How do individuals in the Middle East and Africa use blogs and performances to protest injustice and to voice their desire for democracy? Reflecting twenty years of research and experience after working with guerilla fighters in the Kurdish region of Iraq, refugees in Iran, interreligious groups in Morocco, and former political prisoners in South Africa, Segall offers a groundbreaking view of how groups use cultural forms to navigate memories of violation and to create new political identities. Unlike global media s shifting and often shallow spotlight on the protests of the Arab Spring, this book shows how communities are performing creative, economic, resistant, and even reconciliatory claims of rights amid contentious and gendered territories. By analyzing innovative sites, ranging from a blog of street protests to performance of bewithcing democracy, Performing Democracy attends to local venues and creative technology. With its impressive diversity of women's stories that are often forgotten by the press, this book suggests generational and hybrid protests voicing trauma, seeking change. --Amazon.com.