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for not complying with APA format.
Position paper title
Student Name
Educational Institution
Abstract
Abstracts are research tools that can help you readers determine
if the scope of your article/essay will help them in their own
research. In APA, abstracts are typically 150-250 words in

length and provide an evaluative summary of the essay to
follow. The personal opinion of the author is strictly prohibited
in abstracts. Unlike a body paragraph, the first line of an
abstract is not tabbed-in. For many student essays, especially in
lower-numbers courses, an abstract will not be required; still, it
is good to practice this skill.
Title of Assignment
In APA style, the introduction of the essay should begin
here, followed by the body paragraphs. APA is typically a more
formal style than most students are accustomed to using in a
writing course. For the purposes of this course, the level of
formality should be based on the assignment. For example:
APA asks that students always write in third person (avoiding
words such as I, me, we, our(s), you, your(s), etc). Certain
rhetorical modes, however, don’t cater well to third person
(narrative and reflection writing are two such examples). In
these situations, first person (I, me, we, our(s)) may be, and
should be employed; second person (you, your(s)) should be
avoided in all academic writing unless an essay is specifically
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will employ second person).
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that source must be identified within the text and listed on a
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should be tabbed in. Though there is really no substitute for a
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generator such as http://www.citationmachine.net/apa/cite-a-
book to ensure proper formatting. Any further questions should
be directed to the instructor of the course.
Assignment-3 - Position papers
You will select one health care stakeholder for each of your
Assignment-3 position papers.
Examples of stakeholders are Federal Government, Local
Government, Providers, Nurses and Clinical staff,
Pharmaceutical, etc.
You will discuss the involvement of the stake holder, ethics or
law, finance and funding, the benefits and disadvantage, the
influence the stakeholder has on the health system and the
future for the stake hold. You need to support your statement
with peer-reviewed journal articles, but I will also accept .gov
websites.
Your assignment-3 paper should have 5 – 7 full pages of
content. A full page would not allow me to type anything at the
end of the page. If I can type anything at the end of the page, it
is not a full page. The content pages do not include the title
page, abstract page, and the reference pages. You should have
at least three peer reviewed journal articles as reference

resources. Peer reviewed journal have doi numbers, make sure
to list your journal article in APA format with the doi numbers.
Your paper should be in APA format.
References Comment by Charl Mattheus: You need three
peer-reviewed journal article published in the last 5 years for
this assignment. Peer-reviewed journal articles would always
have a doi number. Make sure you reference listing have the doi
number.
Badley, G. (2014). A place from where to speak: The university
and academic freedom. British
Journal of Educational Studies, 57(2), 146-163.
doi:10.1111/j.1467-8527.2009.00429.x
Links below can help you with APA.
Please remove the links if you use this template as your
assignment template.
http://flash1r.apa.org/apastyle/basics/index.htm
http://www.apastyle.org/
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
Positioning Stakeholder – Assignment-3 Papers
The paper should offer information and insight of areas not
covered in the course content for the topic. It should be between
5 and 7 full pages of text writing, excluding the title page,
Abstract, and reference pages. Minimum of 3 scholarly articles
from peer-reviewed journals (peer-reviewed journal articles
have doi numbers). It is a requirement to list doi number in your

reference list. Additionally, the 3 peer-review journal articles
need to be published in the last five years (2013, 2014, 2015,
2016 & 2017). There should be a minimum of four references. It
will allow students to use textbooks, dissertations, government
web sites and organizational websites after they fulfil the peer-
review journal requirement. The references should be listed in
the reference list at the end of the paper. Each article has to be
cited at least once in the text of the paper. Direct quotes are not
recommended and avoid paraphrasing authors. We expect
students to read the articles and write in their own words when
citing the articles in the text. The quality of written
assignments is strongly based on the ability of students to do
critical thinking. The papers need to follow the American
Psychology Association (APA, 6th ed.) writing style for
academic and scholarly papers.
You should use the APA Assignment Template provided or
submit your assignment in APA format.
Assignment- Position papers
You will select one health care stakeholder for each of your
Assignment-3 position papers.
Examples of stakeholders are Local Government, Providers,
Nurses and Clinical staff, Pharmaceutical, etc.
You will discuss the involvement of the stake holder, ethics or
law, finance and funding, the benefits and disadvantage, the
influence the stakeholder has on the health system and the
future for the stake hold. You need to support your statement
with peer-reviewed journal articles, but I will also accept .gov
websites.
Your assignment-3 paper should have 5 – 7 full pages of
content. A full page would not allow me to type anything at the
end of the page. If I can type anything at the end of the page, it
is not a full page. The content pages do not include the title
page, abstract page, and the reference pages. You should have
at least three peer reviewed journal articles as reference
resources. Peer reviewed journal have doi numbers, make sure
to list your journal article in APA format with the doi numbers.

Your paper should be in APA format.
Week 7 & 8: Assignment-3 Rubric
Due Date – Week-7 before Dec 10, 2017 @ midnight
Due Date – Week-8 before Dec 17, 2017 @ midnight
Possible
Points
Requirements
· Writer addressed all objectives of the selected topic of the
final research assignment.
· Writer stayed focused on the topic, shows clear evidence of
thorough research. The paper is well organized, concise,
complete, correlated to the research and provide information
beyond the course textbook content.
· The paper consists of 5-7 full pages of text writing, excluding
the Title page, Abstract Page and Reference pages
/7.5
Critical Thinking
· Writer show critical thinking and analyzing skills.
· Writer addressed assignment using insights and new
applications.
· Writer interprets new knowledge and applies it properly.
/3
Mechanics
· Grammar
· Spelling
· Word choice
· Punctuation
· Sentence structure
/2
APA Formatting
· Correct: Title page, abstract and reference page
· Proper in-text citations
· Header is APA format
· Proper margins, indentions, and spacing (sentence and line)
· Font type and size

· Minimum of 4 references with at least 3 scholarly articles
from peer-reviewed journals were used as references and at
least cited once in the text.
· No direct quotes or paraphrasing – student used own words
· References in Reference list are in APA format with no active
hyperlinks
/5
Total
/17.5
N e w N a t i o n a l D i s c o u r s e s :
T u n i s i a n W o m e n W r i t e t h e R e v o l u t i o n
D o u j a M a m e l o u k
I do not accept that Tunisia should develop into a massive
prison surrounded by fallacies and Wahhabi religious
thinking that threaten to destroy the accomplishments
Tunisia has achieved during half a century as a modern
Arab Muslim republic.
— Amel Mokhtar
Prior to the 2011 Revolution, Tunisian women’s texts—such as
Amel Mokhtar’s1 novels, Fatma Ben Mahmoud’s2 poetry, or
Messaouda Boubakr’s3 short stories—were nearly devoid of the
topic
of politics and, when mentioned, it was often a distant matter
that took
place far from home, such as the war in Iraq or the Israeli
occupation
of Palestine. For Amel Mokhtar to interfere in the midst of her

