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Paradoxes of Regime Change: What Queer Tunisian Art Exposes about Tunisian State Authority
Abstract
After the fall of the Ben Ali regime in 2011, Tunisians prepared to enter a new era of democracy. Yet, while several successive presidents have contributed to the gradual expansion of democracy in the country, state feminism and the colonial/modern sex/gender system reinforce the continued embeddedness of state authority within the fabric of state and social relations. In fact, state authority often works alongside proclamations of democracy in what Herbert Marcuse has called repressive tolerance. In Tunisia the authority of the state as a repressive monolith overrides democratic efforts in the new era, demonstrating that regime change alone cannot be held responsible for state or social change. Heather Love has argued that deviance is a “[challenge] to the stability and coherence of [the social world].” Deviance in sexual practices can therefore be read as a method of destabilization for normalcy. In this vein, subversive, deviant Tunisian art can challenge Tunisian authority. Young, queer, Tunisian Aïcha Snoussi’s artistic practice engages with questions of queer bodies and sex practices of deviance, pain, and pleasure. By deconstructing dichotomies such as human/animal, organic/inorganic, and male/female, Snoussi’s works poke holes in hierarchies of knowledge upon which state and social authorities are built. This paper finds affinities between sexual anomalies and deviance in Snoussi’s 2017 installation Le livre des anomalies, enabling the work to be to read as an archive of deviance that exposes how Tunisian state authority supersedes various governmental transitions.
Discipline
Art/Art History
Geographic Area
Tunisia
Sub Area
Gender/Women's Studies