Work in Progress in the Social Studies (WIPSS): 2015/6
Wednesday 19 April
Hyper-Despotism of the Bullet:
Destourian Thought and the Politics of Sabotage in Post-Bardo Tunisia
Dr Norbert Bugeja
On Tuesday 19 April, the 19th annual series of the University of Malta’s Work in Progress in the Social Studies, WIPSS, continues its seminars on the theme The Contemporary Political Crisis in the Arab World. Dr Norbert Bugeja, will give a seminar entitled Hyper-Despotism of the Bullet: Destourian Thought and the Politics of Sabotage in Post-Bardo Tunisia. Dr Bugeja writes:
‘This paper is occasioned by the author’s personal experience of the Bardo National Museum in Tunis immediately after the 18 March 2015 attacks that claimed twenty-two lives, dealt a blow to the burgeoning political morale of post-revolutionary Tunisia, and etched an unprecedented mark in the memory of Tunisians of all persuasions. The bullet holes and fractured vitrines in and around the famed Salle de Carthage, where this country’s fabled antiquity meets its efforts to bring about a cultural and political modernity, invite reflection on what Fredric Jameson has termed the ‘irrevocable’ function of historical trauma – and especially its modes of inheritability and transmission in a socius that is itself at a delicate crossroads of political transition. Reflecting on the country’s destourian politics, with its roots in the country’s nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century social reformism, I will argue amongst other things that Tunisia’s successful post-independence transmission of reformist thought into a workable welfare society and an enduring popular intellect provided both an invaluable precedent for the 2011 uprisings that ousted bin Ali, and, concurrently, prompted a backlash of sponsored terror intended to avert the successful delivery of a post-2011 destourian reformism. I will relate my experience of the damaged exhibits at the Bardo and my more recent experience of a country in dire economic straits following the attacks on the Bardo and at Sousse, and will bridge this account with some political readings of post-2011 poetry and its implications for the country’s cultural futures.’
Norbert Bugeja is Research Fellow in Postcolonial Studies at the Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta and is the author of Postcolonial Memoir in the Middle East — Rethinking the Liminal in Mashriqij Writing (Routledge, 2012). He has published extensively on Middle Eastern and North African literature and autobiography, and has edited the first issue of the journal Countertext (Edinburgh University Press, April 2015). His most recent article, ‘Hyper-Despotism of the Bullet: Post-Bardo Tunisia and its (Unforgiving) Memorial Communiqué’ was published in Prospero (20: 2015, EUT) last December, and three new articles on Tunisian politics and Turkish literature will appear from major academic publishers in the coming weeks. Norbert is currently editing two new special issues for Countertext and the Journal of Mediterranean Studies respectively, as well as working on a new monograph. Norbert delivers international keynote addresses and invited seminars and participates in literary festivals on a regular basis. Last year he published the poetry collection South of the Kasbah (Midsea Books, 2015). His new poetry collection in Maltese, titled ²Ñ³Ü»å±ðÂá°ù, will appear later this year from Klabb Kotba Maltin. Norbert Bugeja received his doctorate in English and Comparative Literary Studies with specialism in Postcolonial Studies from the University of Warwick in 2011.
Tuesday 19 April, 18:00-19:00, followed by discussion. In the Faculty of Arts Library, on the second floor of Old Humanities Building, at the end of the corridor next to Room 301. The stairs are in the corner of the quadrangle behind the Assembly Hall. Students are encouraged to attend. The public is cordially invited.
Convenors: Paul Clough, Peter Mayo and Michael Briguglio
