Participants at the 2016 Kasserine Conference on University and Society

In a summative reflection on the long-term project detailed here and the situation as a whole, which I published in Arabic and English, I note that the humanities are under threat, globally. In this research project, which took shape following the Arab Revolutions of the 2010-11, I aim to foster a new critical engagement with the humanities. We need to rethink how the humanities are seen and engaged with by society; it is not enough to allow for the continuation of the status quo or to pretend that over the course of the last decade we have not seen major shifts in both public engagement with the humanities and with governmental control and interference in the university and academy.

The Arab World is currently the site of a paradox. On the one hand, the Arab World is “the place where the humanities go to die”, a space in which there is a considerable violence inflicted onto the humanities and onto humanity itself, with widespread repression and anti-humanities discourses that have long threatened the material, artistic, and literary artefacts of the region, and the cultures which produce such artefacts, with artists and writers being among the most likely to suffer imprisonment, disappearance and torture. Historically open societies, like Egypt, Tunisia or Libya have been witness to long-term attacks on the humanities, both as discipline and as a practice within and outside the University. On the other hand, however, the Arab World has recently become the epicentre of a movement that demands human dignity, freedom, justice and democracy, the very foundations of humanistic disciplines. Since 2011, despite widespread repression of the literary and cultural scenes, we have simultaneously seen an explosion in the numbers of people producing texts, art and other forms of creative self-expression, all of which demonstrates the hope that history is being written, that the present is a decisive time in which to make one’s mark.

How can we catch this creative human moment instead of surrendering to the forces of despair, frustration, and regression?

The Arab World is right at the centre of the fight for the Humanities, and we need to ensure that the global academy centers local voices in the production of their own knowledge. Mahmud al-Mas’adi, former Minister for Culture in Tunisia and member of the Executive Committee of UNESCO, prefigured this problem. He wrote “There is now an awareness that the ‘oriental’ world no longer presents itself to the ‘European’ world as a field of observation, but rather it starts to take its place as an actor and even as an observer [in its own right] … There is a danger that the whole world will drown in an all-encompassing ‘Americanization’ or a totalitarian ‘cultural revolution’ against which the machine world of Orwell or the one-dimensional man of Marcuse or the brave new world of Huxley would seem nothing but trivial.”

The target here is the shortcomings of Area Studies and the production of knowledge in the Western (Euro-American) academy on the Arab World and the Global South more broadly. Al-Mas’adi’s remarks also correspond to some of Frantz Fanon’s most searing critiques of the humanities, as they existed in and through the colonial order. In order to shake off the shackles of colonialism and the uneven distribution of power in knowledge production around the world, Fanon called for a New Humanism, a revolution in the humanities, based on freedom, dignity and the power to create alternatives. This is outlined in the introduction to my book New Humanism.

Work on New Humanism in the context of the Arab Revolutions was largely funded by the academic branch of Rosa Luxembourg Foundation and support form St John’s college, the research Lab Modernites, Lumieres et Diversite culturelle at ISSH in Tunis and others. This project has produced a number of significant outputs, both academically and beyond. Perhaps the most significant achievement is the book University and Society within the Context of Arab Revolutions and the New Humanism, which I co-edited with Mouldi Guessoumi and Mohsen Elkhouni. This volume, published in Tunis in 2016 by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, includes 24 essays in Arabic, English and French; you can view the book launch in this video to the right. The book is now in its second edition and has attracted interest not only within academic circles, but also in official and civil domains, receiving broad coverage in the press, radio and television. It is a multidisciplinary and multilingual publication, which includes essays from the fields of economics, philosophy, sociology, literary studies, political science and history. Issues debated included labour unions in post-authoritarian societies, transitional justice, the role of universities in democratising societies and new approaches to social contention. The book is freely available here.

In this book, I wrote a chapter on humanism in times of torture, which can be read here. Torture is, and has long been, present across human societies. Targeting the human in spite of, not (necessarily) because of, differences in class, age, status, gender, sexuality, race or any other classifications schema, torture is an assault unto the very humanity of its victim. How can we make sense of it? In this essay, I draw from multiple sites of knowledge production and testimony, across languages and genres, in order to explore the intersection of torture and humanism. It is my contention that, because torture forces us to go beyond sites of specific, contextual differences between humans, and instead reckon with our brute humanity, we must also produce knowledge which honours and respects multiple sites of knowledge production, multiple languages and registers, multiple human ways of knowing.

This project has also spawned two groundbreaking conferences. The first, held in Tunis at the National Library in October 2014, was entitled Arab Revolutions and New Humanism. My paper, which was the basis for my later chapter in the edited volume, was entitled “Humanism in Times of Torture” and was part of the panel “Humanisme perdu, humanisme reconquis” (Humanism Lost and Regained). Above and to the left, you can see the programme for this conference. Papers ranged across many different topics, including questions of revolution, citizenship, secularism, different contexts of revolution, different theories of revolution, the emotional aspects of revolution and humanism, the idiosyncrasies of humanism across the world.

This conference was followed by an international conference held in Kasserine in 2016. This study day was focused on the interaction between the University and society in the context of New Humanism. Scholars from around the world spoke across many diverse issues. There were papers on the ways in which economics might be taught in the post-revolutionary context, on the history of universities in Tunisia from independence to the Revolution, on the ways that Tunisian universities have long been caught between the defence of the Human and subservient reproduction of the state’s values, on academic freedom, on gender and the university, on knowledge production and equitable development in Morocco, on post-revolutionary universities in Romania, Latin America and beyond. This study day attempted to situate the post-revolutionary Tunisian (and Middle Eastern) University within a globalist context, exploring the many different examples from across the world of the interaction and relationship between the University and society.

Holding this conference in Kasserine, one of the bastions of the Tunisian revolution and one of the interior regions most deprived of development, and indeed several other conferences across Tunisia held by other academics, in similarly marginalised cities like Beja and Jendouba, allowed us to think of the question of university and society from the perspectives made possible by the Tunisian revolution. The methodology of the whole project was reflected in the programme, which opened the door to interaction and debate between researchers, civil society and official institutions and aimed to integrate local intellectual and cultural production among its activities, and apply the principle of diversity and multiplicity in venues and activities. Key local collaborators were Amal Asssociation for knowledge and development, Institut supérieur des arts et des métiers (ISAM) and the regional Cultural delegation.