novel
Dukhan al-qasr (Smoke of the Palace, 2013) and make a
political state-
ment with such vehemence as the one quoted above reflects her
inten-
tion to participate in the formation of a new national and
possibly
nationalist post-revolutionary discourse. While Mokhtar
glorifies the
accomplishments of the past, she condemns the possibility of
Tunisia
developing not into a democracy, but a theocracy.4 Mokhtar
inserts
herself as a character in her own voice to give a personal
account of the
Tunisian Revolution that took place from December 2010 until
Ben
Ali’s sudden departure to Saudi Arabia on January 14,2011.
Likewise,
Tunisian authors Fatma Ben Mahmoud and Messaouda Boubakr
set out
to accomplish a similar endeavor by transforming their literary
space
into a political space. In exploring the way in which these
formerly apo-
litical authors turn into politically hyperconscious authors by
interven-
ing in their texts and creating patriotic nationalist male figures,
I argue
that they have shifted from political silence to political
engagement
and, by doing so, they appropriate the authority of writing the
post-rev-
olutionary national discourse, henceforth establishing a new
geography
of gender in Tunisia. This post-revolutionary writing genre is

unique to
100 A lif 35 (2015)
Tunisian women, especially in comparison with Egyptian and
Libyan
women who did not benefit from the coeval Revolutions in
terms of
civil liberties and gender equality. According to Mustafa Dikeç,
it
becomes important to think spatially about politics because
“systems of
domination impose orders of space [and time], and that space
often
appears as a means of control and domination” (671). Hence the
post-
revolutionary novel mutates into an explicitly political space
where
new geographies of gender and politics are intertwined and
mapped.
Under both Bourguiba’s and Ben A li’s post-independence
regimes, intellectual conversations and scholarly studies
focused on
women and their emancipation in Tunisia, for Bourguiba
believed that
Tunisia could not develop if Tunisian women were not
“modern.” Ben
Ali followed Bourguiba’s national feminist propaganda, as it
made
Tunisia appeal to the W est’s agenda. In fact, the Tunisian
government
states the Personal Status Code (PSC) as one of Tunisia’s proofs
of

developmental success in the Arab world. The uniqueness of
Tunisian
women’s texts is rooted in the national educational system
which
affirms the history of Tunisian women’s emancipation and
highlights
the “feminist” achievements of Bourguiba and Ben Ali. An
examina-
tion of the latest literary works of these three prominent
Tunisian
women writers, Ben Mahmoud, Mokhtar, and Boubakr, reflects
a state
of political hyperconsciousness that developed within the space
of the
novel or short story after the 2011 Revolution. The novel
provides a
space to explore freedoms, political action, social change, and
estab-
lishes a new geography of gender connected to the political
space in
order to contribute to the new national discourse through a
writing
practice that has become activist. Dikeç mentions that “politics
inau-
gurates space, and spatialisation is central to politics as a
constitutive
part of it” (670). Tunisian women’s post-revolutionary
narratives mir-
ror Dikeç’s idea as politics penetrates the space of the novel as
much
as the novel infiltrates the political space. In other words,
writing lit-
erature for Tunisian women is no longer a phenomenon that
occurs
independently from politics, but quite the contrary: The
political

aspect shifts to become at the center of the literary text.
According to Bernard Westphal, the notion of space is multi-
faceted, and scholars have pondered the term in a variety of
ways.
Space is a fluid notion that is defined in accordance with
specific
needs. For example, in the literary texts of Tunisian women
writers,
the geographical space in their novels shifts from the village to
the
city, mirroring the reality of Tunisia’s rural exodus even today.
In fact,
A lif 35 (2015) 101
this appears in Emna Abdel Qader’s novel Emna (1984), the
first novel
in Arabic published by a Tunisian woman.5 The city of Tunis is
a cen-
tral and eventful space that is often chosen as the geographical
context
of their narratives. While the politicized dichotomy of the city
versus
the village was, and remains, an important topic in women’s
texts, it is
only after the 2011 Revolution that political themes surfaced in
novels
and short stories. A close look at Ben Mahmoud’s fictive
memoir
Im ra’a f i zaman al-thawra (A Woman at the Time of
Revolution,
2011), Mokhtar’s novel Dukhan al-qasr, and Boubakr’s short
story

collection Azal ahki (My Storytelling Goes On, 2013) shows the
newly
found political space of these authors and their evolvement from
polit-
ical silence to a political articulation as voiced in their latest
works.
Homi Bhabha explores political space through his notion of
“ambivalence” (Nation and Narration), which explains the
cultural
and literary narration of a nation shifting from a non-existent
political
conversation in Tunisian women’s literature to becoming the
central
theme. In his introduction, Bhabha explains how national space
reflects the way a given society encompasses the dogmas of the
newly
(post-colonial) structured societies—applicable to post-1956
Tunisia,
that is to independent Tunisia (2). Through Bhabha’s concept of
ambivalence, one may comprehend the complex socio-political
and
historical networks of Tunisian society addressed in post-
revolution-
ary women writers’ novels and short stories. Looking at these
texts,
the notion of cultural and socio-political ambivalence(s) comes
through particularly when examining representations of
masculinities
within the new political space and the self-portrayal of the
women
authors in their texts. The example of Mokhtar’s authorial voice
inter-
jecting in the space of her novel with a personal narrative comes
to
mind as she says: “I sense deep down that the current events

taking
place in the central and north eastern areas of Tunisia are
overwhelm-
ing me to the point that I must abandon the characters of my
novel”
(56).6 Such passages reflect the author’s political engagement,
which
forces her to interrupt the narrative because she is overpowered
by the
socio-political changes occurring in December 2010. When she
returns to writing her novel, she sets up a space that reflects the
new
post-revolutionary reality of Tunisia, whereby her characters
perform
a sit-in threatening to fire her as the creator of their lives.
During Ben Ali’s regime, the existence of political prisoners—
from left and right—was common knowledge in Tunisian
society. Yet,
Tunisian writers (men and women alike) dared not to write
about such
102 A lif 35 (2015)
topics. Self-censorship was indeed more effective than the
censor at
the Ministry of Interior. The historical moment of the January
14,2011
Revolution in Tunisia brought about a period of instability for a
few
weeks after Ben Ali’s departure. Eventually, security was
restored to a
degree. When the Islamist Party Ennahda won in the October
2011

elections with a majority in the National Constituent Assembly
(NCA), the conversation about women was instigated again in
social
media. Suddenly, many Tunisian women (mostly secularists)
grew
anxious regarding the present and future status of women’s
rights
under Islamist rule, especially since Ennahda Party would
dictate the
drafting of the new constitution thanks to its electoral majority.
Examples of such anxiety occurred when the Constituent
Assembly
proposed Article 28 stipulating that “women are complementary
to
men.” This caused an uproar in the streets of Tunis, as
protesters
rejected the idea of women not being “complete” citizens,
calling for
a clause stating that both men and women are equal before the
law, as
stated in the 1957 Constitution.
The challenge that presents itself when studying Tunisian
women’s post-revolutionary texts under any scholarly lens is to
find a
paradigm that is appropriate to approaching such unique texts.
Historically, women’s writing evolved from silence to
articulation,
although the topics were limited to social issues due to the
politics of
the Arab world. Today, in a country such as Tunisia, women
authors
find themselves compelled to narrate political life and state
their opin-
ions incessantly. I propose that Geraldine Heng’s idea that
“through

