Week 6: Poetry as a Shield for the Revolution

This week I chose to focus on articles about how people used poetry as an inspiration and as a sort of mask for them to hide behind. The first article, “Egypt’s Poached Revolutionary Poems” by Mohammed Kheir discusses how poetry was used to empower people through out the uprisings. While lines began to be shouted in the street, there was no true origin from them even though they became associated with famous revolutionary poets like Ahmed Negm. However, Negm denies that these lines were written by him but understands that the people use poetry to hide behind and use him as a face to protect themselves. The second article, “Poetry of the Revolution” by Sharif Elmusa talks about how essential poetry was in the revolution, because of the way it inspires people (and how it inspires people in the same way the revolution did). Elmusa talks about how poetry takes common words and common meanings to create something extraordinary and how, in the same way, the revolution has taken common people and made them do extraordinary things such as seeking justice and removing symbols of power from their government. These articles both exhibited signs of the Cosmopolitan view point because of the way they showed how the people were the driving force of the revolution. However, I think that Elmusa also showed a touch of Political Liberalism because of how he discussed how the some of the people have been removed from power and that now the people of Egypt have more of a chance to step up in the world become of it.

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