Research Statement

Research Questions

This film explores YouTube as a space to map an “anarchive” of popularised Iraqi dance, drawing on dances such as Hacha’ and Khashaaba which are rooted in marginalised communities such as Ghajar (Roma) and Black Iraqis. These anarchives highlights Iraq's erased archives and “invisible” histories beyond the post-2003 US invasion rupture. The film poses questions on how new unofficial methods of preserving these dance practices provide counter-narratives and reveal power structures through these anarchives.  

Context / Significance

Anarchive is a concept borrowed from Lia Brozgal (2020) who uses the term to describe literary and cultural representations of the 1962 police massacre of peaceful Algerian protesters in Paris, a history that was “made invisible”. Brozgal discusses this absence not as a naturally occurring thing but as something that has been actively made invisible through power structures. It is a history that is invisible and visible at the same time. In this context, Brozgal looks at how cultural productions discussing the massacre “do history” and bring about new meanings, making the silences of history speak. Anarchive for Brozgal means several things: it is a process of archiving the archive. Anarchive is also used to mean "without" an (official state) archive, looking at the peripheries of history production. It can also be read as analogous to anarchy where the anarchive lacks order and there is an absence of authority and lack of common origin. 

I use this framework within the context of Iraq’s cultural history. With the 2003 invasion of Iraq, many of the professional archival footage available at institutions in Iraq were destroyed and looted. YouTube became a significant space for unofficial archives, where users upload archival VHS tapes, closing and conversing over the gap created by this “rupture”, as noted by Reman Sadani (2023). Peter Harling (2012) uses the term rupture to point out the lack of historiographical continuity in a lot of research on Iraq that sees the post-2003 invasion as a “rupture” whilst ignoring the significance of social, economic and political histories, especially during the Ba’thist rule in Iraq from 1968 to 2003. 

In 2004, Alaa Saad “Al Burtuqala”1 became an iconic Iraqi song regionally and internationally, reflecting a new trend post-2003 where Iraqi musicians who built their careers singing in nightclubs and hotels in the 80s released music videos from Dubai, repurposing folkloric songs with contemporary elements (Abd Alamir, 2017). Instead of using the state-owned Iraqi channel Al-Shabab, the artists chose Arabic music broadcasting channels, in addition to some Iraqi commercial channels. These videos often featured women dancing, sparking criticism for allegedly harming Iraqi women's reputations (Al Hurra, 2023). Some artists, like Kadhem AlSahir, defended the dances as part of Iraq's folkloric history, particularly the Ghajar community, but suggested a more “respectful” portrayal. The dancers faced severe backlash, including threats and violence (Al Hurra, 2023). 

These music videos and their reactions reveal narratives marked by gender, class, race, and ethnicity, and the power structures that uphold/dismantle them. Dances involving hair twirling are often labelled as “Kawliya” dancing (al Hadithi, 1979; Al-Hashimi, 2012; Salloum, 2013; Zeidel, 2014), a term used pejoratively for the Ghajar community and is often translated to “Gypsy” or “Roma” in English. This label brings forth ethnic and racial stereotypes that are heavily gendered and sexualized. Ghajar women are stereotypically seen as dancers and sex workers (Al-Hashimi, 2012).   

When discussing what defines Ghajar dancing, especially from a folkloric sense, Mohannad Hawaz of the Iraqi Folkloric State Troupe notes that apart from “Hacha’”, much of these dance moves are regionally dependent (Hawaz, 2020). In a party held in Basra, for example, dancers will incorporate more “Basrawi” and “Khaleeji” moves in their dance. It is worth noting that music, rhythm, and dance in modern popularised Iraqi music are heavily influenced by rhythms that are considered to be from Basra, such as “Hewa” (Al-Azraki and Yaqoob, 2023). This is significant because Basra being the southernmost and the only port city in Iraq has a long history marked by transnational histories and the Arab slave trade (Young, 2022). Much of the music in dance in Basra is heavily rooted in the Black community in Basra (Al-Azraki and Yaqoob, 2023). Thus, it begs the question, how much of these stereotypes of what constitutes “Kawliya” dancing sexualises and marginalises the Ghajar community, whilst also erasing the histories and cultural practices of the Black community in Iraq? 

