Exceptionalizing Tunisia

The canonization of Tunisia as the standard-bearer of the Arab spring does a disservice to the ongoing democratization processes in the Middle East and North Africa. Tunisia, as a country, and Tunisians, as a people, have most undoubtedly taken important steps in the transition to democracy process they initiated in the winter of 2011 following the revolution they engineered to bring down the authoritarian rule of former president, Zine al Abidine Ben Ali.

Against uncertain and unlikely odds, the country has, over the past four and a half years, began credibly laying the foundations of a representative system anchored in accountability and rights. In particular, Tunisians prioritized importantly a substantial constitutional process, thus anchoring the changes in a viable and tangible institutionalization track. Tunisia was also, we should recall, – for all the subsequent large-scale events in Cairo’s Tahrir Square – the first country to start the Arab revolutions. Change came from the Maghreb not the Mashreq. Nevertheless, the route has barely been embarked on and difficulties abound.

‘Good’ Tunisia, ‘Bad’ Neighbors

Beyond the difficulties inherent in the Tunisian political liberalization process itself, congratulatory headlines are equally revealing of reductionist readings of the post-Arab spring phase. Setting the positive Tunisian developments – too easily – against, notably, the chaos in neighboring Libya, neo-authoritarianism in Egypt, and civil war in Yemen presents an outlook which at once minimizes the real challenges the Tunisian process has begun facing and fatalistically accept only bleak prospects for the other countries in the region transitioning with great difficulty since 2011.

There is, too, a certain amount of self-serving righteousness bordering on indecency on the part of those who did not readily walk the impediment-filled path with Tunisia in the early days in 2011 – when the uncertainties of ‘Arab democracy’ were the order of the day – coming around to now rally behind those winning the Nobel Prize. Beyond the satisfaction of a well-earned recognition, Tunisians should heed the fact that victory, or a sense of it, is mostly perceptual. It is cemented only through our reading and management of that often subjective feeling, what awaits us, and what we take into that journey.

Transitions to democracy are extraordinarily complex matters that cannot and should not be examined in an impatient logic of hasty assessments of ‘success’ and ‘failure’. A sign of the times, such outlook partakes of the current ‘top-tenization’ of everything, which, in this case, has at its core simplistic readings of competitive societal transformation. Analyses of the Arab Spring continue to be minimally historical and lacking a comparative dimension. Understanding democratization means taking the long view; unpacking multifaceted causes, non-linear pathways, and contingent outcomes. Identifying patterns and factoring-in the notions that transitions go back and forth, can fail, and when seemingly established can falter.

Tunisia will forge ahead even more if we do not sensationalize its arduous and generation-lasting transition process.


Illustration: “La Victoire”, Magritte, 1939 

Remettre en selle la diplomatie en Syrie

Au-delà de la confirmation de la détérioration du dossier syrien, l’entrée en guerre de la Russie contre l’État islamique, ce 30 septembre, souligne avant tout la chute libre de la diplomatie dans les relations internationales contemporaines. De manière sans cesse renouvelée, nous assistons au recours – toujours plus systématique, plus large et plus accéléré – à la force comme réponse réflexive aux diverses crises que connaît le monde, et notamment le Moyen-Orient.

Le cas de la Syrie est révélateur, avec ce dernier épisode, d’un nouveau moment-vérité dans le processus d’affaiblissement de la diplomatie où la compétition stratégico-politique entre différents camps internationaux et régionaux ne s’embarrasse désormais plus des formes – soulignant, avant tout, l’éclatement des processus consensuels et des dynamiques multilatérales émasculées à souhait par ces tiraillements.

Exemplarité négative

Deux traits émergents sont à souligner. D’une part, la théâtralité d’une diplomatie vidée de son sens et fatalement condamnée à l’échec, et, d’autre part, l’atomisation des structures formelles de décision illustrée par la multiplication de réunions internationales ad hoc s’arrogeant la légitimité du processus de prise de décision multilatéral et vidant le Conseil de sécurité et l’Assemblée générale des Nations-Unies de leur autorité politique. L’épisode de « recherche d’une solution diplomatique » devient ainsi un simple passage obligé, avec, par exemple, la multiplication des envoyés spéciaux qui jouent un rôle préalable au fait militaire. Kofi Annan et Lakhdar Brahimi ont, de la sorte, tous deux jeté l’éponge de leurs médiations respectives à Damas, le premier ne manquant pas de souligner la « compétition destructive » entre grandes puissances.