out global history . . . women, the feminine, and figures of
gender,
have traditionally anchored the nationalist imaginary—that
undis-
closed ideological matrix of nationalist culture” (31) frames
Tunisian
women’s post-revolutionary writing and their development from
polit-
ical abstention to political awareness. In fact, their texts mirror
the
need to write the new Tunisian reality from their perspective in
order
to document the historical period of post-revolutionary Tunisia.
Focusing on Ben Mahmoud, Mokhtar, and Boubakr stems from
the fact that they have shifted in their writings from avoiding
the topic
of politics, rarely representing men (or women) as political
subjects in
their novels prior to January 2011, to bringing forward their
male char-
acters as political subjects and entities. Looking at their post-
revolu-
tionary texts (short stories, novels, Facebook entries,7 or
articles) one
notices renewed discontent with Tunisian masculinity that is
centered
around politics. Rather than continuing to create masculine
représenta-
i t / ; / 35 (2015) 103
tions that are devoid of politics as they did under dictatorship,
they con-

struct hyperconscious male political subjects in their texts, yet
the dis-
content with the masculine figures mirrors the authors’
discontent with
the current political scene, especially since their idea of gender
equali-
ty under a real democracy remains an ideal. All three authors’
works
share a focus on three periods surrounding the Tunisian
Revolution.
The first one is the “Days of Fear” —between December 17,
2010 and
January 14, 2011—when Tunisians took to the streets to
demonstrate,
while the second period—after January 14 when Ben Ali fled —
is a
nationally ecstatic and hopeful period. “The Descent Toward
Hell”
occurs after the elections of October 23,2011 when hope and
happiness
vanish, and sadness and disenchantment haunt the characters. In
mak-
ing use of their literary writing to bring these important
historical peri-
ods forward, the authors—as Dikeç proposes—define “the
objects of
political struggles in broader, process-oriented terms rather than
simply
assigning an empirical given to them ” (673). Indeed, the
objects of the
political struggles for M okhtar, Ben M ahmoud, and Boubakr
are the
authors themselves, as they appear unwilling to dissociate
themselves
from the political spaces of their novels, and are either active
partici-

pants in the plots or interfere directly through their authorial
voices.
During an interview Messaouda Boubakr granted me, it was
difficult
for her to answer questions without an intense focus on politics.
She declared:
I don’t write from a void. I am the product of this socie
ty, and as an author, I live political and social events with
intensity. Politics is the basis for everything. Our econo-
my depends upon our politicians’ policies, and our lives
are shaped by economic decisions. The example of
imported Turkish and Slovenian milk comes to my mind.
At first, we could not find milk in grocery stores, and
when there finally was milk, it was Turkish. Take our
gasoline crisis as another example. How do you want all
the strikes going on in this country for the past two years
not to influence my writing? My writing has changed
because I have more political consciousness than I have
ever had in my life. (Personal interview)
Thus, pre-revolutionary self-censorship and disregard for
politics and
political issues in her literary texts give way to a focus on
politics for
Boubakr today. It appears that the new political spaces that
were cre-
104 A l i f 35 (2015)
ated after the Revolution have induced Ben M ahmoud, M
okhtar, and
Boubakr to produce politically charged texts. M aking use of

W estphal’s geocritical theory, I explore the textual instances of
politi-
cal hyperconsciousness in the works produced by these three
authors,
which I use to interpret the space of the novel: Tunis as the
microcosm
and Tunisia (as well as the rest of the Arab Spring countries) as
the
macrocosm for post-revolutionary political dismay.
A Woman’s Testimony of Tunisia’s Revolution
Fatma Ben M ahmoud’s testimony of the January 2011
Revolution
is entitled Im ra’a fi zaman al-thawra. It is the first
autobiographical fic-
tion documenting the 2011 Tunisian Revolution. This text
resembles a
novel in its literary style although the author announces her
intention to
document the Revolution from a woman’s perspective. Ben
Mahmoud
chooses to reveal her gender as early as the title of her book and
through-
out the entire work by insisting that her account of the
Revolution is
through a woman’s eyes. Is a wom an’s narration of the
Revolution dif-
ferent from that of a man? As the narrator, Ben Mahmoud opens
her per-
sonal account of the Revolution by exposing the effect of
dictatorship and
the lack of freedom on her psychological well being. She admits
to her
state of depression and need for medication. Her life changes
when she

reads on Facebook about the incident in which Mohamed
Bouazizi
immolates himself in front of the municipality of Sidi Bouzid to
protest
the confiscation of his wheelbarrow with the fruits he was
selling, accord-
ing to Alcinda Honwana (2). In her autobiographical work, Ben
Mahmoud explains that this event shocked the nation as
Tunisians were
not accustomed to protest under their dictatorial regime and
were even
less accustomed to this particular method of protest: self-
immolation.
What was even more surprising was Bouazizi’s life: a college
graduate
who could not find a job and was compelled to sell produce out
of a
wheelbarrow.8 He became the symbol of the masses of
unemployed col-
lege-educated Tunisian youth. Describing the effect of
Bouazizi’s self-
immolation, Ben Mahmoud writes:
The situation has changed now. The once small society is no
longer small. It has metamorphosed into a larger society that
circulates events thanks to Facebook. People are no longer
small groups of families but instead they are the Tunisian
nation that no longer accepts to see its youth humiliated. (17)
A lif 35 (2015) 105
The author believes that social media, especially Facebook,
have
transformed Tunisian society. As she narrates the Revolution

and youth’s
resistance, the geo-spacial dimensions of Tunis/Tunisia alter
and Tunisian
society, instead of being divided, suddenly unites to fight police
violence.
From a gender perspective, the author/narrator declares that she
is a
woman narrating the Revolution, yet she acknowledges that
Tunisian men
led the outburst of the Revolution. She writes: “We are all
Mohamed
Bouazizi! The entire city turned into one man’s heart beat” (26).
Ben
Mahmoud expresses the unity of the population using masculine
terms
reflecting a patriarchal attitude. Is the Revolution masculine?
Did
Tunisian men make the Tunisian Revolution? According to the
narrator,
Bouazizi ignited the flame of the Revolution through self-
immolation,
then women and men alike followed suit. The images of protest
against
the police and the violence inflicted upon the protesters on
Facebook stir
her reaction to narrate the events in a text that mixes poetry
with prose, as
she romanticizes the Revolution rendering it an act of rujula
(masculini-
ty). Though the author starts her work describing her mental
state of
depression, she quickly shifts to describing the altered feelings
that the
Revolution causes her, such as fear, hope, and joy, until
reaching the death
of Bouazizi, which upsets her and marks what she considers the

end of
Ben Ali. The Revolution, in Ben Mahmoud’s work, marks the
beginning
of the author’s healing from dictatorship-related maladies.9
Describing the Revolution, Ben Mahmoud writes: “Have you
ever seen a weak human being, alone with no arms, catch a
lion? I
haven’t. Yet, I saw a weak and helpless nation with no weapons
rid
themselves of their unjust president.” (59). The author depicts
the polit-
ical space of the Revolution as a battle between a helpless and
weak man
and a powerful lion. Furthermore, Ben Mahmoud places herself
as a wit-
ness of the Revolution, and assigns herself political activism.
Heng
attributes such attitudes to female emancipation, which she
describes as
“a powerful political symbol describing at once a separation
from the
past, the aspirations of an activist present, and the utopia of
imagined
national future” (31). Heng views this “female emancipation” as
the
supplier of “a mechanism of self-description and self-projection
of
incalculably more than pragmatic value in the self-fashioning of
nations
and nationalisms” (31). Ben M ahmoud’s text reflects H eng’s
connection
between wom en’s emancipation and its role in the present and
future of
nation building. In fact, Heng’s argument could explain the
passionate

