Guest Editors' Note: The Libyan Event and the Part for the Whole

The events of 2011, which led to the death of Mu'ammar Qadhdhafi and the fall of the Jamahiriyya, triggered a profound reshaping of Libyan politics. In order to shed light on such a dynamic, yet traumatic, moment, this Special Issue of Middle East Critique is fully dedicated to Libya. Three years after the 2011 Event, multiple governments—one in Tobruk and one in Tripoli—and several militias create fertile ground for violence and lawlessness. In this issue, each article tries to return a theoretical and analytical complexity to the study of Libya and, in doing so, they collectively advocate for a multiplicity of narratives that challenge the dominant pre-2011 and post-2011 academic representations and media accounts. Doubtlessly, the unquestioned Orientalist mind-set, as formulated by Edward Said, has affected and still affects the academic comprehension of Libya and the formulation of policies toward the country. In fact, since Qadhdhafi's oil nationalization and the gradual rapprochement of Libya with the Soviet bloc through the purchase of weapons, western media and scholarship have used ‘Qadhdhafi’ and ‘Libya’ as synonyms, reiterating an Orientalist understanding of the Middle East. Scholars, analysts, and journalists depicted the ‘Libyan head for the Libyan whole,’1 to quote anthropologist John Davis, assuming that there was no ‘Libya-ness’ beyond the macro-historical meta-narrative of ‘Qadhdhafi-ness.’ The cumbersome and ubiquitous personality of Qadhdhafi obscured Libya's complexity, and one Libyan became the symbol for all Libyans.

This habit—‘the part for the whole’—has continued even after Mu'ammar Qadhdhafi's fall. On the one hand, the revolution of 2011 has forced analysts to realize that beyond the Libyan regime there was a Libyan society: A complex universe comprised of tribes, cities, and agents that did not necessarily identify with Qadhdhafi's project. On the other hand, the discovery of a ‘Libyan multiplicity’ has overwhelmed the analysts who have continued to look desperately for the narrative, the key to unveil Libyan mysteries. Some writers have proposed ‘tribalism’ as the narrative to understand the revolution, others ‘Islamism’, and others, in turn, have demonstrated a fetishist attachment to the old narrative, reading the facts of 2011 simply as the end of ‘Qadhdhafi-ness.’ This Special Issue criticizes this phenomenon by demonstrating that post-revolutionary Libya cannot be understood by focusing on one story, one reading, or one aspect. Rather, it is necessary to consider a multiplicity of narratives, which collectively can be called upon to confront the problematic essentialist and Orientalist representations of the country. We deem this issue as an homage to Libya's sophisticated intricacy, an attempt to demonstrate that we need to look for the multiple ‘parts’—rather than for ‘the part’—in order to understand the whole.

The approach of this Special Issue is informed by a post-modernist suspicion for the narrative, but also by an understanding that ‘complexity’ is a double-edged sword. Fundamental is the approach to the Libyan scenario as multi-faceted, rhizomatic and allergic to the notion that one narrative is more important than the others.2 However, criticism of hierarchical narratives often reinforces hierarchical scholarship: underneath the slogan ‘things are more complex,’ one frequently can find a childish desire to demonstrate the ‘I know more’ attitude. Post-modernism has an obsession for convolution, which is the fruit of specific socio-economic traits that characterise our époque3 and our geographical context.4 In order to relate critically to the idea of ‘multiplicity,’ this Special Issue stems from an appreciation of intricacy and fluidity not as end purpose of research, but rather as its starting point. In such a way, the goal is to ‘make a map’5 that shows multiplicity rather than to ‘trace’ causes and effects because this allows us to comprehend how Libyans relate to the map. The message of this Special Issue is thus: First recognize Libya's multiplicity; then decipher the diverse ways in which Libyans navigate through it.