The 1970s during which the Ba’thist government was in power was referred to as a “golden age” for the Iraqi arts where the first Iraqi state dance troupe was established in 1971 and toured internationally (albayan, 2001; Hawaz, 2020), and Iraq upheld an image on the world stage of being very progressive for women’s rights (Ali, 2018, p.90). Saleh (2022)  points out in her work on the subjectivity of national belonging, that these narratives are stratified along class, ethnic, and sectarian lines.  The Ba’th regime’s anti-Shi’a and anti-Kurd rhetoric marked an exclusivist ideal of nationhood. During this period, the Ba’thist government banned satellite dishes and the state relied heavily on state-owned media channels to promote a “unified” national identity through cultural productions (Sadani, 2023). Ali’s (2008) work on women’s rights activism and gender policies in Iraq astutely illustrates how gender for example was and is used as a pragmatic tool by the state and imperialist forces to enforce power. She argues how the state’s construction of difference through its varying state practices throughout the history of Iraq, marks a site where individuals or communities could claim social and political rights.  

When mapping an anarchive of Iraqi dance, I draw on the centrality of Basra as a site of anarchives sitting at a paradoxical position on the peripheries of history production. Thawra Yaqoob’s work (Al-Azraki and Yaqoob, 2023) highlights the importance of oral history in Black Iraqi ritualistic music and dance. Much of these traditional dances of Basra have been preserved communally despite the continued lack of care and erasure by the Iraqi state which views them as “un-Islamic”. At the hands of the state, dance/music and ritual become separated and in effect sanitised, marking a racist epistemological dichotomy of ways of knowing within dance (mind/body vs soul/body) (Al-Azraki and Yaqoob, 2023). 

“Khashaaba” is one of the few dance forms of Basra that receives much attention in the documented anarchive of YouTube. The Basra State Folklore Troupe was established a few years after the Iraqi Folkloric State Troupe in 1976 ([The Basra Folkloric State Troupe from the Republic of Iraq. Celebrations of Oman’s national day on 15th November 1985]فرقة البصرة للفنون الشعبية من جمهورية العراق  ، احتفالات سلطنة عُمان العيد الوطني 15 نوفمبر1985م, 2022). The rhythms and dances of Basra and their televised documentation were not limited to the state troupe but to other local ensembles such as the Basrawi Khashaaba Troupe which held regular recorded performances called “Jalsat” (gatherings) and continue to do so.  “Khashaaba” is often described as originating from the seamen aboard ships in the port of Basra who improvised drum-like instruments from planks of wood (Al-Ma’muri, 2020). Its origins are spoken of in a way that sanitises its strong African roots and erases its violent history (Al-Ma’muri, 2020). 

Methods 

The film builds on critical archival studies, utilising archival footage, film and interviews on YouTube, and YouTube comments, to converse/close over the gap created by historical ruptures (Pietrobruno, 2013; Sadani, 2023; Haddad, 2013). By looking at the videos as anarchives in conjunction with the context when they were produced, I look at these re-engagements with the archives as a form of cultural “production” rather than representation (Hall, 2021). In other words, as processes of “archiving the archive”.

The film relies on the quotation and pastiche copyright exceptions. The work uses fragments from several audio-visual sources on YouTube as a mode to creatively play with the material, as well as a method of quotation to explore my research questions. In addition, due to YouTube’s shifting copyright laws and frameworks, these videos can be deleted at any time. In the context of rupture, making copies and reusing these audio-visual sources could also be seen as preserving cultural memory and would thus fall under the copyright exception for preservation purposes. 

