“The people’s wisdom” and the 2011 Egyptian Revolution: folklore, colloquial poetry, and subalternity in Shaima’ al-Sabbagh’s praxis

Abstract

This virtually inaugural scholarly study of the activist Shaima’ al-Sabbagh (1983–2015) documents and analyzes three areas of her production in relation to the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. The argument is made that her colloquial poetry, folklore research and support of subalternity worked in synergy together. Foregrounding the folk imaginaries that the revolution drew on, al-Sabbagh identified a fundamental gap in that event between bourgeois intellectuals/activists and subalterns. Seminal pedagogies she was in the process of devising to close that gap and creative projects to empower labor actors are analyzed in relation to Antonio Gramsci’s views on folklore and his “philosophy of praxis.” These projects benefited from al-Sabbagh’s apprenticeship in the popular, at both the grassroots and academic levels, including her involvement in aragoz (hand-held puppet theater). Al-Sabbagh’s texts, among them manuscripts, as well as video and audio recordings of her, are cited; additionally, interviews about her have been conducted.