Dissenting Bodies: The Performance Art of Adham Hafez

This article explores the art of Adham Hafez, an Egypt-based performer, choreographer and music composer, in relation to the political and social turmoil in Egypt leading up to and following the 2011 uprising. Hafez's work through and on the body highlights how the uprisings themselves were a rejection of various assaults on the body rendered by the Egyptian state, colonialism and global capitalism. By focusing on the ways that Hafez's performances reconfigure the senses, and relations between the body and language, this article shows how performance can be a site of dissensus that creates potentially transformative resonance between bodies - in Tahrir Square and beyond.