This essay grapples with Arab celebrity as an overtly political, inherently transnational phenomenon and explores how revolutionary celebrity may expand our understanding of celebrity writ large. Through the prism of a media battle between the singer Assala and the Assad regime in the Syrian uprising since March 2011, a politics of celebrity is explored that pits the body of the star against the body of the sovereign, at the nexus of revolution, transnationalism, and circulation across media.

Arab uprisings, body, celebrity, spectacle, Syria, media
2015
Issue Section:
Essays
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