account of the Revolution that Ben Mahmoud writes. The
historical
moment affects writers, poets, and anyone who attempts to
document it
106 A lif 35 (2015)
in an emotional or poetic manner, which explains the
fluctuations in Ben
Mahmoud’s moods and feelings depicted in Im ra’a fi zaman
al-thawra.
The political hyperconsciousness of Ben Mahmoud starts with
the event
of Bouazizi’s self-immolation and develops throughout her
narrative.
Although she depicts herself as an emotionally reactive
observer to the
early political events of the Revolution, she trains herself in
politics
through her readings, but especially through the violent
confrontations
she witnesses on her screen. Facebook and television become
her polit-
ical educator and her observing gaze grows into a revolutionary
gaze.
It was unusual for Tunisians to see the military surveilling the
streets of Tunisia according to Ben Mahmoud (64). The political
space
changed rapidly—compared to Egypt, Yemen, or Libya—as the
mili-
tary in Tunisia were kept on their bases and only called in
emergency
situations. From a geocritical perspective, reading Ben

Mahmoud’s
Revolution mirrors a radical change in human relations in a
geograph-
ically delineated space (Tunisia). In fact, Ben Mahmoud’s text
is her
personal interpretation of images: She attempts to mimic the
reality of
the days of Revolution and yet produces a narrative where
reality, fic-
tion, and poetry intertwine. This reminds us of Westphal’s
remarks on
space and geography as he asserts: “Historically, space has
always
been subject to symbolic readings. The concrete details of
geography
often relate to a spiritual hermeneutic rather than to immediate
obser-
vation.” (1). On the one hand, Ben Mahmoud’s account of the
Revolution stands as a symbolic reading of the events and her
reac-
tions to them. On the other hand, the geography of Tunisia
changes as
the author reflects the spiritual effect of the Revolution upon
herself,
which in turn causes a new geography of gender to emerge.
Consequently, Ben Mahmoud finds herself in a new political
sphere,
demonstrating for democracy, and especially protesting for
Tunisian
women’s rights, equality, and political representation.
In her representation of herself as a woman, Ben Mahmoud nar-
rates the processes she goes through when she attempts to
change her
real Facebook name to a pseudonym that would defy the
censors. This

causes her an internal dispute over the loss of her real identity.
It
appears that in revolutionary times, mixing reality with fiction
may
cause damage. She writes:
I failed to communicate on my borrowed Facebook page. I
felt that it was not mine, and that this woman (Fatma Aziz
instead of Fatma Ben Mahmoud) was not I. She became a
A lif 35 (2015) 107
stranger to me as if she were another woman I did not
know. When I entered my borrowed Facebook page, I felt
like I was spying on another w o m a n .. . . How difficult it is
to be forced to conceal yourself behind a mask in your
country when all you want to say is how much you love
your nation and that your heart bleeds for it! (73)
Ben M ahmoud relates her identity as a Tunisian woman to
Fatma Ben
M ahmoud and rejects her pseudonym on Facebook even though
she
creates it. The imposition o f her masked self clashes with her
desire to
express love for her nation. This is an example of how
individuality
clashes with the imposed concept of the pre-revolutionary
nation,
where freedoms are restricted and masks are sought as an
attempt at
self-expression along with self-protection. Once again, in this
passage,
the author reveals her political hyperconsciousness as she

connects her
identity to the political space restricting her. The author
emphasizes
her gender as an im ra'a (woman): She is not just Tunisian; she
is a
Tunisian w om an, and this is how she identifies herself.
On another level, Ben Mahmoud employs the image of flowers
throughout her account that resembles a poetic memoir of the
Revolution.
Although fear of the unknown surrounds her stories, hope
overcomes it
until the last two chapters of her book in which she describes
her anxiety
and disappointment with the post-revolutionary political scene.
Her ques-
tion: “Tunisia is Muslim so why do they want to make it
Islamist?” (146)
summarizes her political stance and unease with the new
regime. She
states: “Where have these new so-called revolutionaries come
from?
They surround themselves with narrow ideologies that call for
polygamy,
banning visiting graves, harassing artists and accusing them of
heresy,
and threatening to run the ink out of writers’ pens.” (146). The
end of Ben
M ahmoud’s account of the Revolution reflects her dismay with
the out-
come of the protests and resistance that caused her fear while
attempting
to remain hopeful for a better tomorrow.
Looking at the poetic tone Ben M ahmoud employs throughout
the text, her reader would not expect to see such a change in the

polit-
ical geography of Tunisia within the brief temporal space of her
book.
The intellectual shock that she suffers in her last two chapters
reflects
the effect of temporality on Ben M ahm oud’s mimetic relations
between
the real and the fictive. Through her text, the author conveys
her aston-
ishment at Tunisia’s new socio-political transformations that
seem to
her to be more fictive than real. There are no real parameters in
Im ra ’a
108 A lif 35 (2015)
f i zaman al-thawra that govern referentiality; instead, an
unbalanced
mixture of reality and fiction occurs. The men who were heroes
throughout the Revolution suddenly become a threat to Ben
Mahmoud’s freedom as a woman. Although not the same men
who
enacted the Revolution, the “men” who won the elections are
those who
lived in exile and concealed their political beliefs under
Bourguiba and
Ben Ali. She states: “I am terrified of the new/old comer. It is
unthink-
able that I give up the civil rights of my country, my rights as a
woman,
and my rights as a writer.” (147). Once again, Ben Mahmoud
frames
herself as a member of a nation, and defines herself as a woman
and as

an author. It becomes obvious that she must face a new
geography of
gender in post-revolutionary Tunisia that she is inclined to
resist, a
geography of gender in which Tunisian women’s civil rights do
not
achieve new grounds but instead are consistently threatened by
the
political and media-based debates. In fact, Heng indicates that
there is
no feminism in the Third World that is “secure from the
intervention of
the state, nor from the power of any who are able to wield the
discourse
of nationalism with unchallenged authority” (45).
Documenting the Tunisian Revolution in Fiction
Amel Mokhtar documents the Tunisian Revolution in her novel
Dukhan al-qasr, which she started before the Revolution,
narrating life
in Ben Ali’s palace. When the Revolution occurred in 2010-
2011,
Mokhtar stopped writing for several months.10 Despite being a
novel,
Mokhtar interferes in the fictive text once she returns to it and
decides
to write her personal account of the Revolution. Although her
previous
writing techniques are present in her latest work—such as
altering the
narrator with every new chapter and consistently narrating in
the first
person—she reminds the reader of her desire to mold fiction
into a
document for Tunisians resistance during and after the

