Images of the Past: Nostalgias in Modern Tunisi

The construction of stories about identity, origins, history and community is central in the process of national identity formation: to mould a national identity---a sense of unity with others belonging to the same nation---it is necessary to have an understanding of oneself as located in a temporally extended narrative which can be remembered and recalled. Amid the "memory boom" of recent decades, "memory" is used to cover a variety of social practices, sometimes at the expense of the nuance and texture of history and politics. The result can be an elision of the ways in which memories are constructed through acts of manipulation and the play of power. This dissertation examines practices and practitioners of nostalgia in a particular context, that of Tunisia and the Mediterranean region during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Using a variety of historical and ethnographical sources I show how multifaceted nostalgia was a feature of the colonial situation in Tunisia notably in the period after the First World War. In the postcolonial period I explore continuities with the colonial period and the uses of nostalgia as a means of contestation when other possibilities are limited. An ethnographic engagement with nostalgia requires that we acknowledge and seek to account for multiple strands of remembrance, seeing how they coexist, combine, and/or conflict. Nostalgia is shaped by specific cultural concerns and struggles; and as with other forms of memory practice, it can only be understood in particular historical and spatial contexts.