(Friday, March 15, 2024, 4 p.m., Sala Liguria, Palazzo Ducale, Genoa)
The talk will start with a brief excursus on the history of censorship and book circulation in the Arab world from the medieval period until modernity. Afterwards, attention will be brought to the case of Egypt and texts written by detained authors from the 1940s onward will be presented. The talk is intended to reflect on the meaning of writing in the condition of imprisonment in the Arab world, in Egypt in particular, and how practices of censorship (or lack of censorship) have characterized the control of the publishing market and, even today, strongly condition written expression. Texts by female prisoners and detainees belonging to different political currents will be discussed, and attention will be paid to how the concept of freedom took shape precisely through writing during political detention and what the reading public’s expectations of this literature are.