Revolution.
This novel highlights Noor al-Katib as the only female narrator
among
five male narrators who belong to various socio-economic
classes and
adopt different lifestyles. Consequently, their Tunisian
Revolution
tales differ from one another.
Mokhtar’s novel reflects an interaction between the new, post
revolutionary real world of Tunisian society and the fictional
world
she sets up through her characters and their interactions. Each
chapter
contains the term “anxiety” in its title, as if Mokhtar were
narrating the
anxieties of the new Tunisia. While the characters Noor,
La‘ursi,
A l i f 35 (2015) 109
Lahbib, and Farid recount their personal problems, Mokhtar
interrupts
the stories with her personal account of the 2010-2011
Revolution.
Since the author disrupts her novel, the characters decide to
perform a
sit-in (ïtiscim) to be brought back to the space of the novel. The
idea
in itself expresses the new political scene in Tunisia that has
been
dominated by a culture of political protest embodied by sit-ins
and
demonstrations. Indeed, Mokhtar responds positively to her

characters
under the pressure of their political protest. Their dialogues
reflect the
new socio-political scene and divides based upon various
people’s
political orientations. Most characters express their dismay with
the
new Tunisia dominated by the Islamists. What was thought of at
one
point in the narrative as a hopeful future and the scene where
the “Arab
Spring” began turns into the possibility that the Tunisian
Revolution
was nothing but an American-Israeli plot to direct terrorism
away from
the West and toward the Arab world.11
The only female character in Mokhtar’s novel, Noor al-Katib,
narrates the chapter “Anxiety of Motherhood” (29-37) in which
she
describes the violence her husband Abbas directs toward her,
both ver-
bally and physically. When Noor’s health is restored, she seeks
revenge
from her abusive husband after preparing his favorite meal,
putting a
sleeping pill in his drink, and tying him up with a rope. Noor
says:
I mixed my glass of vodka with ice to drink to the health
of my husband—the slave of my moodiness—to whom I
was going to do as I pleased. My dear husband allows
himself what he forbids me. I became a happy woman . . .
actually I became the happiest woman in the universe. I
started feeling a victorious pleasure, as intelligence tri-
umphed over strength. (32)

As Abbas overpowers Noor with his physical strength, she
subdues him
with what she calls her feminine intelligence within the private
space of
their home. The domestic abuse scenes—the first coming from
Abbas
and the second plotted by Noor—are but an introduction to her
state-
ment reminding him of the history and strength of Tunisian
women as
she says to him: “I am a free woman and the daughter of a free
woman.
I am the descendent of the highest epics and you dare to treat
me like a
slave as you beat me, humiliate me, and call me by all the
names of
whores” (33). Although there is no overt political statement in
the
“Anxiety of Motherhood” chapter, gender conflict occurs and
the female
11 0 A lif 35 (2015)
narrator finds herself contriving to restore herself as a woman.
Noor
must avenge herself as a wife, a Tunisian woman, and a human
being
through a well-thought out plan that ensures her triumph. On the
other
hand, this chapter foregrounds the politics of gender within
Tunisian
society. As Noor is transported to the hospital after she passes
out as a

result of Abbas’s violence, she blames her wounds upon an
accident
rather than admitting the truth to her brother. While she is
willing to lie
to save Abbas’s face, she has secretly decided that justice is her
person-
al affair and not that of the state or the law. After the doctor
announces
to her that she is well enough to be discharged from the
hospital, he con-
cludes his diagnosis with the happy news of her pregnancy.12
The politically charged events that follow the Revolution in
Mokhtar’s novel are thus introduced by gender politics. For
example,
Noor plays a representative role for Tunisian women who
succumb to
domestic abuse (mostly by men: husbands, fathers, brothers,
etc.) and
yet resist through their own means. Her declaration reminding
Abbas
of the free-willed individual she represents extends beyond the
imme-
diate space of her home. Noor al-Katib overthrows the
traditional pol-
itics of gender by making use of her intelligence to defeat the
physical
strength of her husband. Thus, Mokhtar blends the reality of
domestic
abuse against women with the fictional Scheherazadian ruse of
the
female narrator creating a particular space that evolves from
Noor’s
home to the cafés, streets, and hotels of Tunis.
The constant movement between reality and fiction means that

referentiality can be established, but not a referent. Making use
of geo-
criticism as a critical tool allows the unraveling not only of the
gender
politics and the politics of gender in Mokhtar’s novel but also
of the
oscillation that occurs throughout her novel, between
characters, geo-
graphical spaces, and political events. Furthermore, I would
argue that
a geocritical look at Mokhtar’s post-revolutionary novel enables
an
understanding of the real space of Tunis through the fictional
space the
author creates. Note, for example, Noor’s following words:
I walk sadly on Habib Bourguiba Avenue with its
faded colors, its dusty sidewalks, its silenced birds
while piles of trash are spread throughout. Sadness
covers the cafés as well as people’s faces, as they
advance with a frown. . . . I almost do not recognize
this avenue where I have spent more than half of my
life. (154)
A lif 35 (2015) 111
This mirrors Mokhtar’s political hyperconsciousness as the real
space
of Tunis is transformed into a political space throughout the
events of
the narrative and in the dialogues of the characters. Through
literature,
Mokhtar creates a mimetic connection between the city of Tunis
(specifically its main street, Habib Bourguiba Avenue, named

after
Tunisia’s first president) and the characters of the novel,
especially
after the January 2011 Revolution.
Before the Revolution, Mokhtar chooses the sea as the space
where Si Lamjad, one of the protagonists, and others learn
courage and
performance. They drink to overcome the difficulties of the
ocean and
find the bravery to resist and surmount fear (40). Yet resisting
the
harsh life on a boat at sea allows for the narrator to discuss the
issue
of al-harga (a colloquial term meaning illegal immigration by
boat)
which has taken the lives of many. In other words, the space of
the sea
brings the Tunisian sailors’ masculinity and masculine prowess
into
question. When Mokhtar delves into the political space of the
Revolution in the second part of her novel, she intervenes in a
chapter
titled “The Anxiety of Revolution” (61-77) and writes her
personal
response to the Revolution. She declares her infinite and
passionate
love for Tunisia which she discovered only during the days of
the
Revolution. Vast is the space of the novel as it allows its writer
not
only to narrate a storyline, but also to interfere in it in order to
recount
the political and historical events that changed Tunisia. The
political
hyperconsciousness of Mokhtar transcends the notions of

nationalism
and patriotism and Tunisia becomes the recipient of an avid and
fiery
love. Heng believes that “nationalism is so powerful a force in
the
Third World” (34) that states would associate feminism with
Western
imperialism in Arab countries so as to dismantle the nationalism
of
feminists in a given country. Mokhtar writes:
The day I returned from my trip I discovered that my
soul was claiming the land of Tunisia. I realized that I
love Tunisia. I love this country with no changes and no
corrections, just as it is, to the point that I knelt to kiss
the land as I was crying while descending from the
plane. When the Revolution occurred, I was overjoyed
and considered it the beginning of a new truly free,
developed and democratic Tunisia. I understood that I
loved Tunisia madly, adored it and could never live
away from it. (63)
112 A lif 35 (2015)
This passage translates the vivid and strong emotions of
Mokhtar vis-
à-vis the space/place that she writes about. The politically
charged
events allow her to realize her notion of patriotism for Tunisia,
where
she grew up and lives today. Perhaps it is her attachment to the
local
space that compelled her to produce a text that focuses on the
socio-

