Some members of the Zaytouni student committee with their fellow teachers

This is a black-and-white photo, rather badly framed and a bit blurry, depicting a group of students posing with a banner in their hands. In the photo, two individuals have been marked with two arrows.

The photo is attached to the graduation memoir on “Zeytouni Education” (لتعليم الزيتوني) for the class of 1954-55 at the Ecole Normale. A student, Abdennour Attiah, wrote a brief caption that reads: “A few members from The Voice of the Zeytouni students [La Voix de l'Étudiant Zeytounien] association, together with their schoolmates”. As the caption implies, there are both children and young adults. Some of the children are less put together than the rest of them, and we can make out their mischievous looks and smiles as they stretch to be visible behind the bulky silhouettes of the main characters at that moment.

This photo is found inside a document that is hardly an archive, a graduation memoir (or rather the second part of the memoir, as the title indicates, yet the first part is not there) found amongst others documents, in the back room of the small and touching Tunisian museum of National Education, not far from the Kasbah. It is unnecessary to delve into the overall content of the memoir, which recounts the history of the Zeytouna [mosque], and records their teaching methods and the notion of Islamic reformism. It is the moment that interests me, Abdennour’s present moment, which, through his words and the photos, captures a specific point in time.

At that time, as Tunisia was witnessing its last days under colonial rule, a protest movement led by the students from the traditional Muslim school emerged. Some of the students went on hunger strike to preserve their curriculum, which was at risk of being reformed in the name of “modernization”.

This photo is one of many examples of archival footage that freezes a moment in time, shedding light not only on a historical moment, but also carrying certain projections with it, which we might label as ‘dreams of the past’. It preserves and reflects the pride and grace of these young activists, dressed in their djellabas and raising their banners up high, but also conveys a sense of the mischief and joy that the youngest children felt upon being part of this moment. The photo, which at first glance resembles any other group photo, and the hundreds of class photos that can be found in the same museum, differs from these other arranged groups of peers because it carries this hope with it, expressed by the image itself and the text that is at the very heart of it, inscribed on the banner. It reads “If, one day, a people desires to live, then fate will answer their call” (إذا الشعب يوماً أراد الحيـــــــاة ,فلا بــدّ أن يستجيب القــــدر), taken from a famous poem by Abu-l-Qasim Chebbi. This verse, which became a slogan, has been associated with the Republic in Tunisian historiography and public memory, with its modernity and its canons, and the fight for national emancipation against the colonizers. Chebbi embodies a triumphant memory attributed to those very people who, by fighting the French, fought in the name of modernity, taking back this very notion from them of building an emancipated future.

This verse, and Chebbi along with it, belonged to those who would subsequently dismantle the Zeytounian teaching. We always seem to distinguish a clan of traditionalist nationalists (religious, even reformist) from a clan of modernists (secular, whose reference point was Ataturk), which Chebbi was part of delineating. So it was no surprise to me when I discovered this photo and the ingenuous way in which the students were claiming this heritage - which was still very fresh at the time. Chebbi wrote this poem, “The Will to Live” (إرادة الحياة), in 1933, a few months before his death the following year.

My understanding is that this remnant of the past, left inside a graduation memoir, can be unraveled in multiple ways, drawing links between the past, present and future. I can see the dreams of change and heroism, reflected in the bodies and faces. I also see how a common heritage of struggle was shaped and how the words that expressed it were appropriated, words that weren’t neutral because they involve people and their destiny, as well as, at its very core, their determination. The pride that can be seen in their postures resonates with this assertiveness, and the awareness of a destiny that is being fulfilled. Lastly, I see an arch of time that recalls a not so distant past when this quote - that traveled to other countries - was written on other banners, signs, walls, and chanted over and over again in remote lands, far away from the little Tunisia of 1955 and the Muslim students who wished to maintain, as part of the independent nation to come, this center for knowledge, disputes and intellectual and social revolutions which was the Zeytouna. It was in fact a very unjust fate that befell this youth upon independence, when they had struggled to build a national Islamic heritage in symbiosis with the challenges of national emancipation, even if it was in opposition with the vision of modernity as heralded by Habib Bourguiba.