I aimed to explore my research questions beyond writing, drawing on what McKittrick (2021) refers to as a methodology rooted in Black studies and anticolonial thought This approach integrates various ways of knowing (texts, stories, songs, places) and encourages viewer imagination without always providing answers. Even though my research is not practice-based, engaging directly with audio-visual material helped me to make sense of it. My subjective mapping exercise of reconstructing a past through “absence” (El Shakry, 2015) thus became an exercise of storytelling, of mapping a narrative. 

I also began to question what an anarchive dance looks like and what feeling can be captured.  Here I drew from the work of Julianknxx whose artistic commission “Chorus in Rememory of Flight” binds the performance, testimonies and context of different Black diasporic localities to illustrate how music can be vital for the survival of cultural memory (Julianknxx, 2023). Throughout Julianknxx’s installation, the ocean acts as a symbol and silences and poetry punctuate the space as if to say the unsaid and carry the heaviness of its many possible meanings. The river(s) serve as a significant symbol for Iraq, representing the Fertile Crescent and alluding to its ancient civilisation. However, bodies of water, particularly in their connection to the sea, are rarely associated with the history of slave trade, in which Basra played a role. The power of the anarchive, therefore, lies in its ability to evoke “a Black Iraqi past that is both a repository of pain and a source of creativity” (Rossetti, 2021, p.10). I also draw on Albright’s (2019) work on gravity and the act of falling, connecting it to the term “Hacha’”, which can be translated as going down to sleep or collapsing. Albright subverts the notion of falling as symbolic of chaos, instead questioning how learning to land might be grounded in turmoil. Here, the body becomes central, as an embodied form of knowing.  

Drawing on Baghoolizadeh’s (2015) work on Black Iranians and anti-blackness in Iran, I was mindful of the risk of sensationalising and essentialising Black and Ghajar identity in Iraq. Rather than focusing solely on skin colour and visual representations, my aim was to highlight the histories and lived realities of racism (Kareem, 2019) experienced by Ghajar and Black Iraqis. At the same time, I sought to move beyond viewing these cultural productions as exclusively significant to specific communities, instead examining their broader relevance on a national scale (Baghoolizadeh, 2021). 

Outcomes and Impact

I draw on Farhan’s (2022) work on “Iraq’s Archive Fever” to question what it means to archive amid rupture. Much of the archival material that was not destroyed in Iraq after 2003 was plundered and looted to the United States, including records from the Ba’thist government. Farhan frames this within the concept of archive fever, whereby Iraq is portrayed as unstable and incapable of preserving its own history. In this narrative, the West assumes the role of protector, preserving Iraq’s past in institutions that remain inaccessible to Iraqis within Iraq, despite digitisation efforts. 

Farhan highlights how, despite these limitations, Iraqis have found alternative methods and made use of available resources to subvert dominant, Saddam-centric narratives, incorporating instead more regional and transnational perspectives.  

As I am at the beginning of my PhD, I am still contemplating the direction of the project. While YouTube has become a vital platform for communal archiving, it presents structural limitations: videos can be deleted due to shifting copyright laws and frameworks (Haddad, 2013). Additionally, videos are often reuploaded multiple times, making it difficult to contextualise and verify the authenticity (Haddad, 2013).  

Inspired by Hardi Kurda’s work on archiving Kurdish music (‘Archive Khanah – Hardi Kurda’, n.d.), I am considering the role of community involvement in preserving cultural sounds and dance. Kurda questions the role of citizens and the criteria for archiving, engaging communities in the creation of curated exhibitions and interactive games.  

I hope to contact various YouTube channel owners who upload archival footage of Iraqi dance, as well as Iraqi musicians and performers in Basra, to begin a dialogue on what archiving Iraqi dance could look like. I am still uncertain about how this film might be positioned within the archive. However, I hope that by making it accessible and available for viewing, it will spark discussions around Iraqi dance and archiving practices, moving beyond the notion of a “neutral” archival process to reveal its socio-political dimensions (Azoulay, 2019). 