political events following the Revolution mainly through her
male
characters Farid, La‘rusi, Abd al-Majid, Lahbib, and Mahdi.
While her
previous works, such as al-Kursi al-hazzaz (The Rocking Chair,
2009), bring the sexual taboos of Tunisia to the surface, her
post-rev-
olutionary novel displays her political and social awareness of
the new
Tunisia. The political void in her literature to date has been
compen-
sated for with a detailed account of the new political scene and
the way
it has divided Tunisians according to party allegiances.
Westphal notes that “there is no bright line between the real and
the fictional” (4) and, therefore, the reader of Dukhan al-qasr
becomes
aware of the lack of homogeneity and harmony between the
various
male narrators, while united in the small space of Tunis. As the
author
affirms the political dissatisfaction of most of her characters
and the
hypocrisy of the new regime, she renders friendship contingent
upon
the oneness of political space, while giving voice to her
discontented
characters. For instance, L a‘rusi takes the risk of losing his
friendship
with Farid over their political past. He says:
[M]y good friend Farid insinuated that I am one of the
remnants of Ben A li’s regime. He attributed my success
ful career to my previous political allegiance. The jerk!
How dare he accuse me! He who proudly worked with

the corrupt Trabelsis before the Revolution is now pre-
tending he was pushed to do so. What a hypocrite and a
liar! Today he feigns honesty while defending religion
sellers. Perhaps he has secretly joined them. If I discover
that he has, I will end my relationship with him immedi-
ately. I despise hypocrites! (84-85)
This passage presents a political divide in post-revolutionary
Tunisia
where those who paid allegiance to the one-state party during
Bourguiba
and especially Ben Ali’s terms have become eschewed and
rejected by the
new democrats. However, La‘rusi displays his bitterness toward
his friend
Farid who used previous political allegiances as a weapon
against his
friend. As La‘msi wishes to retaliate against Farid’s
accusations, he men-
A lif 35 (2015) 113
tions his possible and probable political allegiance to a
religious party,
which causes La‘rusi disappointment with his friend. The
common space
of friendship risks fragmentation due to the new political space
in Tunisia.
Furthermore, politics interferes with gender politics by breaking
the male
friendship between La'rusi and Farid, who used to drink
together in the
same bars and cafés, a space that only men in Tunisia frequent.

In the context of Dukhan al-qasr, Mokhtar interferes in her nar-
rative with her personal account of the Revolution and her clear
dis-
may of post-elections political climate. By stating her political
stance
in her personal accounts, she makes the reader aware of her
political
hyperconsciousness through her mostly male characters
interacting
within one space: Tunis and, more often than not, the Habib
Bourguiba
Avenue, a symbol of Bourguiba’s legacy. In other words,
Mokhtar
creates the context through her literary text, allowing Tunis (as
the
place) to connect with the new political space through her
characters.
Westphal proposes that context connects space and place by
establish-
ing meaningful space in the constitution of place (5). Indeed,
the new
political spaces shape the city of Tunis as the place that they
occupy.
In fact, Noor exclaims: “I can barely recognize the Habib
Bourguiba
Avenue on which I have spent more than half of my life. Where
are
you now, O dear leader?” (154). The female narrator shouts out
a final
and deep dismay with the new political scene in Tunisia and
nostalgi-
cally invokes Tunisia’s first president, Habib Bourguiba. For
the
author, Bourguiba represents women’s emancipation as he put
forth
the Personal Status Code in 1957 and made education

mandatory and
free to boys and girls.13 The dissatisfaction with the current
political
scene causes her to yearn for Bourguiba and his epoch,
reflecting the
author’s political yearning for of Bourguiba’s time when
juxtaposed
with the present. Mokhtar has shifted in her writings from
discussing
the social sexual taboos of Tunisia before the Revolution to
revealing
the innovative political spaces bom after the Revolution.
Writing as Political Defiance
Messaouda Boubakr recounts the political incident behind the
title of her short stories collection Azal ahki. While she was
protesting
in front of the National Constituent Assembly (NCA): “A
bearded man
told me to be quiet, go home and stay where I belong” (Personal
inter-
view). Because Boubakr felt insulted by her aggressor’s order,
she
decided to publish her short stories as a response to a man
wanting to
114 A lif 35 (2015)
silence her (Personal interview). This incident reminds us of
Milani’s
description of Iranian women’s newfound space after the 1979
Islamic
Revolution. She writes: “They disappeared as entertainers and

singers.
They faded away from the silver screen. Women’s place, it was
argued, was not public but private, not out in the streets but
inside the
home” (1). Taking a role in public protest implies that
Boubakr’s pres
ence is emblematic of both her sense of nationalism and her
feminism
(as she believes that women’s role extends beyond the private
space).
Heng suggests that when “resurgent religious traditionalism is
the
dominant mode of nationalist culture, nationalist antipathy to
moder-
nity’s social impact may be expressed as antipathy to the West
and to
Western cultural modalities”(33). How ironic it is that before
the
Revolution Boubakr suffered from the national censors at the
Ministry
of Interior, which caused her to have an inner-censor that she
had to
surpass in order to write. Today, she maintains she must write
and
publish to move forward so that no one can silence her. The
first ten
short stories of her collection were written after the Revolution.
They
are brief and offer either an account of a historical moment in
the
Revolution or a critique of a socio-political and socio-religious
phe-
nomenon that occurred after January 2011.
In the short story entitled ‘“ A rus” (Bride), Boubakr undertakes
the topic of m ut‘a (pleasure) marriage as she describes the

dilemma of
a young university student who finds herself pregnant after a
night of
pleasure with a man with whom she consummates a m ut‘a
marriage.
To her surprise, he divorces her the following morning and she
finds
herself pregnant. However, a girlfriend of one of the main
characters
approaches her saying: “Someone talked to me about you. He’s
one of
our colleagues at the university. In fact, you know him. He
wants you
for his wife in accordance with Shari'a law and the Prophet
Muhammed’s tradition” (11). The pregnant student simply
answers:
“For how many nights?” (11). Not only does Boubakr reflect
upon a
new post-revolutionary social phenomenon, but she also
questions
gender roles in the new socio-political space in Tunisia that has
allowed what was previously hidden and taboo to surface.
Westphal
states that representation “involves the translation of a source
into a
derivative—the source is sometimes ‘the real’ (the world), and
the
derivative is ‘fictional’ (the mental image, the simulacrum)”
(75).
Thus, Boubakr shifts from source to derivative. Her reader
perceives
her translation of the new political space into social phenomena.
The
newness of the political scene has given birth to complex and
retro-

A lif 35 (2015) 115
grade social issues, some of which may have been dormant
under dic-
tatorship, the Revolution allowing them to erupt publicly.
According
to Boubakr, the rise of religiosity in Tunisian society has
diversified
codifying sexual practices, through 'urfi or m ut'a14 marriages
that
Boubakr refers to in her short story ‘“ Arus.”
Referentiality, defined by Westphal as the relations between
reality and fiction, stands as the parameters of each of
Boubakr’s short
stories. In fact, without the reality of the social upheaval of the
Revolution—as represented by Boubakr—her fiction would not
stand
or even exist. Furthermore, the author mocks the exhibitionism
that the
religious men and women portray in their clothing in her short
story
“al-Shams taskhar min sawadina” (The Sun Mocks Our
Blackness):
My neighbor, covered in black cloaks, carefully watches
her steps as she descends the newly white-painted stair-
case and its shiny, clean marble. I can see her fingertips
difficultly pulling aside the lengths of her cloak, as she
attempts to balance her pyramid shaped body. I walked
past my neighbor as I swiftly walk down the staircase I
know so well, while holding together my white coat. I
wanted to say good morning to her, but seeing no face to
welcome my greeting made me retract it. (27)

