Chapter 17: Revolutionary Creative Labor

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Page ID: 175237

Marwan M. Kraidy
University of California Press

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This chapter elaborates the concept of revolutionary creative labor. The Arab uprisings, particularly the conflict in Syria, have given rise to a notion of creative resistance. Various activists, journalists, academics, and curators have used that phrase to celebrate a gamut of expressive practices and forms encompassing graffiti, digital memes and mash-ups, handheld banners, political rap, and others.¹ The wording combines two terms with overwhelmingly positive connotations that evoke human ingenuity and agency.

17.1: Introduction
Introduction of the goals of this chapter: to explore revolutionary creative labor and its impact on understanding precarity in cultural production, with a focus on the Arab uprisings, especially the conflict in Syria.
17.2: Creativity and Labor in Social Movement and Production Studies – A Snapshot
Examining concepts related to creativity and labor as covered by social movement and cultural production studies. How identifying something as “creative” is a strategic and discriminatory move.
17.3: Industrial and Revolutionary – Two Types of Creative Labor?
Differences between industrial creative labor and revolutionary creative labor, in terms of confrontationality, centrality of the body, position on the sanctioned-unsanctioned divison, visibility, and status as either waged or unwaged.
17.4: Subjectivity and Revolutionary Creative Labor
The concepts of expression, production, and revolution in creativity as developed by Hans Joas, and their convergence in revolutionary creative labor. Subjectivity as created by revolutionary creative labor, changing the relationship between ruler and ruled.
17.5: Notes