References

Abd Alamir, A. (2017) [The Last Dance of the Red Dress: Seven Decades of Iraq’s Contemporary History through Singing and Music] رقصة الفستان الأحمر الأخيرة - سبعة عقود من تاريخ العراق المعاصر عبر الغناء والموسيقى. [Almutawasit Publishing] منشورات المتوسط. 

Al Hurra (2023) ‘البرتقالة’.. الأغنية العراقية المثيرة للجدل التي قُتلت بسببها الراقصة هنادي | الحرة [online]. Available from: https://www.alhurra.com/iraq/2023/06/08/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A8%D8%B1%D8%AA%D9%82%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A3%D8%BA%D9%86%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%82%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%AB%D9%8A%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D9%84%D9%84%D8%AC%D8%AF%D9%84-%D9%82%D9%8F%D8%AA%D9%84%D8%AA-%D8%A8%D8%B3%D8%A8%D8%A8%D9%87%D8%A7-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%82%D8%B5%D8%A9-%D9%87%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%AF%D9%8A (Accessed 9 May 2024). 

Al-Azraki, A. & Yaqoob, T. Y. (2023) Afro-Iraqi Rituals: Stigma, Discrimination, and Resilience. the Black Theatre Review. [Online] 1 (2), . [online]. Available from: http://journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu/tbtr/article/id/5149/ (Accessed 20 November 2023). 

albayan (2001) الفنانة العراقية شهر زاد شاكر: هجرت الفرقة القومية كي لا أشهد احتضارها [online]. Available from: https://www.albayan.ae/culture/2001-09-16-1.1127168 (Accessed 27 October 2023). 

Albright, A. C. (2019) How to land: finding ground in an unstable world. New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press. 

Al-Hashimi, H. (2012) تكيّف الغجر..دراسة أنثروبولوجيا اجتماعية لجماعات الكاولية في العراق. دار المدى. 

Ali, Z. (2018) Women and Gender in Iraq: Between Nation-Building and Fragmentation. 1st edition. [Online]. Cambridge University Press. [online]. Available from: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/9781108120517/type/book (Accessed 26 January 2024). 

Al-Ma’muri, A. A. A.-H. (2020) [Music Cut from a Tree: on Basrawi Khashaaba] الموسيقى المقطوعة من شجرة | عن الخشابة البصرية [online]. Available from: https://ma3azef.com/الخشابة/ (Accessed 20 November 2023). 

Anon (n.d.) Archive Khanah – Hardi Kurda. [online]. Available from: https://hardikurda.com/archive-khanah/ (Accessed 3 April 2024).

Anon (2022) [The Basra Folkloric State Troupe from the Republic of Iraq. Celebrations of Oman’s national day on 15th November 1985]فرقة البصرة للفنون الشعبية من جمهورية العراق  ، احتفالات سلطنة عُمان العيد الوطني 15 نوفمبر1985م. [online]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_3GSpta108 (Accessed 13 June 2024). 

Azoulay, A. A. (2019) Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. London, UNITED KINGDOM: Verso. [online]. Available from: http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=5976949 (Accessed 25 March 2024). 

Baghoolizadeh, B. (2021) From Religious Eulogy to War Anthem: Kurdizadeh’s “Layla Bigufta” and Blackness in Late Twentieth-Century Iran. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. [Online] 41 (3), 441–454. 

Baghoolizadeh, B. (2015) Picturing the Other: Race and Afro-Iranians in Documentary Photography. Ajam Media Collective [online]. Available from: https://ajammc.com/2015/07/20/picturing-them-vs-us-race-and-afro-iranians-in-documentary-photography/ (Accessed 7 December 2023). 

Brozgal, L. (2020) Absent the Archive. [Online]. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. [online]. Available from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv19cw9xh (Accessed 10 January 2024). 

El Shakry, O. (2015) “History without Documents”: The Vexed Archives of Decolonization in the Middle East. The American Historical Review. [Online] 120 (3), 920–934. 

Farhan, S. (2022) Iraq’s archive fever. Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World. [Online] 16 (1), 103–116. 

