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Mediating Justice: Victimhood and Public Denouncement in Cases of Gender Violence in Tunisia
Abstract
This paper examines how notions of victimhood, testimony, and evidence that are central to litigation in the formal justice system figure and are taken up in relation to cases of gender violence in Tunisia in the age of social media as part of broader discussions about the pursuit of justice after the end of the dictatorship. It examines the emergences of and debates over tash-hir, a form of public denouncement enacted through the circulation of photos, videos, and written testimonies on the internet and audiovisual media outlets that identify and allege the incrimination of perpetrators in sexual harassment and violence. I argue that tash-hir operates as an alternative mechanism of justice that in its highly mediatized form reshapes and complicates the process of claims-making simultaneously enabling and limiting the ability of victims to obtain redress and reparations. I furthermore argue that the practice needs to be understood in relation to broader debates about Feminist political horizons, impunity for the powerful, and participatory citizenship under Tunisia’s nascent democratic system and to the global repertoire inspired by the #MeToo movement. My analysis is based on an ethnography among members of the Facebook page of and Feminists leading the #EnaZeda (which means “me too” in Tunisian dialect) movement and 18 months of fieldwork in Tunisia that included observations of legal trainings and interviews with activists, lawyers, judges, psychologists, and government officials. This paper aims to contribute more broadly to a discussion of the possibilities and limits of communication technologies and new media in the Middle East and North Africa (Eickelman and Anderson 2003; Hirschkind 2006) in not only reshaping access to justice but reconfiguring the central notions and processes associated with justice (Clarke 2019), such as truth, accountability, and democracy.
Discipline
Anthropology
Communications
Law
Geographic Area
All Middle East
Arab States
Mediterranean Countries
Tunisia
Sub Area
None