Abstract | In this article, I engage with aesthetic experience as a central hermeneutic endeavor for theorizing performing arts audiences in the Arab region. I argue that a critical engagement with Arab performing arts audiences’ aesthetic experiences necessitates both an archaeological manoeuver and a re-articulation of two keywords: ‘experience’ and ‘everyday’. The article advances, using evidence from research, that allowing the audiences of performing arts in the Arab region to speak may be a step towards democratizing the triangular meaning making process among the performer, the audience, and the art institution, and a means towards dislocating, if not liberating, the categories’ Arab culture, art, performance, and experience, from their teleological articulations. |
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