Haddad, F. (2013) An Undiscovered Archive? Online Video Sharing, Alternative Narratives and the Documentation of History. 

al Hadithi, T. H. (1979) al Ghajar wal Karaj fi al ʿIraq. FULL REFERENCE NEEDED.

Hall, S. (2021) Selected Writings on Race and Difference. [Online]. Duke University Press. [online]. Available from: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781478021223/html?lang=en (Accessed 9 November 2023).

Harling, P. (2012) ‘Beyond political ruptures: towards a historiography of social continuity in iraq’, in Writing the Modern History of Iraq. [Online]. WORLD SCIENTIFIC. pp. 61–86. [online]. Available from: https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789814390576_0005 (Accessed 23 February 2024). 

Hawaz, M. (2020) Ep 115. Mohanned Hawaz: Things You Didn’t Know about Iraqi Dance. [online]. Available from: https://www.ianadance.com/bellydance-life/episode115 (Accessed 1 November 2023). 

Julianknxx (2023) Julianknxx: Chorus in Rememory of Flight | Barbican [online]. Available from: https://www.barbican.org.uk/our-story/press-room/julianknxx-chorus-in-rememory-of-flight (Accessed 6 November 2023). 

Kareem, M. (2019) Arabic literature and the African other. [online]. Available from: https://africasacountry.com/2019/05/how-do-arabs-talk-and-write-about-black-people (Accessed 28 May 2024).

McKittrick, K. (2021) Dear science and other stories. Errantries. Durham London: Duke University Press. 

Pietrobruno, S. (2013) YouTube and the social archiving of intangible heritage. New Media & Society. [Online] 15 (8), 1259–1276. 

Rossetti, C. (2021) Messages in Bottles: An Archive of Black Iraqi Identity in Diaa Jubaili’s al-Biṭrīq al-Aswad. Humanities. [Online] 10 (2), 82. 

Sadani, R. (2023) Magnetic Memories: How To Mend That Which Has Been Ruptured? [online]. Available from: https://malaffatnaas.com/2023/02/07/magnetic-memories-how-to-mend-that-which-has-been-ruptured/ (Accessed 8 January 2024).

Saleh, Z. (2022) Ethnographic narratives as living archives among the Iraqi diaspora. Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World. [Online] 16 (1), 89–102. 

Salloum, S. (2013) Minorities in Iraq: Memory, identity and challenges. Baghdad: Masarat for Cultural and Media Development. 

Young, G. (2022) Archives after state unmaking: Researching provincial urban histories in Iraq. Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World. [Online] 16 (1), 71–87. 

Zeidel, R. (2014) Gypsies and Society in Iraq: Between Marginality, Folklore and Romanticism. Middle Eastern Studies. [Online] 50 (1), 74–85. 

Peer Reviews

All reviews refer to the original research statement which has been edited in response to what follows

Review 1: Invite resubmission with major revisions of practical work and/or written statement. 

This is a promising and rich treatment combining a screen studies approach with an important cultural history. Film and video material is presented alongside interpretative titles or prompts, making a strong editorial aesthetic almost like an audiovisual magazine. The clips are often fragmented, inset and multiplied, signalling a playful sense of confidence in appropriating the material. However, for a viewer unfamiliar with Iraq's history and geography, and not expert in dance, more exposition and a clearer structure is needed.  

The accompanying text is excellent, contextualising the author's project in a framework of scholarship and a media moment of fragile digital communal archiving. For a special issue on copyright exceptions, then perhaps more could be said about the copyright framework, and how the legally enabling concepts of pastiche and quotation condition the author's own creation of an archive in the form of this film. These are our UK conditions for use; how do they relate to the conditions for use mentioned in the film and text - the destruction of physical cultural archives, the diasporic generation of content by Iraqi musicians and dancers, and the nostalgic uses to which this is put, as referenced in the film's fascinating segment on YouTube comments.  