Le jeu ainsi recomposé, on peut, à cet égard, presque s’étonner que la Russie ne soit pas intervenue plus tôt, comme la Turquie n’a pu à terme éviter de le faire ou de la même façon que le Hezbollah libanais ait naturellement rejoint l’exercice. Une exemplarité négative s’en suit et des interventions sud-sud (au Yémen par exemple) se multiplient, toujours au nom de « la sécurité », de « l’ordre » et de « la stabilité ».

Il demeure que l’évitement de la diplomatie n’est, en réalité suivi que de peu de résultats tangibles. Dans ce cas précis, l’opération américaine contre l’État islamique a été rapidement suivie d’annonces de succès l’an dernier, avant que l’organisation d’Abou Bakr al Baghdadi ne prenne Palmyre en Syrie et Ramadi en Irak, sans perdre Mossoul. De même, les positions de l’État Islamique auraient été « détruites de 40% » par l’action russe, avant que le groupe ne prenne contrôle dans ce même temps contrôle de la région autour d’Alep.

Au vrai, les dynamiques de néo-guerre froide enfantent logiquement des nouvelles guerres par procuration ou chaque puissance (autrefois « superpuissances », mais l’emphase est désormais réservée aux super-groupes non-étatiques) projette unilatéralement sa force à sa convenance et sur ses cibles, et ce sans contrôle international. Étrange, par ailleurs, et signe des temps, que cette diplomatie soit peu réclamée par les sociétés, au Nord comme au Sud, qui souvent approuvent – sondages à l’appui – la solution militaire, un peu comme si la diplomatie n’était même pas considérée comme une option viable.

S’impose donc le retour à la diplomatie, en Syrie et au-delà.

Tout à sa complexité – et elle est réelle – le dossier syrien ne peut réellement être réglé que par la diplomatie. Alternativement, une solution de force mènerait vers l’impunité (pour Bachar al Assad), l’illégalité (pour les groupes armés) ou l’échec programmé (pour l’interventionnisme étranger).


Photo : Nations-Unies

Beyond Orientalism

Just as Orson Welles essentially invented cinematic language in one go in 1939 with Citizen Kane (completing that exercise the next year in The Magnificent Ambersons), Edward Said largely defined the contours of discourse critique of the Arabo-Islamic world in 1978 with his Orientalism – an exercise he, too, further refined later on in 1993 with Culture and Imperialism. A peculiar gift to Arab and Islamic studies Said’s was – not least coming not from a historian or a political scientist but from the literary theorist the Columbia professor of comparative literature was. For in the past forty or so years, no other overarching paradigm has come to equal such influence in this field.

To be certain, Said’s theoretical construct (also fleshed out in Covering Islam in 1981) is not without limits. Yet from Bernard Lewis immediately to Daniel Varisco recently, by way of Martin Kramer, many have attempted unsuccessfully to find fissures in Said’s scholarship. Said’s work transcended ‘MENA’ or ‘Muslim’ studies and came to constitute a pillar of post-colonial studies influencing many a rich production in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe with, notably, the likes of Achille Mbembe, Gyan Prakash, and Milica Bakić-Hayden finding inspiration in it.

‘Post-Orientalisms’, ‘neo-Orientalisms’, and ‘nesting Orientalisms’ have nonetheless inevitably kept us in the orbit of that 1978 founding text.

Enters Hamid Dabashi.

Impossible Reciprocity

Also teaching comparative literature at Columbia University…, Dabashi has already produced several key works (Authority in Islam; Brown Skin, White Masks; The End of Postcolonialism) that engage richly with the discussion opened by Said. His latest book opens, however, a dimension of this debate that takes it beyond the identification of the tenets, drivers, and mechanisms of Orientalism.

Can Non-Europeans Think? is a long-awaited new layer clinically tackling the question of bias and the absence of self-examination in knowledge production. If Orientalist (mis)representation of the (alleged) ways of the Orient served political purposes, which could and were replayed (colonialism, imperialism), it is because ownership of the standards was never questioned and by its bearers primarily.

Orientalism registered because of the impossible reciprocity underwriting it.

And it is precisely here that Dabashi digs, looking not so much for the structure of discourse but for the production of knowledge. Both are related to power but one has an immediate tactical purpose whereas the other functions on the strategic level. And indeed Dabashi turns the tables around next asking rather logically in the book’s introduction: “Can Europeans Read?”. In other words, genuine universality cannot emanate from provincialism, however powerful and self-sustaining. Rather, it comes from opening with humility to alternative intellectual traditions, not merely to assimilate them into that which we already know.

There is indeed life after Orientalism.


Photo: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)