Duke University Press Dissident Syria: Making Oppositional Arts Official

From 1970 until his death in 2000, Hafiz Asad ruled Syria with an iron fist. His regime controlled every aspect of daily life. Seeking to preempt popular unrest, Asad sometimes facilitated the expression of anti-government sentiment by appropriating the work of artists and writers, turning works of protest into official agitprop. Syrian dissidents were forced to negotiate between the desire to genuinely criticize the authoritarian regime, the risk to their own safety and security that such criticism would invite, and the fear that their work would be co-opted as government propaganda, as what miriam cooke calls “commissioned criticism.” In this intimate account of dissidence in Asad’s Syria, cooke describes how intellectuals attempted to navigate between charges of complicity with the state and treason against it. A renowned scholar of Arab cultures, cooke spent six months in Syria during the mid-1990s familiarizing herself with the country’s literary scene, particularly its women writers. While she was in Damascus, dissidents told her that to really understand life under Hafiz Asad, she had to speak with playwrights, filmmakers, and, above all, the authors of “prison literature.” She shares what she learned in Dissident Syria. She describes touring a sculptor’s studio, looking at the artist’s subversive work as well as at pieces commissioned by the government. She relates a playwright’s view that theater is unique in its ability to stage protest through innuendo and gesture. Turning to film, she shares filmmakers’ experiences of making movies that are praised abroad but rarely if ever screened at home. Filled with the voices of writers and artists, Dissident Syria reveals a community of conscience within Syria to those beyond its borders. Review "Dissident Syria demonstrates the power of art against the power of the state, the versatility of the creative mind in the face of brute force. miriam cooke's book is a fascinating read."--Issa J. Boullata "World Literature Today" "[cooke] candidly writes about her initial failures to grasp nuances of Syria's culture, including giving a public lecture on women's literature in Syria with Assad's pronouncement on culture as its title. . . . Yet Ms. cooke's persistence paid off with startling revelations about the middle ground in Syrian art between collaboration and incarceration."--Richard Byrne "Chronicle of Higher Education" "A thorough - and heartbreaking - account of creative life in Syria, and an implicit homage to the indomitable human spirit, in this case Arab men who can be counted among the great dissidents of our times. . . . Miriam Cooke's book on dissidents in Syria exceeds its original purpose by opening the door to Syrian intellectuals, writers and filmmakers. It points to a crucial problem - the abuse of power that has turned that nation into a police state - and opines that Syria, with all its richness and diversity, deserves better. Given real peace, both inside and outside its borders, Syria could again become a center of creativity, culture and civilization."--Etel Adnan "Al Jadid" "In Dissident Syria, scholar of contemporary Arabic literature miriam cooke sheds light on the heretofore neglected world of Syrian oppositional culture. . . . This important work will attract specialists in a range of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. Dissident Syria will appeal to those interested in Syrian, Arab, and Middle Eastern expressive culture. It adds an important dimension to the literature on the relationship between politics and the arts. It also forms a significant contribution to a growing body of work on prison literature. cooke's accessible, engaging style makes Dissident Syria an ideal choice for undergraduate courses in the same range of topics."--Christa Salamandra "Journal of Middle East Women's Studies" " Dissident Syria is an important and urgent book. In her fascinating account of Syrian cultural productions during the