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Article: A socio-historical analysis of English in Libya

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Gherwash, Ghada. 2024. A socio-historical analysis of English in Libya. World Englishes 43(1). 71–85. https://doi.org/10.1111/weng.12632 (paywall).

Abstract: Political instability has been a mainstay in Libya since the Italian occupation in 1911. In the intervening years, the shifting political landscape has had an undeniable influence on the presence of English in the country. In this paper, I argue that Libya presents an ideal case study for Kachru’s Concentric Circles of English, where ‘linguistic ammunition’ (Kachru, 1986: 121) is used to manipulate and control the masses and spread anti-Western sentiment in this expanding circle country. To provide a much-needed socio-historical context for a country whose English language and linguistic history remains understudied (Hillman et al., 2020), this paper touches on key events in Libya’s political history that have influenced the status of English and language use; from the Italian colonization, to Qaddafi’s decade-long ban of English, to the 2011 Revolution, and beyond. This paper is divided into six sections: (1) critical approaches to language policy (Tollefson, 1991) and Foucault’s governmentality approach (1991); (2) demographic and geographic description of Libya; (3) historical and political overview; (4) educational language policy and the development of the education system; (5) English language policy in Libya (the ban on use of English in 1986 following the 1969 coup that brought Qaddafi to power and the reintroduction of English in the mid-1990s); and will conclude with (6) English language in post-Qaddafi Libya. Understanding these key moments in Libyan political history will provide the context needed to understand how a generation of Libyans found themselves without the linguistic skills necessary to compete in the global economy.

Article: Ottoman abolitionist policy in Trablusgarp and Benghazi

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Hargal, Salma. 2024. Ending slavery in imperial peripheries: Ottoman abolitionist policy in Trablusgarp and Benghazi provinces (1857–1911). Middle Eastern Studies.

When Istanbul prohibited the trade of enslaved Africans in 1857, the Ottoman local authorities expanded efforts to curb human trafficking throughout the imperial realm. These endeavours also included Libya, which lies at the frontiers of the Greater Sahara, a major slave-raiding zone in the nineteenth century. The historiography devoted to modern Libya maintains that the Porte took action to curb slavery only in response to British pressure. In this article, I seek to situate the prohibition of human trade in Libya within the larger scope of the end of slavery in the imperial realm. I argue that the Ottomans conducted an abolitionist policy in Libya that was embedded in the reforms undertaken in these peripheral provinces, namely, to foster the Porte’s sovereignty at its imperial frontier. I further argue that the enslaved population gained agency in the manumission process and in their integration into Ottoman society after their liberation. This bottom-up approach to the end of human bondage reveals the entanglement of old and new patterns of manumission in the era of abolition as well as the social integration of these emancipated slaves into Ottoman society during the Reform period.

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.

Article: Reluctant Militants: Colonialism, Territory, and Sanusi Resistance on the Ottoman‐Saharan Frontier

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Jonathan Lohnes. 2021. Reluctant Militants: Colonialism, Territory, and Sanusi Resistance on the Ottoman‐Saharan Frontier. Journal of Historical Sociology 34(3), 466-478. [paywall]

Abstract: Libya's enigmatic Sanusi brotherhood has been the subject of perennial debate since its emergence in Ottoman Cyrenaica in the mid nineteenth century, becoming a screen upon which apologists and detractors could project their own political anxieties and desires. For European critics, the brotherhood embodied the irrationality and fanaticism of the Islamic East. Its networks in North and Central Africa constituted an obstacle to their expansionist designs, while Sanusi prestige throughout the Muslim world rendered the brotherhood a threat to the entire colonial order of things. Nationalist historiography has generally endorsed this view, albeit with a positive valence, characterizing the Sanusiyya as an anticolonial social movement. Meanwhile, modern critical scholarship has tried to impose order on the chaos of the turn-of-the-century Sahara by assigning to the fraternity the role of a “proto-state.” This article proposes a new framework for understanding the history and sociology of the Sanusi. Drawing on theorists of subaltern resistance such as James Scott and Michael Adas—alongside Ottoman, British, French, and Italian primary sources—I demonstrate that the brotherhood began its life as an inward-looking Islamic social justice movement with little evident interest in state building or the geopolitical controversies of the moment. I coin the term “reluctant militants” to describe its mercurial trajectory from frontier evangelism to armed struggle in response to French and Italian colonial encirclement. This process culminated in the Long War of 1911–1931, during which the Sanusiyya played a critical part in the struggles over post-Ottoman reconstruction, from the Maghreb to Anatolia.