From this small photo, and based off of the text which it centers around, but also the words of the student Abdennour Attia, we can reconstruct other possible futures, which, from the outset, have the power of questioning the once limited interpretations, relying on what we have come to learn about the times that ensued, or through historical accounts, and official histories, which worked to close these doors. The archive, and in this case the photo, helps us to open the doors of ijtihad once again, reflected in the gazes turned towards the lens, and in the stance of these young people looking at us. This is at the heart of the temporality with which historians work day by day.

Unfulfilled futures 

When it comes to imagining the futures of the past, the historians find themselves on familiar territory, as if at home. In order to write the past, they have to trace its unfulfilled futures. In other words, such an act, performed as a daily exercise, is a way of reworking and rethinking the historical dialectic, creating a permanent tension between the ‘horizon of expectation’ projected into the future, and the ‘field of experience’ anchored in the past, as expressed in the well-known reflections of Reinhart Kosseleck.¹ However, beyond the routine of the profession, this idea based on the past constructions of utopias or projections of the future takes on a particular meaning in the present. We live in a time where, as Enzo Traverso writes, an open present closes off a past, for which we seek to create a balanced perspective and the memory of which we seek to release.² But this is a memory which maintains its depths, enigmas, heritage and defeats, its ‘unfulfilled hopes’, as Daniel Bensaïd aptly demonstrates in his work on Walter Benjamin.³

How can we fail to establish the link between such ideas on the current state of history, and what is happening in the context of Arab revolutions, almost 10 years after the uprisings of 2010-2011? How can we fail to see in the proliferation of archiving initiatives, restitution and conservation projects, and the development of new artistic, scientific and everyday practices, reflecting our desire to update and revisit the past? Looking through all of these pieces, one wonders if we will succeed, with all these films, with all these texts, with all these voices, in “being right”, in showing to what extent the path to emancipation, the quest for dignity, was the correct path. Do these archival items exist to just ‘prove others wrong,’ to resist the powerful construction of the official historical narrative, to constantly re-establish our truth? When I think of the situation in these terms, I imagine us holding back a dike in a raging river, in desperate resistance during which we let go one after the other, the dike collapsing in pieces. In the end, there may be a few scraps left that continue to resist, but the dike has given way in any case, and we are exhausted, if we managed to not already drown.

I then imagine that other ways of resisting are possible, by attempting to circulate, to let bits from our revolutionary past flow by. Perhaps, faced with the force of the current, we need to position ourselves on the edges, and let our hands mark the edges of the path we are taking. What is it that allows hopes and dreams to keep flowing? Sometimes, quite simply, the power of an artistic language. And in this respect, artists are the archivists of our present. But sometimes also, a simple incentive to slow down. I mean, really watch, really read, really listen, and for long periods of time. This slow resistance is what makes it possible to find one's way, to make landmarks for those who will come later, to be visible for those who are in search of shelter, of some rest. This is how I perceived this photo of the young Tunisian students, like a mark along the path of a ‘history in the making,’ lined with drums and trumpets. The struggle of the young students, almost forgotten and dissonant compared to well-known stories, is the imprint of these low frequency circulations.

How archival work can be a step towards utopia 

The topic of archiving is always related to utopia. Today, we are constantly discussing archiving, archiving, and archiving. Works of art are said to be the archives of the present, that sounds and voices from elsewhere, within our world of big data, are viewed as the dark or bright side of the brave new world.

How could we view archival work from an emancipatory perspective?  From an activist’s point of view, the archival act is associated with melancholy. The traces that we preserve are used to remind us of more glorious or happier days. They contribute to the creation of heroes, in the development of narratives as refuges, from the barricades of the Commune to the struggle of Jeronimo, from the Battle of Algiers to the fall of Mubarak, Ben Ali or Gaddafi. The memory of these episodes is transmitted through traces and stories, but it requires us to identify those for whom we wish to erect clandestine statues, those for whom we want to attach to the walls of cities in the form of rampant stencils. Should we now gather the archives of this past to lock them away, or sit down to open these drawers and try to understand?

