Blogs & Literature & Activism

Social criticism has been a pervasive element in modern Arabic literature since its beginnings. This book is concerned with social criticism in blog narratives against the background of a long tradition of criticizing society through literary expression in the Egyptian national framework. It is also about ways in which the Arabic literary heritage, classical and contemporary, is put to work and recycled in Egyptian Arabic-language blogs. Readers will become aware that a number of the same societal and political problems that have been and still are treated in literature are brought up in Egyptian blogs. While social criticism will be shown to be a common thread in literary expression and blogging in Egypt, a central question is how bloggers use their cultural and literary heritage to advance their goals of changing social and political reality. The bloggers give voice to core problems with which an early blogging generation was and continues to be concerned. Some were discontented with the inability of the government to provide them with the democratic liberties they requested. Others emphasized the necessity to solve the urgent problems of poor governance, corruption and poverty. The book concludes that if the root problems are not addressed and the old order not removed, real change cannot take place. The question is what picture literature and social media including blogs will present to us henceforth: one of a society taking steps towards real change, or one reflecting the status quo with circumscribed individual liberties and lack of social reform.