Media and the politics of the sacral: freedom of expression in Tunisia after the Arab Uprisings

Abstract

In 2011, calls for ‘dignity’ led the mantra for change in the Arab Uprisings. ‘Dégage!’ (‘Clear out!’) was hurled against Tunisia’s President Ben Ali and his fellow Arab dictators’ coercive paradigms that robbed citizens of agency and censored their convictions. During the exceptional politics that ensued, Tunisia’s liberated media exemplified the independence the revolution had achieved. Yet, how free expression was constituted grew increasingly contentious as the media’s lens projected ambiguities in practices surrounding religious and political norms – what Harald Wydra terms ‘sacral symbolisms’ – within the popular imaginary. This implicated interpretations of what was publicly acceptable and dignified and what was not. The media’s engagement with freedom of expression and its significations went through three stages. First, ‘Dégage’, or ‘freedom from’, was celebrated as an erasure of humiliation. The disharmony of competing symbolisms took on new import, however, as the second aspect of constructing dignity, ‘freedom to’, became a contested political and cultural space. Mediation of free expression became a site of power politics and appropriation, creating ‘red lines’ that curtailed certain liberties to secure others, thereby recasting the contention as ‘freedom for whom’. This third stage, in train, remains a realm of mediated uncertainty.