There are several ways to make the words of revolt and the traces of revolution bear fruit. Making them mean something is only suitable for fabulists, artists and storytellers. We can use them to say something else, quietly and slowly.

Science and knowledge of the world take place in a protected social place, by an elite, but it is also through the process or shattering that true knowledge is built, not through parochial polemics; the knowledge that upsets and changes the world. As masters of ignorance, just like Jacques Rancière, faced with what he calls the “archives of the workers' dream,” let us stand before these archives and ensure that they help us reinvent history.⁴

The undertaking is then up to us, within our capacity, for us researchers, small, needy intellectuals. There is a function for us here. We become collectors and “producers”. We don’t just stand in front of the state archives that will one day hand over their police files, their reports, their dossiers and records. These are an enviable war treasure when power is overthrown, but they do not reflect the hopes and enthusiasm of revolutionaries, or those on the margins, and against the grain, of course.

The police are meticulous agents of the state, monitoring those who threaten it. They identify, persecute, recognize and arrest. But if we want to grasp the players of history elsewhere than in this face-to-face encounter with the state; we have no other option but to examine the documentation lying around: old leaflets, songs, costumes and photos...

Student Attiah's graduation memoir is such a form of documentation lying around, with some photos inside. 

When we are faced with an archival item, what else can we do but read it, look at it, ask the questions that it sparks? Let's look at these young people. Which questions shall I ask them, what do they remind me of? What can I imagine of them, about what they were doing when this photo was taken. And for that matter, who took the photo?

Is it this student himself who asked them to pose? Or did he find these photos hidden somewhere in his house? Is he himself part of this movement? Let's examine their faces, their age, the way they presented themselves. What was the language of this revolt? Let's look at how they decided to use their bodies, in both a discrete and violent way. The hunger strike which was underway – which was photographed below – was also an echo of future struggles, those which are waged with the body.

Creating a revolutionary common ground 

In this photograph, dating back to more than six decades ago, the collective body stands at the very center, proudly assertive. In the more recent past, numerous archives have kept track of what a revolution does above all else: it weaves links, and because it places itself outside the ordinary course of things, it allows for the creation of unexpected links, both miraculous and ephemeral. The memories of struggles contained in the activist archive is not a process of justice to be dispensed with once the reports have been made. It is a subversive act, as it reminds us that revolt is inscribed in gestures that can be replicated. It reminds us that in the very fact of continuing this quest for unexpected encounters, the creation of a new community is a revolutionary act.

On the edge of melancholy 

Benjamin had conceived of revolution and emancipatory ideas as acts of faith in the face of a world of violence, alienation and hatred. This act of time, this revolutionary messianism is no longer familiar to us. It has failed in too many twentieth-century plights. The imagination, which brings us together, should not, in my opinion, become prophetic; it should open up possibilities. Not in the form of drawing on a blank page. Imagination is not something that is projected for us or onto us, it is a long and deep form of empathy, which allows itself to resonate. At the center of this quest of mine, there is no truth, there is probably no longer any humanity, nor even a world. My approach and method is to emphasize what unites us, what helps us to preserve ourselves.

Since 1989, we have been told in a thousand different ways that the historical dialectic born with the French Revolution has been broken down. Daniel Bensaïd writes: "The alliance between the utopian heritage and the revolutionary project has now been severed³." Perhaps what the Arab revolutions teach us is that the utopian heritage can be built outside of books or manifestos, that it can be inscribed in our bodies and in what is inscribed in them. The multiple imaginary futures of the future have therefore been inscribed in our bodies, and it is for us to learn how to decipher them and restore their revolutionary force. Because what the young people in the photo represent, as seen from our present, is not only their coming defeat in the face of triumphant modernity, but also the echoes of the awaiting struggles that will bear, as if in spite of themselves, the traces of these archaisms, and of their youthful determination to survive.