Fake Martyrs and True Heroes. Competitive Narratives and Hierarchized Masculinities in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia

Abstract

Treating the category “martyr” as socially constructed and contested along gendered and political lines, this paper examines how heroes and martyrs have been produced and deployed in post-revolutionary Tunisia. It begins by examining governmental attempts, launched soon after the revolution, to monopolize and institutionally define who could benefit from official recognition as a martyr. The differences in the definition of “martyrdom” between official institutions and families of the deceased are unpacked, arguing that “martyr” is a moral category, the boundaries of which are often drawn in terms of differing masculinities. The paper goes on to demonstrate how the category of “martyrs of the nation” has progressively overshadowed the category of “martyrs of the revolution” in official memorial practices, as the commemoration of the revolution has progressively focused on its uniformed victims, leaving out the civilian ones. One of the interesting features of this shift is that it demonstrates the malleability of the way the category “violence” is understood and deployed. The paper thus shows how neither state officials nor the families of deceased officers, activists, or bystanders accepted that it was sufficient simply to have died during the upheaval in order to be recognized as a martyr. All applied additional moral and political criteria in order to determine who deserved to be labelled as a martyr. At stake in these debates were contrasting representations of masculinity, in particular between triumphant, militaristic masculinities and fragile and damaged masculinities. As the figure of the uniformed “hero” has become increasingly consolidated and hegemonic in post-revolutionary Tunisia, the term “martyr” itself has been increasingly appropriated by state institutions and official memorial practices that serve to reaffirm order and governmental power.