Abstract
Using life stories, this chapter highlights Tunisian women’s agency before and after the revolution. Given the lack of written documents—memoirs, autobiographies, and so on—related to the early history of women’s movements in Tunisia, the experiences of the first Tunisian women to go to school at the beginning of the twentieth century and those women who were the first to practice professions that had been dominated by men are important for understanding when, how, and why they were active—or were not active—in political struggles. The chapter demonstrates that following the so-called Arab Spring, a new online literature became accessible to a broad public, including the new phenomenon of political cartoons produced by women and a renewed interest in zajal—poetry and oral jousting in the everyday language of the people—where women zajal poets speak their verses in public.
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Notes
- 1.
Labidi, L. 1987. Joudhour al-harakat al-nisa’iyya: riwayaat li-shakhsiyyaat tarikhiyya [Origins of Feminist Movements in Tunisia: Personal History Narratives]. Tunis: Imprimerie Tunis Carthage. See also Labidi, L. & Zghal, A. 1985. Génération des années 30: la mémoire vivante des sujets de l’histoire. Tunis: CERES.
- 2.
Zajal is a poetic form that uses colloquial Arabic to express a poetic vision of the self and the world. Several women poets participated in public recitations of this sort in Sbeitla, Hammamet, Ain Draham, Tunis, and other locations during 2011 and later.
- 3.
Mafeje, A. 1997, cited in Hale (2014, 150).
- 4.
The information that follows is taken from her life story and was collected in interviews I had with her during the 1980s.
- 5.
Etienne Burnet (1873–1960) was the son of an education inspector who introduced him to observing nature. He earned his university diploma in letters at the Sorbonne, an agrégation in philosophy, and a doctorate in medicine (the agrégation is a competitive civil service exam for certain positions in the educational system). Between 1896 and 1897 he gave private lessons to the son of a rich Parisian family, who introduced him to the cultural elite, including Dr. Georges-Fernand Widal, who was decisive in orienting him toward a scientific career. Tawhida Ben Cheikh’s relationship with Dr. Burnet is in this way similar to the latter’s encounter with Dr. Widal. Information concerning Etienne Burnet is available from: http://www.pasteur.fr/infosci/archives/bur0.html.
- 6.
The life story I collected has similar elements to the one collected by Leila Blili (see Blili, L. 1993. “La médecine au feminine.” In Mémoire de femmes. Tunisiennes dans la vie publique 1920–1960. Tunis: CREDIF-ISHMN and MediaCom).
- 7.
Leila Blili found the information regarding Ben Cheikh’s winning a French fellowship in Archives du Mouvement National, Series Tunisie 1917–1940. She did not mention the fellowship either in her testimony to me or to Leila Blili, perhaps because this fellowship was a privilege offered by the French to some and not to others.Leila Blili found the information regarding Ben Cheikh’s winning a French fellowship, Reel 89.
- 8.
<Emphasis Type="Italic">Aziza Othmana, who died in 1669 (her precise date of birth is not known), was the wife of Hammouda Pacha Bey of the Mouradite dynasty which ruled Tunisia for much of the 17th century.She was known for her compassion for those who suffered, for her virtue, and for her generosity. At the end of her life she freed her slaves and created a religious endowment (waqf) to aid in freeing slaves, buying the freedom of prisoners, constituting the trousseau of poor girls, and financing the hospital that today bears her name. She also performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, bringing with her servants and slaves. See Sadok Zmerli and Hamadi Sahili. Figures tunisiennes. Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami, 1993, p. 49.
- 9.
Leila, no. 1 (March 1939), pp. 2–4.
- 10.
The nationalist Neo-Destour movement in Tunisia was founded in 1934 after a split in the Destour movement composed mainly of landowners and notables. It was the Neo-Destour that led the struggle for independence from French colonial rule and among its leaders was Habib Bourguiba, the first president of the Tunisian republic, who headed the country from 1956-1987. See Lilia Labidi and Abdelkader Zghal. Génération des années 30. La mémoire vivante des sujets de l’histoire. Tunis: Université de Tunis, Centre d’Etudes et de recherches économiques et sociales, 198.