The narrator creates a space where she juxtaposes the black and
the
white. The significance of the colors goes beyond the simple
image
they represent (as colors) and they become the mirror of the
charac-
ters’ souls. Through her narrator, the author reflects a socio-
religious
stance that can also be translated into a political one by
describing
her discomfort toward the munaqqaba (wearing a full-face veil)
woman. In fact, she later mentions that meeting this woman in
the
morning caused her soul to sink into a state of “black anxiety”
(27).
Furthermore, this short story reflects the association between a
cloth-
ing style that reflects Islamic religiosity with political
allegiance and
belonging. Boubakr’s fictive peregrinations in Tunisian society
reveal the changes in image (especially in women’s clothing)
that the
Revolution has brought about. The above passage reveals the
new
divide in Tunisian society between the “religious” and the
“secular
ists.” However, through a politics-of-gender lens, one sees that
the
multifaceted political scene has caused the female narrator to be
crit-
ical of another woman because of the image she projects. One
may
116 A lif 35 (2015)

wonder if we are truly living in a democratic Tunisia if a non-
veiled
woman refuses to look at a fully veiled woman as her equal and
instead is critical of her attire to the point that the blackness of
her
clothing profoundly disturbs the one who observes her. Another
post-revolutionary woe in Tunisia appears to be the association
of
clothing with political opinions and allegiances. According to
Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, this phenomenon
relates to
affect, which in their opinion “arises in the midst of in-between-
ness:
in the capacities to act and be acted upon .. . affect is persistent
proof
of a body’s never less than ongoing immersion in and among the
world’s obstinacies and rhythms, its refusals as much as its
invita-
tions” (1). Hence, Boubakr creates female characters in her
short sto-
ries that embody political performance in their behavior and
appear-
ance. W omen’s bodies are the bearers of political meaning and
active performers in Tunisian society. While one character
imposes
her physical appearance in the name of freedom and democracy,
the
other one imposes her refusal of the latter as she reacts to the
other’s
performative embodiment of a political concept.
In her short story “Hirabi” (Chameleons), Boubakr’s style
turns Orwellian and reminds us of Animal Farm (1945) or of
Kalila

wa Dimna (12th century) by Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ in that
she
sets the stage of a revolt that happens in the animal kingdom.
The
animals have issues in the fictive setting that reflect the
political and
economic scene within which Tunisians live since the
Revolution.
For example, the importation of goods, including cattle, remains
problematic. Boubakr writes:
Not only did the revolution reach humans but also it spread
to the stables. Hence the pregnant ewes rebelled against their
owners followed by the roosters who were upset by their
competition with those imported from foreign markets. As
for the cows, they protested against the existence of a mixed
breed of cows that competed with them over their food and
the reduced number of bulls. . . . Only the chameleons tres-
passed from one group of protesters to another, as they
changed their colors searching for the winners. (25)
In a change of style, and rather than making use of reality as it
is in
her fiction, Boubakr employs the metaphor of the animal
kingdom to
describe the current political scene in Tunisia with humor. In
the
A lif 35 (2015) 117
above passage, which is the core of the short story, the
revolution is
portrayed as an epidemic that passes from humans to animals.
The

reader becomes aware of the economic issue with importing
cattle
from abroad while cattle are raised in Tunisia. Another critique
that
the author sets forward is that of the “reduced number of bulls”
which is another way of saying that Tunisia suffers from a low
num-
ber of men, in the sense that manhood and masculinity are
equated
to bravery, courage, and standing up for justice. In the current
polit-
ical space in Tunisia, Boubakr describes the chameleon as the
only
animal in the kingdom that survives. It is the representative of
the
human being who hurdles from one party to another and then
quick-
ly follows the winner. The winner is the one who wins the
elections
and gains the support of people, even of their previous
opponents.
Furthermore, the animal kingdom metaphor mirrors the chaos
that
occupies the socio-political spaces in Tunisia today. It appears
as
though humans mimic animals’ behavior. Boubakr establishes a
mimetic relationship between humans and animals, which
portrays
the author’s dissatisfaction with post-revolutionary political life
and
its repercussions on the socio-economic situation. Her political
hyperconsciousness prevails as her texts focus on the socio-
econom-
ic state of Tunisia. Boubakr maintains that she currently follows
the
political scene in Tunisia closely as she senses that the

Revolution
allows her to develop into a politically conscious citizen.
Boubakr
proclaims that writing is the tool she uses to translate her
political
consciousness (Personal interview).
Boubakr’s writing reflects a hyperconsciousness present in all
of her short stories written after the Revolution. The
relationship
between Tunisia’s socio-political reality and writing creates a
new
space that emphasizes referentiality and the new political
environment
surrounding her. Rather than focusing on gender relations in her
short
stories, the author chooses to focus on the Orwellian allegory of
the
animal farm, as she rids the short story of male characters and
politi-
cizes the silent exchange between two women representing the
newly
found political spectrum in Tunisia through the one’s veil and
the
other’s unveiledness. In her short narrative, Boubakr embodies
secu-
larism and religiosity in the physical appearance and attitude of
the
two women. Dismissing male characters or describing them in
one
short story as the missing bulls reveal Boubakr’s dissatisfaction
with
male performance in the Tunisian political spaces that merges
into the
space of her fiction.

118 A lif 35 (2015)
From Self-Censorship to Political Hyperconsciousness
When Fatma Ben Mahmoud takes her pen to document the
Tunisian Revolution through her woman’s eyes in Imra’a fi
zaman al-
thawra, she successfully describes the anxiety and hope she
experi-
ences during the days of the Revolution. It would have been
difficult
for the reader to predict that her final two chapters would be a
cry of
dismay about the outcome of the Revolution. The “real” drives
her
personal account/memoir of the socio-political events that led to
January 14, 2011. While the days of the Revolution inspired
Ben
Mahmoud to write poetry about Bouazizi and the snipers, the
last two
chapters read as a determined promise that she will defend her
free-
doms as a woman, a writer, and a Tunisian citizen. On the other
hand,
a close look at Amel Mokhtar’s Dukhan al-qasr, which she
started
before the Revolution and completed after, reflects the
influence of the
real on the fictive. The uniqueness of this novel stands out in
the
author’s direct intervention in her fictive narrative with two
chapters
that document the Revolution. She highlights the new political
divides

in Tunisian society and shows how the political spaces that the
Revolution created caused social splits rather than a national
rap-
prochement. Her work reflects her dismay with the outcome of
the
Revolution and her suspicion that it was a ventriloquist’s puppet
in the
hands of higher world powers.
Messaouda Boubakr’s collection of short stories Azal ahki rep
resents more of a fictive critique of the new social phenomena
that are
one of the Tunisian Revolution’s by-products. Since Ben Ali
ruled
with an iron fist to insure that freedom of expression and press
were
stifled, it became difficult after the Revolution to decipher what
social
woes already existed and which ones were a direct consequence
of the
newly created political spaces or of a newly found freedom of
the
press and of expression. Despite the divergence of their stories,
all
three authors converge in the fact that their texts mirror their
political
hyperconsciousness and have moved them from being apolitical
writ-
ers to becoming politically conscious ones.
N otes
1 Amel Mokhtar is a Tunisian novelist, short story writer, and
journalist in the
Tunisian newspaper d-Sahqfa. She publishes parts o f her works