Article: Whose Memory Is Lost?

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Spadaro, Barbara & Najlaa El-Ageli. 2023. “Whose Memory Is Lost? Languages, Spaces, Diasporic Implications and the Memory of Libya: A Conversation between Najlaa El-Ageli and Barbara Spadaro”, in Brioni, S., Polezzi, L, Sinopoli, F. (eds.) Creativita Diasporiche. Dialoghi transnazionali tra teoria e arti (Rome: Mimesis). Open access.

Diasporic Creativity is a bilingual volume made up of thirteen conversations between humanities scholars and artists whose work focuses on the theme of migration and identity. The contributions in the collection embrace forms of production ranging from literature to visual arts, from cinema to theatrical performance, from podcasts to rap music, while among the recurring themes emerge debates on identity, language, migration, memory and citizenship. This volume is also an invitation to rethink creative and academic work, in the humanities area, as intrinsically linked to dialogue and collaboration. Each conversation focuses on Italy understood as a catalyst of meanings and artistic practices that develop in different and often unexpected directions, rather than as a geographically and culturally specific, homogeneous and delimited place. Similarly, the notion of Italian culture that emerges from these conversations is open, dynamic and intrinsically linked to the belief that research and creativity have a central role in imagining and building more just and inclusive societies.

Evaluating “understudied”

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So often many of us use the word “understudied” to describe Libya as a topic in different fields of research. I myself have done so on this blog (probably quite often) and I hear colleagues do the same. In this post, I want to make one kind of attempt to quantify this. Not to complain (more than I already do), or propose any particular solution, and certainly not to validate the idea that quantity of research on a topic somehow indicates better, more useful research. Rather, just as an informal exercise, get some more precision about what “understudied” might really mean, as a complement to the (rather vague) impression many of us have. To do this, I’ve decided to look at general venues of research in which a Libyan-related topic might be reasonably expected to appear, and make a rough calculation about what percent of work in those venues relates to Libya. I focus on early-modern to contemporary Libya here (ancient Libya already has good coverage through several dedicated journals).

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Article: Solidarity Among Colonial Subjects in Wartime Libya, 1940-1943

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Tagliacozzo, Livia. 2022. Solidarity Among Colonial Subjects in Wartime Libya, 1940-1943. Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History 22(2). 109–140. (open access)

Abstract: During World War II, Jews in Libya faced persecution and adversity. In response, Muslim individuals often became aides to the Jews, driven by economic reward, shared benefits, and genuine empathy. Examining the manner Jews and Muslims interacted in these circumstances sheds light on the complex relationship between the two communities, influenced by factors such as religious affiliation, connections to the regime, and personal interests. The fascist regime’s differential policies towards the two communities over two decades also played a role in shaping this relationship, sometimes causing conflict between the communities, but also leading to a shared sense of opposition to the Italians following common experiences of persecution.

Article: A State of Discord: A Sociohistorical Reflection on Contested Statehood in Libya

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El Taraboulsi-McCarthy, Sherine. 2023. A State of Discord: A Sociohistorical Reflection on Contested Statehood in Libya. In Armando Salvatore, Sari Hanafi & Kieko Obuse (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Abstract: Contrary to the majority of Western scholarship on Libya, which ascribes Libya’s “statelessness” to a failure on the part of local actors to adopt modern state formation following independence in 1951, the author argues that this view fails to take into account local power dynamics among social actors and between social actors and the state (colonial and postcolonial) that manifested themselves in modes of cooperation and contestation and have shaped Libya’s experience with statehood. The author shows that while contestation among social actors before and after independence had been stronger than centralizing forces, resulting in a state of discord, this should be explained in context and through a local account of Libya’s history as a colonized country. This chapter calls for a more robust incorporation of temporal aspects of social and political development in theorizing the state in Libya and the Arab world.