Maria Frederika Malmström’s new book deals with both the backstage and the frontstage of politics in Egypt, especially since the takeover by the military, through connecting two bodies of theory—affect and materiality. She has tried to bring “large-scale events such as war, public demonstrations, state-sponsored violence and armed repression into the scale of the everyday, the bodily, the sensory and the local” as well as to bring the “backstage and the frontstage of politics into a deep dialogue.” Affect theory shows how sonic vibrations – important stimuli within everyday experience, with a unique power to induce strong affective states – mediate consciousness, including heightened states of attention and anxiety. Sound, or the lack thereof, stimulates, disorients, transforms, and controls. As an object, sound has a particular status. Sound is measurable, which means it is material, if invisible. It permeates our bodies and the environments in which we live. We cannot keep our ears closed or sounds out. Sound also creates environments: revolution takes place largely with the energy generated in chants and songs; church bells and the Islamic call-to-prayer sacralised space. In this talk, Malmström focuses on sound and affective transformative politics in Egypt.