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IntroductionIntroduction 1 Introduction
Je suis Bardo
On 18 March 2015, three gunmen disguised in military fatigues entered the Bardo precinct of Tunis. They hurried along the path that leads to the Bardo museum, stopped in front of the entrance and opened fire on a busload of tourists. They then broke into the museum, shooting staff and visitors on their trail, before climbing the marble stairs and taking a room full of hostages. The terror lasted for three hours before Tunisian special forces stormed the build- ing and ended the siege. In total, 19 people were killed and over fifty were wounded in the carnage. Responsibility for the attacks was claimed by the ter- rorist group ISIS, which had recently come to prominence for its bold and spectacle-obsessed style of terror in Syria and Iraq. The Bardo attack’s significance lay not only in the number of victims killed, but also in the centrality of the site to Tunisian public life. The Bardo complex began life as the residence of the Bey of Tunis. It was converted into a history museum under French rule in 1889. Following independence, the museum and an adjoining military complex remained, but part of the site was re-purposed to house the national parliament. The Bardo has attained additional signifi- cance since the revolution as the site of a new spirit of democracy. Inside the parliamentary buildings, members of special committees charged with draft- ing the country’s new constitution had sat for countless hours during 2012 and 2013 whilst televised debates from the adjoining parliamentary chambers were broadcast to audiences across Tunisia, who for the first time in their lives could witness genuine unmediated political debate. Meanwhile, on the street out- side the entrance gate to the Bardo, groups of protestors gathered spontane- ously each day to press their demands in the new democratic space opened up in Tunisia. The museum itself remains the most popular in Tunisia, visited by thousands each year. It is internationally renowned for housing the largest col- lection of Roman mosaics in the world. Thanks to funds from the World Bank, the Bardo had just been refurbished a couple of years before these attacks, af- ter a long period of renovation. It was, in that sense, a symbol of a renewed tourism and heritage ambition for Tunisia. On 29 March 2015, the Tunisian government organised a silent anti-terrorist rally in Tunis. Following the model of the Parisian ‘Republican March’, held two months earlier in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the event com- prised two rallies: a march by the general public and a march by political per- sonalities and dignitaries, including Tunisian president Beji Essebsi, former
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004394971_002 2 Introduction
French president François Hollande, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, Algerian president Adelmalek Sellal, and the Italian politicians Matteo Renzi and Federica Mogherini. Hundreds of thousands of people joined the cortege which passed the most important axes of the city centre of Tunis, finishing in front of the Bardo museum itself, where politicians gathered. In sometimes chaotic scenes, the visiting dignitaries laid floral wreaths at a plaque bearing the names of all who died. Army trumpeters played a lament for the victims. The slogans accompanying the rally also drew inspiration from the recent bloody events of Paris: just as Charlie Hebdo had galvanised international pub- lic opinion, so did the Bardo attacks in Tunisia. Arriving at the entrance to the museum alongside Hollande, Beji Essebsi said: ‘Tunisians proved today they are not afraid of terrorism. When Tunisia is targeted, all Tunisians stand as one’. The national government had promoted the march with television slots ap- pealing for a large turnout to demonstrate ‘national unity’ in the face of terror- ism. Behind him, people were holding bunches of flowers and banners proclaiming ‘Je suis Bardo’ or ‘Le monde est Bardo’ (the world is with Bardo) in front of the museum, edifying this site as the standard bearer of the demo- cratic ideals defended since the Revolution, an unshakable bastion of enlight- enment in the face of autocracy and rampant religious radicalism.
Spaces of Mediation
This was not the first time that the museum in Tunisia had been called upon to support the process of collective redefinition. In fact, this book argues that, whether intentionally or otherwise, museums in Tunisia have long held the role of ‘spaces of mediation’. The term ‘mediation’ offers contrasting meanings. One possible sense comes from the root media (sing. medium), that is, a means, channel, or mechanism by which a certain social reality is communicated and expressed. Different media have different instructional purposes. For example, the press is intended to inform its readers of local or international events, while novels have historically been understood as a means for the cultivation of personal subjectivity. In the case of museums, it has been demonstrated time and again that, since their birth as public institutions in the nineteenth century, they have been involved in the production of knowledge and truth. Drawing from Foucault’s work on governmentality, some scholars have showed how early museums were used by ruling classes to instruct and discipline the masses (Bennett 1995; Duncan 1995; Hooper-Greenhill 1992; MacDonald 2010). Others have explored their function as systems of signification that can be read as texts, involving the narrative strategies produced by space, scenography and