Monthly Archives: October 2023

Article: To Follow Bousaadiya

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A new article is the first (to my knowledge) study focused on the Libyan folkloric character Bousaadiya (بو سعدية). See also the author’s recent podcast episode on the same topic.

Tayeb, Leila. 2023. To Follow Bousaadiya: Mobility and Memory in Libyan Cultural Politics. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 16/3. 313–336. [not open access]

This article takes the figure of Bousaadiya, once performed in varying iterations throughout central North Africa, as an entry point to approach the problematics of mobility and memory in Libya. Bousaadiya performance, a multidimensional set of practices that I read critically as dance, produces an embodied social ground upon which Libyans have enacted and contested racialized practices of belonging and a mobile gravesite where it is possible to interrogate regional histories of enslavement and their material and symbolic legacies. While reading Bousaadiya performance enables an excavation of the trans-Saharan slave trade and its ghostly e/affects, performing Bousaadiya enabled the incomplete burial of these through surrogation, easing particular losses. In this article, I explore both of these aspects of the performativity of Bousaadiya’s dance, which is underscored by the forms of remembering it that continue to proliferate. To follow Bousaadiya is to grapple with the ongoing unresolvedness in Libyan cultural politics of the country’s histories of slave economies and the hierarchies left in their wake and to gesture toward the prospect of repair.

Article: The Politics of Boredom in Post-Revolutionary Libya

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Cherstich, Igor. 2023. Smoking, Praying, Killing: The Politics of Boredom in Post-Revolutionary Libya. In Revolution Beyond the Event: The Afterlives of Radical Politics, ed. by Charlotte Al-Khalili, Narges Ansari, Myriam Lamrani, and Kaya Uzel (London: UCL Press). [open access]




Modern Libyan history has been marked by two revolutionary occurrences. In 1969 Colonel Muʿammar al Gaddafi led a coup against the king of Libya, abolishing the monarchy and establishing one of the most perdurable socialist governments of the twentieth century. Forty years later, a revolution broke out against Gaddafi, determining the sudden collapse of the socialist state. In this chapter I will examine the aftermaths of these two uprisings. In so doing, I will show that in spite of their antithetical character – one revolution brought Gaddafi to power, the other put his rule to an end – both events were characterised by a similar, fundamental discrepancy. More specifically, I will demonstrate that in both cases the revolutionaries claimed to have brought about a completely new phase in Libyan history: a novel era marked by an unprecedented sense of vitality and dynamicity. Equally, I will show that the insurgents attained exactly the opposite of what they aimed to achieve: rather than precipitating an age of effervescence and movement, they generated an age of stasis. A stagnant state of affairs where Libyans could not help but feeling stuck, lethargic, and bored.

Article: What drives public trust in the military in non-democracies

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Abouzzohour, Yasmina & Tarik M. Yousef. 2023. What drives public trust in the military in non-democracies: Evidence from Libya (2014-2019). The Journal of North African Studies. [open access]

This article investigates the conditions that lead to heightened trust in the military in non-democracies through an empirical study of post-2011 Libya. Drawing on the political science and sociology literatures on institutional trust in non-democratic contexts, we develop hypotheses linking public trust in the military to personal safety, political interest, Islamist orientation, trust in institutions, regionalism, and support for democracy. Using survey data collected by the Arab Barometer between 2014 and 2019, we empirically test these hypotheses. Our findings reveal a confluence of factors driving trust in the military in Libya, including regional, generational, educational, and class divides. Being older, male, and from the East contribute positively to trust in the military as well as perceived personal safety, trust in government, interest in politics, and support for democracy. On the other hand, an Islamist orientation, education and income are negatively correlated. These results allow us to speculate about the drivers of trust in the military. In particular, the positive impact of personal safety and support for democracy could reflect the public's perception of the army as responsible for ensuring safety and protecting a nation in turmoil. The role of interest in politics could be attributed to the charged context of politics and security after the 2014 elections. Notably, regional exceptionalism in the East could be related to the role and behaviour of the eastern-based, self-proclaimed Libyan National Army. Our paper contributes to the limited empirical research on trust in the military in non-democracies, backsliding in conflict countries, and political attitudes in Libya.

Podcast: Mobility, Memory, and the performance of Bousaadiya in Libya

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The Maghrib in Past & Present podcast most recent episode in its “Libyan Studies” series is “Mobility, Memory, and the performance of Bousaadiya in Libya”.

In this podcast, Dr. Leila Tayeb, Assistant Professor in Residence in the Communication and Liberal Arts Programs at Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q), explores the cultural politics of mobility and memory in Libya. Looking at Bousaadiya, a figure who has been performed in many iterations throughout North Africa, she offers a reading of these performance practices as a space in which Libyans enact and contest practices of belonging. Tayeb describes how performance, and specifically dance, creates a frame through which to observe political, historical, and cultural phenomena. Highlighting repetition as an important element of performance, she argues that mimesis of certain practices over time can serve to reinstantiate – or disrupt – power structures. Bousaadiya performance practices, Tayeb argues, serve as a space in which Libyans grapple with the unresolved history of the trans-Saharan slave trade which took place in Libya for centuries and persisted even after it was formally abolished. Reading Bousaadiya through these lenses allows for an excavation of this history, its legacies, and opportunities for repair.