To be more specific, the message is three-fold. Firstly, we want to show that, due to the persistence of Orientalist biases in the analyses of Libya, there has been a tendency to ignore narratives that seemed less–consequential, but which actually are important, such as artistic expression during the Libyan revolution.6 Secondly, this Special Issue wants to demonstrate that the dichotomies—‘tribal/national,’ ‘religious/secular’—and the hierarchies—‘Libya is more tribal than national’—proposed by Libyan ‘experts’ are false. The country is both tribal and national, both secular and religious, and Libyans adopted and still adopt many strategies to navigate these spectrums. A recent example of this could be the alliance between a number of Cyrenaican Salafi cells and General Khalifa Heftar, who since 2014 has been engaged in a war against Islamist groups in Libya with Egyptian support. Thirdly, we want to deconstruct representations such as ‘Qadhdhafi-ness’ and ‘statelessness,’ as the shadow of those narratives still influence contemporary analyses. Libya has not become multifaceted with the end of the regime, but rather it always has been. As suggested by Theodor Adorno, ideology often has the role of covering up differences,7 and a similar dynamic can be detected with Qadhdhafi. In the early years of his rule, he wanted to level all differences in order to promote social equality and let the people govern themselves, but in time he became the enemy of anything different. In a denial of reality that deserves a serious psychoanalytical investigation—rather than the vulgar accusation of being a ‘mad dog’—he promoted the false notion that every Libyan ‘thinks green,’8 every Libyan is an Arab, even the Tuareg, etc. Qadhdhafi succeeded in hiding multiplicity from the Western media, but he failed at home. The multiplicity was uncontainable: There always were dissidents to persecute, protesters to hang or shoot.

The focus on multiplicity constitutes a good antidote to essentialist and Orientalist models, but it also can help us to understand whether the events of 2011 are better described as an ‘uprising’ or a ‘revolution.’ For many, the former is a more suitable description for three reasons. Firstly, the West decided to intervene against Qadhdhafi, thus contaminating the revolutionary character of the conflict. Secondly, external forces from the Persian Gulf have penetrated the country since the early phases of the war, and now are fuelling various Islamist uprisings. Thirdly, the anti-Qadhdhafi forces have not managed to create a unified revolutionary front. These arguments suggest that Libyans experienced an unorganized uprising ignited from the outside, rather than a locally articulated revolution. Doubtlessly, it is true that foreign countries intervened—and still are intervening—in Libya through the provision of military and economic support. However, a scholarly analysis must confront how the desire and resistance of the Libyans crossed and interacted with the interests of Western and Arab countries. On the one hand, the Jamahiriyya regime did not have the support of the whole population and many forms of resistance and defiance were taking place before 2011. On the other hand, the West seemed to exploit this situation and tried to impose its own ideological vision for Libya, which would be easier to pursue if Qadhdhafi were toppled.

Similar considerations can be made in assessing the role of those agents who currently are funding local Islamism—mainly polities in the Persian Gulf, and various Al-Qaeda-morph organizations. These groups, which are creating bonds with many (but not all) Libyan militias, constitute another form of imperialism, and in analyzing them one might fall into a conceptual trap: reducing Libya to the site of a battle between external forces. On the one hand, this way of thinking furnishes us with useful coordinates to criticize the transnational and invasive character of imperialist projects. On the other hand, this attitude, which we often find in anti-imperialist literature, is imperialist to the bone. It implies that politics is a matter of scale. If it is true that the world is a stage, then according to this analytical lens there are only directors, no actors: only large national and transnational giants, no Libyans. We are extremely worried by the fact that ISIS flags have been spotted in Libya, but we also are worried about the crass analysis that this phenomenon might generate. Sadly, when faced with recent developments, the critics of foreign interference often state that Libya was better off under Qadhdhafi, a self-declared enemy of both Western colonialism and Islamism. Doubtlessly, he was a vocal critic of Western exploitation in Africa and offered practical help to a number of countries that suffered from colonial hangover. However, in time Qadhdhafi himself became drunk with power and violence, fuelling transnational hatred and colonizing his own people. When assessing the role of Qadhdhafi, one should remember that the enemy of an enemy is not necessarily a friend. Underneath this style of nostalgic analysis lies the racist, thus Orientalist, notion that Libyans are immature people who require a master, as if they were eternal children in need of a domineering father.

