Source/Link:

Omnia Khalil on Academia.edu 

Text:*

*Extract from longer text by author, which was sent to K LAB in preparation before attending Workshop 2; see detour 306

I use violence as a lens of analysis to unpack some of the social practices at Wekalet Al-Balah, a second-hand clothing market, in Bulaq Abule’lla neighborhood in Cairo. I examine violence as a form of power (Ardent 1970), with the complexity that is associated with different forms of political, economic, and/ or social power. Moreover, I seek to understand the violence that initiates amid urban experiences, social institutions, and social networks, to reveal local communities’ struggles, “social injuries”, and lived experiences within societal and structural forms of violence (Ralph 2014).

[…] Violence is being part of the everyday live, and its practices are becoming ordinary and part of the subjectivity formations of ordinary people who are not to be labelled as thugs or heroes. Instead, by revealing the intersectionality of violent practices in post-revolutionary Cairo, my research shows how multi-layered the story is in understanding a city that witnessed a revolution.