In general the video essay needs clearer structuring and would benefit from making explicit a few points that are covered in the accompanying text. The author mentions that an aim was to encourage imagination without providing too many answers. An essayistic approach should allow space for viewers to have their own relationship with the footage. However, in our crowded media landscape, a video essay needs also to be accessible. Given the publication context is more about the form than the subject area, more signposting is needed for general viewers to engage with the important questions being asked. 

I recommend making more use of the editorial voice that is already present in the film in the form of textual chapter markers and definitions. Some explanation could be given for the term 'anarchive', and some more background could be provided regarding the regional and cultural specifics of the dance forms, and what they stand in contrast to. A stronger editorial voice would also work to pull together tonally different material - the podcast, the contemporary TV documentary, the Fahdel film - to work in service of the principal research material, ie the dance videos. Finally, a more explicit focus on the research questions the author poses in the abstract, about counter-narratives and power structures, would be great. 

To conclude, this is a valuable and important project. The author demonstrates familiarity with the material and an ability to move through Iraqi documentaries and videos, curating and interpreting them for a scholarly international audience. They set out a convincing theoretical framework, historical context, and their own active interest in preserving a digital archive, in the accompanying text. There is a strong case for the video essay as part of the project. I recommend they revise the latter for structure and clarity before publication. 

Review 2: Accept submission subject to minor revisions of written statement and (optionally) of the practical work. 

This is a video essay on a fascinating topic, a zoom in to the margins within the margins, Iraqi dance performances associated to marginalised communities within the country, namely Ghajar (Roma) and Black Iraqis. The researcher suggests that the film is show how YouTube can contribute to mapping an “anarchive” of these dance forms, drawing on the work of Lia Brozgal. What is particularly strong is how the film, in my own view, becomes an archive. It is a unique collection of various sources moving from specific regional and cultural contexts to dance performances by the communities in such contexts.  

The format of practice research thus becomes as relevant as ever, since it is the audiovisual medium the one giving audiovisibility to otherwise rarely seen or traceable videos, which are also added value through the contextualisation in this video. The aesthetics of the title at the beginning and in various sections of the video essay remind of William Klein’s film on the Pan-African Festival of Algiers in 1969, acquiring further coherence with the selected theoretical framework, but also with liberatory and revolutionary filmmaker associated to national struggles for liberation in Latin America and Africa, which creates a rather interesting aesthetic relationship South-South, when bringing in a context from the Middle East.  

Quite at the beginning, there is an interesting topic raised: death. This is not just due to the death of a particular individual, but also, of Iraqi cinema, as we see the destroyed and abandoned celluloid. This visual image seems a call to action, to the restoration of such cinema. The video essay then participates as a form of restoration at the intersection of immaterial and material culture, that is, both tangible and intangible. The creative reuse of the various YouTube sources act as a form of preservation, as an archive of the anarchive.  

The topics raised by communities delve into existing subjects about identities not being fixed, as Stuart Hall rightly pointed out. The body, in movement, through these dances, thus becomes a free form of expression, able to challenge any fixed understanding of the nation or of identity. In this sense, the researcher could further emphasise both in the statement and in the audiovisual work what is so significant about these dances. Similarly, further work could be done on the flow between the various section, perhaps adding some intertext or voice over clarifying the connection between the various sources being reused. The key argument and contribution to knowledge could also be further emphasised, since this is a very important intervention in different fields, which could also be identified, beyond the insights on these dance performances fruit of intersectional identities and various forms of movement in Iraq. 

The work addresses the intriguing concept of “anarchive” through the use of fascinating materials that are fragile in different meaningful ways. The explanation on copyright exceptions should be expanded. How does the film rely on ‘quotation’ and ‘pastiche’? How does the author interpret these concepts? Even more interestingly, given that as the author notes ‘videos can be deleted based on shifting copyright laws and frameworks’, the author could provocatively claim to rely on the exception for preservation purposes (guidance available here: https://www.copyrightuser.org/educate/archives/). 

All reviews refer to the original research statement which has been edited in response