Research Seminar of SIAS and Establishing Research Networks on the studies of protest movements: focusing on the cases of the Middle East and its comparison with those in Asia
A Demos In-Becoming: Tunisia 2014-2024, Struggles and Resistance to Remake the "Missing People"
Friday July 19, 2024
A Demos In-Becoming: Tunisia 2014-2024, Struggles and Resistance to Remake the "Missing People"
Friday July 19, 2024
Institute of Islamic Area Studies at Sophia University invites Prof. Larbi Sadiki to hold a research seminar on democracy and civil society in Tunisia in collaboration with Establishing Research Networks on the studies of protest movements: focusing on the cases of the Middle East and its comparison with those in Asia (Principal Investigator: Keiko Sakai).
Larbi Sadiki is an expert on democracy and human rights in Tunisia and Arab countries. Currently, he is a JSPS Invitational Fellow for Research and based at Chiba University's Centre of Relational Studies on Global Crises and is also a Fellow of the Toda Peace Institute. His most recent co-authored book with Dr Layla Saleh, Revolution and Democracy in Tunisia: A Century of Protestscapes (2024) has recently been released by Oxford University Press. In this seminar, he will talk about democracy after the Tunisian revolution in 2011. Prof. Keiko Sakai (Chiba University) will give comments from the point of view of political movement in Arab countries and Prof. Takaki Keiko (J. F. Oberlin University) from the point of view of Tunisian civil society.
17:30-17:35 Opening: Erina IWASAKI（Sophia University）
17:35-18:20 Lecture by Prof. Larbi SADIKI
"A Demos In-Becoming: Tunisia 2014-2024, Struggles and Resistance to Remake the ‘Missing People’"
18:20-18:30 Comments: Keiko SAKAI (Chiba University) and Keiko TAKAKI （J. F. Oberlin University）
18:30-19:00 Discussions
The aim of the lecture by Prof. Larbi Sadiki is twofold. Firstly, it situates the Tunisian ‘demos’ in post-colony with special reference to historic struggles not just for justice, but also for relaunching the “missing people”. Thus, the lecture does not depart from an Orientalist position of a democratic ‘tabula rasa’. Avoiding neat conceptions of democracy, however, the basic tenet of the lecture is that neither the ‘continuity’ nor the ‘end’ of a Tunisian revolution can be taken for granted. Instead, and secondly, the lecture seeks to answer a key question having to do with politic, epistemic and civic trajectories, discourses, and imaginaries to build a demos below the state. To this end, the lecture critically revisits the problematic of theorizing democracy-in-becoming in non-Western contexts.
Institute of Islamic Area Studies, Sophia University
Establishing Research Networks on the studies of protest movements: focusing on the cases of the Middle East and its comparison with those in Asia (Principal Investigator: Keiko Sakai)
Institute of Islamic Area Studies, Sophia University sias-co@sophia.ac.jp
