What happened almost ten years ago in the Arab world? If uprisings occurred almost simultaneously in several Maghreb and Middle Eastern countries from 17 December 2010 onwards, does this mean that the same things happened in each of these countries? What has been called the Arab revolutions has been the subject of abundant production, in terms of scientific research, but also and above all in all spheres of political and economic expertise. But few projects have turned to understanding the social history of the region, which has been somewhat neglected since the end of the 1970s, in an attempt to investigate the roots of the revolt in the region, and to answer the two questions posed by the 2011 moment: why now, and how to explain the shared destiny between these parts of the world.
The project sets out the hypothesis that the post-independence period of the different countries in the region (exception of Palestine) has brought about new horizons of emancipation and has put the notion of dignity at their heart. We want to make a history of the political emotion called dignity (Karama) in the Mediterranean Arab world since independence. It seeks to conceive ways of comparing revolutionary projects and episodes in the region, postulating that their matrices and ways of doing things constitute a transnational space of revolt whose base is the quest for dignity, which came to complete the desire for freedom and independence that guided the anti-imperialist movements, to accompany the struggles for autonomy or emancipation of different segments and sectors of society, and even to subsume the whole of social struggles, whatever their political, religious or historical references.
It is not easy to conclude such a project. The situation in the Middle East and North Africa where we see the fading of many of the hopes that we documented throughout the project made it often difficult to handle and meet the deadlines. Some members of the team are in the present moment facing the bombings in Lebanon or have part of their family there; others are facing the worsening of the Asylum situation in Europe and have to fight on a daily basis to guarantee their presence in the countries they ended up living in. These situations are not only side details in the context of a project like this one. Navigating the administration in Germany or France, worrying about your people at home, making sure you don’t get arrested… this has been part of our continuing discussions. This is part of our research on dignity.
Considering all this complicated context, we achieved a lot, and we are still in the process of publishing, making visible our work. This may need a little more time than expected, but we hope to see all this work readable in French, English and Arabic.