- 11.
This reading is based on a review of 18 issues of Leila available at the Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunis (2 issues appeared in 1936, 3 in 1937, 4 in 1938, 6 in 1939, and 3 in 1940), carried out in August 2013. Here we find a number of articles signed with women’s names—in order of appearance, Meriem, Kalsoum, Zeineb, Frida, Wassila, Jamila, Nour el Houda, Yasmina, Beya, Assia, Aida, Sophya, and Malika. Instances of first and family names include Y. Larab, Aicha Ghomry (a student in London), Souhayr Kalmaoui (an Egyptian), Zeynouba Tahar, Saida Sahly, Jamila Malki, Jamila Alaily, Essaida Foudhayli, and Amina Ben Hassine.
- 12.
Leila, January 1938.
- 13.
Mo. Ka. [sic] 1939. “La femme tunisienne, evolution.” In Renaître, no. 1, pp. 4–5.
- 14.
Rafika, 1939. “Propos de Femmes.” In Renaître, no. 4, p. 15.
- 15.
Labidi, L. 1987, Qabla, médecin des femmes. Tunis: UPPS.
- 16.
Among the members of La Layette Tunisienne, Tahar Ben Ammar was prominent. Financed mainly by middle-class women, this association also received contributions from Jewish and European women, as well as support from the Tunis municipality and the Ministry of Health. An event such as the one mentioned in the text could collect as much as 400,000 francs.
- 17.
Leila. 1957. “‘La Layette’: Oh! les femmes.” In L’Action, April 4, p. 15.
- 18.
<Emphasis Type="Italic">Alfred Dreyfus (1859–1935), a French Jew, was accused of giving military information to the German Embassy and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1894.After serving almost five years in prison in French Guyana, he was tried and convicted again in 1899 but, amid much controversy,he was pardoned and freed as it became clear, largely through an open letter, entitled J’accuse, published by Émile Zola in 1898, that the case against him was based on false and fabricated evidence and was a gross miscarriage of justice.In 1906 Dreyfus was declared innocent of all charges and the Dreyfus affair echoed globally, including in Tunisia, where it was seen as a universal symbol of injustice.
- 19.
Several days before this incident, Emna Bent Hadj Ali Ibrahim was killed in Taboulba, in the Sahel region of Tunisia, in military actions led by General Garbay. See Labidi, L. 2009, Qamus as-siyar li-lmunadhilaat at-tunisiyaat, 1881–1956. [Biographical Dictionary of Tunisian Women Militants]. Tunis: Imprimerie Tunis Carthage, p. 117.
- 20.
This information was related by Adel Ben Youssef in an oral presentation given at the colloquium on the “Role de la femme Maghrébine dans le Mouvement de libération et l’édification de l’Etat National,” organized by the Témimi and the Konrad Adenauer Foundations and held in Tunis on June 23, 2005.
- 21.
I collected this life story in 2009.
- 22.
The group took its name from a cafe that brought together individuals characterized by the poet Tahar Bekri as “singers, journalists, free-thinkers, anti-conformists, penniless persons, pessimists, and in despair at their state but who took revenge on adversity through irony and black humor[...], nothing escaped their satirical gaze, as they used laughter to foil social degradation and the injustice of history.”(“Chansonniers, journalistes, libres-penseurs, anticonformistes, désargentés, pessimistes et désespérés de leur état mais qui se vengeaient de l’adversité par l’ironie et l’humour noir [...], rien n’échappait à leur regard satirique, déjouant par le rire la déchéance sociale et l’injustice de l’histoire.” (Philippe Di Folco. Le goût de Tunis. Paris: Mercure de France, 2007. p. 90).
- 23.
http://www.hakaekonline.com/?p=53374. Published December 13, 2013.
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Labidi, L. (2016). Tunisian Women’s Literature and the Critique of Authority: Sources, Contexts, and the Tunisian “Arab Spring”. In: Sadiqi, F. (eds) Women’s Movements in Post-“Arab Spring” North Africa. Comparative Feminist Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50675-7_13
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