John’s last post outlined most of what we did during First Week, but let me update you on Friday\u2019s class, because it was awesome! We\u2019ve been studying a lot of political theory (and practice) and we\u2019re just starting to get into what for me is the most fascinating part of the \u201cart of insurgency\u201d: the potential for insurgency in art.\u00a0 Yesterday, we had our first set of performances. The assignment was to create a performance that reinforced and\/or challenged hierarchy. The results were varied, but uniformly very cool. \u00a0There was a modern dance performance about the Cold War, a Brechtian illustration of discrimination at the airport, an audience-participation heavy piece about the changing means of production in a PB&J factory, and a rendition of Orwell\u2019s Animal Farm<\/i> using tableaux.\u00a0 These performances brilliantly illustrated many of the political science principles we\u2019ve been learning about.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve been discussing the ways in which various resistance movements appropriate the dominant norms of their cultures for their own ends. For example, Asmaa Mahfouz posted a vlog that helped spark the recent Egyptian revolution. Her call to action embraced patriarchal norms; she insinuated that men were not real men if they failed to participate in the protest movement.<\/p>\n