Event

The Media Activism Research Collective will have its first work-in-progress meeting of Spring 2015 on Monday, February 23, at noon in Annenberg room 224. Annenberg doctoral candidate Omar Al-Ghazzi will present his paper-in-progress entitled, "Mobilizing history for collective action: On the 'garbage dump of history' trope in Arab politics."

Abstract: This paper explores the meanings of the trope of the “garbage dump of history” in Arab political rhetoric. The trope is used to rhetorically dispose of unwanted political figures into an imagined “garbage dump” or “dustbin” where all those who should be forgotten by history (for their offensive lack of value) reside. At the beginning of the 2011 Arab uprisings, the garbage dump of history was reserved for dictators and used to persuade publics to participate in ‘historic’ protests. However, following the struggle for power in many Arab countries, Arab political actors symbolically claimed that their opponents should be thrown away into garbage as well. In Egypt, for example, both the supporters of the national army and the Muslim Brotherhood threatened that they will dispose of the other into the “garbage dump of history”. In this paper, I analyze the metaphor of temporal trash as a signal for the future-oriented forgetting of political adversaries, and as a way to justify their violent “cleansing” in reality. I conclude with situating the rhetorical trope in the context of Arab collectivity, modernity, and historical progress.

Lunch will be served. Feel free to invite friends and colleagues. Please RSVP here by Friday, February 20.

If you are interested in presenting a work-in-progress at a future MARC meeting, please email Jasmine Erdener at jerdener@asc.upenn.edu.