and short articles
on herFacebook page: <
https://www.faœbook.conVAmelMoktharEcrivaine>.
A lif 35 (2015) 119
https://www.fa%c5%93book.conVAmelMoktharEcrivaine
2 Fatm aB en M ahm oudis a Tunisian poet, short story writer,
novelist, and the
correspondent in Tunis o f the journal cd-Imarat al-thaqafiyya.
One may con-
sult her writings on her Facebook page: <
https://www.facebook.com/fben-
mahmoud?ffef=ts> .
3 Messaouda Boubakr is a Tunisian novelist and short story
writer. She
became a political activist in civil society organizations after
the Tunisian
Revolution. One may find som e o f her writings on her
Facebook page:
< https://www.facebook.com/messaouda.benboubakei> .
4 In her seminal work Words, not Swords: Iranian W omen
Writers and the
Freedom o f M ovem ent, Farzaneh M ilani refers to the
contemporary histo-
iy o f Iran, but her comments are equally valid when discussing
Tunisia
after the 2011 Revolution
5 According to Ai'cha Ghedira, the first published text by a
Tunisian woman in French
appears in the 1970s, with the publication of Gmnes d’espérance

by Malika
Golcem Ben Rejeb, which was followed by Sophia El Golli’s
Signes in 1979.
6 All translations from Arabic are mine.
7 After the Revolution o f 2011, Tunisian authors (men and
women) shared
their thoughts, opinions, and even literary productions on the
walls of
their Facebook page. Social media became instrumental in
communicat-
ing authors’ views and perspectives.
8 The Bouazizi narrative has since been questioned by many
Tunisians.
However, it was useful for revolutionary propaganda at the
time.
9 W hile Ben M ahmoud describes the Tunisian R evolution’s
effects on her
through a screen, M ona Prince, the Egyptian academic,
blogger, and writer
describes the days o f the Egyptian Revolution in Tahrir Square
in her work
R evolution Is M y Nam e with more hum or and horror than
Ben M ahmoud
describes the short-lived Tunisian uprisings. W hile the
Tunisian author
suffered psychological wounds, the Egyptian author was
abducted and bru-
tally beaten by the security forces o f M ubarak’s regime.
10 M okhtar m entioned that the R evolution caused her to
become an observer
rather than a writer, and that she suddenly suffered a writer’s

block as she
did not know how to situate herself as a writer in a free country.
She was
used to writing while thinking about ways to overcome the
censor. Yet,
today, she can write what she pleases and as she pleases, which
caused her
a great shock (Personal interview).
11 Consequently, M okhtar translates the anxiety o f Tunisian
society through
her many characters. On the cover o f Dukhan al-qasr, Tunisian
academic
and writer Olfa Y oussef writes: “This novel contains many
characters
expressing their various voices and their different opinions.
However,
T unisia remains the main character who appears to be evasive
and shift-
120 A l i f 35 (2015)
https://www.facebook.com/fben-mahmoud?ffef=ts
https://www.facebook.com/fben-mahmoud?ffef=ts
https://www.facebook.com/messaouda.benboubakei
ing, sad and revolted though dreamful o f a better tom orrow .”
Y o u ssef s
description o f M okhtar’s work emphasizes the contradictions
the different
characters live throughout the novel, which further reflects the
new polit-
ical reality created in T unisia after January 14, 2011.
12 The alienation caused by gender conflict is not foreign to

Tunisian
w om en’s works and is not lim ited to literature. Moufida T la
tli’s films
such as The Silences o f the Palace (1994) or her second film
The Season
o f M en (2000) reflect the continuation o f gender conflict w
ithin Tunisian
society. In fact, Lamia Ben Y oussef Zayzafoon argues that T la
tli’s work
is “a political allegory for wom en’s struggle against new forms
o f oppres-
sion in the post-colonial era; namely, Western fem inism ’s
silencing o f the
‘Third W orld M uslim sister,’ the post-independence state
patriarchy, and
Tunisian w om en’s own interiorization o f the law o f
‘heteropatriarchy’”
(48). Zayzafoon’s argument reflects the many gender struggles
Tunisian
women confront and which are replicated in the visual art
production of
Tunisian women.
*2 The Personal Status Code guarantees women’s freedom in
marriage as well as their
right to dvoroe, alimony, and child support. For further
information see:
<http://www.e-
justiœ.tn/fileadnin/fkhiers_site_francais/axfesjuridqjes/Statut_p
er-
sonel_Fr.pd>.
14 According to Tunisian law, ‘urfi marriage is an illegal
marriage contract that
occurs between a man and a woman in the presence o f two
witnesses. The

contract cannot be registered as it does not conform to state
regulations
regarding legal marriage contracts. As for m u t'a marriage, it
is literally a
“pleasure marriage” that can end whenever either party decides
to end it. The
sole goal o f this illegal union is pleasure. Both marriages are
foreign to
Tunisia. Hence the author expresses her shock with such a
social phenom-
enon that has repercussions upon women who can end up
pregnant and
abandoned by their male partners such as in Boubakr’s short
story.
Works Cited
Abdel Qader, Emna. Emna. Tunis: al-Dar al-Tunisiyya lil-Nashr
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1984.
Ben M ahmoud, Fatma. Im ra 'a fi zaman al-thawra [A Woman
at the Tim e o f
Revolution]. Tunis: Manshurat Karem el Cherif, 2011.
Bhabha, Hom i. Nation and Narration. London; NY: Routledge,
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Boubakr, Messaouda. A zal ahki [My Storytelling Goes On],
Tunis: Dar
Sahar, 2013.
—. Personal interview. Tunis. July 4, 2013.
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Dikeç, Mustafa. “Space as a Mode of Political Thinking.”
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16718512000334#>.
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Gregg, Melissa and Gregory J. Seigborth, “An Inventory of
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Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2010, 1-25.
Heng, Geraldine. ‘“A Great Way to F ly’: Nationalism, the
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Honwana, Alcinda. Youth and Revolution in Tunisia. London;
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Milani, Farzaneh. Words, not Swords: Iranian Women Writers
and the
Freedom o f Movement. NY: Syracuse UP, 2011.
Mokhtar, Amel. Dukhan d-qasr | S moke of the Palace]. Tunis:
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—. Personal interview. Tunis. July 3, 2013.
Prince, Mona. Revolution Is M y Name: An Egyptian W om en’s
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Eighteen Days in Tahrir. Trans. Sarnia Mehrez. Cairo, AUC P,
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Tlatli, Moufida, dir. The Season o f Men. Original France Petite
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—. The Silences o f the Palace. Capital Films, 1994.
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NY: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011.
Zayzafoon, Lamia Ben Youssef. “Memory as Allegory: The
Spectre of Incest
and the (Re)naming of the Father in Moufida Tlatli’s The
Silences o f
the Place (1994).” Critical Art 21.1 (2007): 47-67.
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Ghedira_LF_2003_2.pdf

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