You Have Not Yet Been Defeated

A roundtable conversation with Sanaa Seif.

Sanaa Seif will address Alaa El-Fattah's book of essays You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, his essayistic and political activism more generally and Sanaa’s campaign for Alaa's release. Both Alaa and Sanaa are prominent British-Egyptian activists involved in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Alaa has been imprisoned since the revolution, and Sanaa has been promoting his book of essays and actively campaigning for his release.

Sanaa will be in conversation with Maša Mrovlje (University of Leeds) and Nicola Pratt (University of Warwick). The roundtable will feature readings from El-Fattah’s essays, discussions of his key ideas and reflections on the promises/failures of the campaign for his release. Thematically, the roundtable will focus on El-Fattah’s metaphor of monstrosity, which outlines how activists can reanimate their political commitment in the wake of defeat and draw resilience and hope from past losses and wounds.

These discussions will be the basis of a podcast on El-Fattah’s prison writing and the campaign for his release. It is our hope the roundtable will promote Alaa’s book and raise awareness about the significance of Sanaa’s and Alaa's activism.

This roundtable is co-hosted by the Centre for Contemporary Political Theory and the Centre for Democratic Politics.