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Maghreb Mithlya: Histories of Queer People in the 2011 Tunisian Revolution
Abstract
Scholarship on sex and sexuality in the Maghreb overwhelmingly focuses on the experiences and identities of foreign men. In fact, scholars have hesitated to tackle the subject of homosexuality amongst Maghrebis, and when they have, their work has exclusively focused on gay men. In some ways the lack of scholarship on homosexuality in the Maghreb reflects the socio-legal oppression of queerness in contemporary Maghrebi societies. Today in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia same-sex sexual activities are illegal and many LGBT people choose to hide their sexual orientation from large parts of their communities for fear of social discrimination, family rejection, violence, or murder. Historically speaking, queer love and relationships have been restricted to the sexually-segregated spaces of the private sphere, sitting outside of the traditional archive. While queer people have been part of every major protest movement since the 1960s, and more recently, led struggles for legal rights, including the right to marry, to organize, and to publish journals, they remain absent from the historical narrative. My second book, Maghreb Mithlya: A History of Queer Women in Postcolonial North Africa, seeks to bring queer voices into histories of the postcolonial Maghreb. This paper will be based on one chapter in the book focusing on the role of queer organizing in the 2011 Tunisian Revolution. I will first introduce the audience to the process of creating a “rebel archive,” in which a historian can find the traces of an intimate queer life, led despite social and legal prohibitions. Then, through an analysis of oral histories, visual arts, and literature, I will tell the stories of a few queer Tunisians and their fight for a democratic society in which they would be free to live and love. This work will help recover the histories of the racial, political, and sexual diversity of people living, writing, and dissenting in the Maghreb during the twentieth century.
Discipline
Anthropology
Art/Art History
History
Literature
Media Arts
Geographic Area
Algeria
Europe
Maghreb
Morocco
Tunisia
Sub Area
None