This paper will argue that the Arab uprisings have generated conflicting emotional perceptions that oscillate between nashwa (rupture), triggered by the promises of the revolution, and ihbat (frustration), caused by the turn the events have taken in some countries in the region. Using stories from Moroccan print media, the paper traces the discursive rendering of nashwa and ihbat to competing ideological projects and outlines the framing mechanisms used in the construction of these emotional perceptions. Eventually, the point is made that the Arab uprisings are better read as an event, in Alain Badiou’s philosophical sense, in that their resonances continue to generate new possibilities, as attested by the peaceful democratic transition in progress in Tunisia.

This paper focuses on the symbol of Omar al-Mukhtar, the Libyan anticolonial national hero, as used during the 2011 Libyan uprising against dictator Al-Qadhafi. It traces back the history of the use of Al-Mukhtar’s symbol in three turning points in Libyan history: independence, Al-Qadhafi’s 1969 coup, and the 2011 uprising. The figure of Al-Mukhtar, central to Al-Qadhafi propaganda, was reclaimed by rebels and protestors in 2011. Using literature on modernity, post-colonialism, and memory, in addition to historic Libyan sources, this paper contends that the circulation of Al-Mukhtar’s image reveals the fixation of Libyan discourse on an originary national moment of anticolonial confrontation. It argues that the use of Al-Mukhtar by the rebels seeks to discursively erase Al-Qadhafi from Libyan national consciousness. The attempt to break from the postcolonial past is an act of temporal re-structuring that enables Libyans to revisit the question, articulated during the anticolonial struggle, about a homegrown modernity and national identity. Part of a larger project about the Arab uprisings, the paper is a case-study of the ways meta-historical narratives are constructed and circulated in Arab media.

Ten years ago it still made sense to talk about progressive leftism, nationalism and Islamism as the dominant socio-political discourses in the Arab world. Since late in the first decade of this century these discursive frames have overlapped with each other, warped and twisted into new shapes in order to accommodate new discourses and combinations. This paper will begin with the lack of consensus in the contemporary Arab makes it a crucible of socio-cultural experimentation where questions of world-wide import are playing out. While it is an article of faith in the popular press that Islamic fundamentalism is a discourse that has spread from the Middle East, this paper will argue a counterintuitive claim that, among other experiments in discourse unfolding in the Arab world, a hybrid consisting of the tenets of human rights discourse and Levantinism is also spreading. This paper will argue that post-2011 cultural productions in the Levant represent a confluence of Enlightenment-based human rights discourse and contemporary Levantinism. Consciousness of the inalienable rights of human beings is an ideological standpoint that permits strong moral stances yet it is reducible to a legal framework. Levantinism is a protean term that has gone from a slur to “a testimony of the persistent pluralism and Mediterranean cosmopolitanism [that runs against] the obsession of ethnic purity.” Fundamentally, it is a discourse that refers to a way of living marked by conviviality. This paper shall argue that the emergent discourses of change in the Arab world often evoke a hybrid of human rights legalism and Levantine conviviality. As such, the ferment taking place in the Arab world is also at some level groping toward a discursive solution to a generalized split between legal and social worlds.

In 2012, a new literary journal entitled Awraq was published by the (new) Syrian Writers' Collective. The renowned Syrian philosopher Sadiq Jalal al-Azm acts as editor-in-chief, also writing the introductory and concluding essays, and the issue includes a broad range of literary, scholarly and critical voices, like Yassin al-Hajj Salih, Ibrahim Samuil, newer ones who are finding their voice within the existential rupture of the current uprising in Syria, and even an essay by the Slovene philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek. This paper will look at continuities and discontinuities with the Collective's historical and spiritual antecedent formed in 1951 in Damascus. There is a notable rhetorical mirroring, "creating a free forum for Syrian writers" in both "manifestos," but the transformation of the Collective into the Arab Writers' Union in 1954 subsequently co-opted its consensus, and seemingly aligned it with state discourse. One wonders why this new collective would tap into this zeitgeist. What parallels can we find between the two and how can we "read" this re-formation? As well, what is at stake in forming a new collective in the midst of the bloody uprising in Syria: Is it a gesture of negation? Or regeneration? In light of the tragic violence in Syria this paper will consider how the publication of Awraq supports innovation in a time of rupture, while also suggesting continuity with an existential past.

In his essay La Haine de la démocratie (Hatred of Democracy, 2005/2007), Jacques Rancière observes that modern democratic transformation necessarily entails a challenge to proponents of the so-called “Republican thesis,” those in favor of a new “pastoralism” who find in modern European democracy an end of transcendentalism and the triumph of limitless consumerism underscored by a kind of chaotic and entrenched inclination towards crime. Targeting a text by Jean-Claude Milner: Les penchants criminels de l’Europe démocratique (2003), Rancière, quoting Plato, argues that criminality becomes the fatalistic last defense of the democratic experiment. Specifically, he suggests, “revolutionary terror” does not undermine the transformation to democracy, rather, it is “consubstantial with its project,” it is a “necessity inherent to the very essence of the democratic revolution.” In the following I examine the discourse on terrorism in Tunisia as integral to the country’s post-revolutionary process of reform. With Rancière’s thesis in mind, I concentrate on the unique rhetorical campaign construed around Tunisia’s public enemy number one: Sayf Allah Ben Hassine, or “Abu ‘Ayadh.” Arrested in Libya in January 2014, following a nearly year-long stint on the run, Abu ‘Ayadh, I suggest, became a rhetorical point of dissension par excellence: his significance revolutionary and counterrevolutionary at once. More importantly, the narrative saga surrounding his dissent into infamy served to destabilize an otherwise entrenched dichotomy between political Islam and the secular left. Drawing on research conducted, in part, with the Center for Strategic Communication at Arizona State University and with funding provided by the Office of Naval Research and MITRE, I argue in this paper that discourse generated by and about radical criminal actors in the public sphere like Abu ‘Ayadh provided a vital narrative framework for thinking through the limits and limitations of freedom in the post-Ben Ali era. ‘Ayadh’s own narrative, which I examine here as well, assumed a trajectory of almost tragic-comedic proportions: his final dispatch being an hour-long recording of himself, alone on a bed inside an unnamed hotel room, ranting on injustice and the malignancy of Tunisian leadership.