 and 2008.