Moreover, it is certainly true that the Libyan revolution had many souls—Nationalist, Leftist, Liberal, Islamist, etc.—but this data are not enough to dismiss the Libyan case as an unorganized uprising, as some analysts have done. In 2014, the democratically elected government collapsed due to factional rivalry and the refusal of many militias to surrender their weapons. However, this multi-vocality does not mark the Libyan revolution as an exception. As historians know, there hardly ever has been a mono-vocal revolution. Even though we abstain from offering a standard phenomenology of revolutions, we know that this dynamic is quite common: The different revolutionary voices unite to fight the oppressor, they win the battle, and the stronger voice begins an internal purge against the others. It is for this reason that Trotsky's photo was erased from Stalin's public pictures and Danton was decapitated by the Jacobins. In light of this contextualization, it is clear that writers have demanded of the Libyan revolution what no revolution possibly could deliver: sudden but organized changes, internal homogeneity, and immediate clarity. Here the classical Hegelian phrase proves valid: The failure of reality to live up to its own ideal shows not the deficiency of reality, but the fragility of the ideal. Analysts of Libya have been impatient—the paradoxical trait of the armchair observer who expects things to be done at the fastest pace—and it is to them that we say clearly and baldly: it has been only three years. The French Revolution—for many the revolution par excellence—took 10 years marked by factionalism, debate and internal conflict. Let us abandon the sterile dichotomy of successful and failed revolutions because very often revolutions are both failures and successes. The French Revolution produced Napoleon: It succeeded in bringing down the king, but it paved the way for the emperor. For this Special Issue, we decided to keep the term ‘Revolution,’ but we proceeded along another type of conceptualization, one that accounts both for sudden events and slow changes. We believe in the possibility that something phenomenal and radical happened in the streets of Benghazi, Tripoli, etc., in 2011. Borrowing Alain Badiou's language, one might say that an ‘Event’ has taken place, with all the complexities that accompany such a happening.9

According to Badiou, the ‘Event’ is a rapture that takes place in the realms of Politics (the revolutionary break from the state), Science (the revolutionary discovery), Art (the explosion of new aesthetics) and Love (the new consciousness of the amorous subjects). For Badiou, certain pre-existing conditions help to make the rupture possible. In the case of Libya, for instance, the initial success of the Egyptian revolution helped Libyans to contemplate the possibility of change. However, in Badiou's view, the pre-evental context is fundamentally un-related to the Event itself for three reasons. Firstly, the Event cannot be described fully using the language of the pre-existing context. This was the case with Qadhdhafi who claimed that the only true revolution was the one he staged in 1969, while the one of 2011 was an uprising orchestrated by foreign powers. Instead of accepting the possibility of a new language—a new revolution!—he fell back on his tired notion of the ‘foreign enemy,’ and in various speeches he labelled the Libyan revolutionaries as non-Libyans: crazy drug addicts (a symbol of Western debauchery) and terrorists (a symbol of the influence from the Gulf). Secondly, the Event comes to disclose some aspects of social reality that, though present, were repressed by the state. In the case of Libya, this meant the ‘discovery’ of a multiplicity of political voices whose existence, as previously explained, had remained hidden behind ‘Qadhdhafi-ness.’

Finally, the Event transcends—but does not erase—the specific identities that inhabit the pre-evental context. It shows that differences are capable of welcoming an overarching identity without dissolving in it. In Libya, this created the notion, which was popular in the first year after the revolution, that both Arabs and Berbers, both tribesmen and critics of tribalism, could be ‘Libyans in a new Libya.’ Interestingly, this latter aspect is detectable even in the factionalism that now characterizes the country. The majority of these factions—governments, militias, Islamists, and sub-groups within them—refer to the notion of the ‘New Libya’ in their discourses, though in different ways. Even the champions of federalism often present regional division as a possible practical solution rather than a desirable goal. These multiple agents have different agendas, but they have understood that the strength of the Libyan revolutionary Event demands something more than multiplicity. They pursue specific goals through the prism of a broader Libyan identity. In other words, they do not merely perpetuate a disorganized uprising. Rather, they testify in multiple ways to the happening of the revolution.

To be sure, not all the views that the different factions hold for Libya's are equally valid. The views of the violent Islamist groups are worrisome (although these should be analyzed carefully, with the understanding, for example, that many Salafi cells in Libya are peaceful and hold democratic ideas). However, as scholars, we believe that the notion of the Event as understood by Badiou helps us to contextualize Libyan multiplicity. We also believe that this conceptualization can help us to re-arrange the debate by showing that Libyans—and not only Western powers and Gulf monarchs—can be the main protagonists of what is happening in their country. Badiou explains that one cannot prove that an Event has taken place. Rather, a subject only can embrace the Event, be faithful to it and declare publicly that it has happened. Badiou focuses on the relevance of the subjective stance because ‘no discourse can lay claim to truth if it does not contain an explicit answer to the question: Who speaks?’10 An Event is a procedure of experience and declaration. The post-evental subjects are characterized by the formula ‘not…but…’:11 they are not under a certain state anymore, but they have entered another state. Libyans are not under Qadhdhafi anymore, but are in that multi-layered realm that is post-revolutionary Libya. They now are declaring to the world that this transition has taken place, although this declaration is assuming different shapes and forms. These dynamics are too complex to be summarized into the category of ‘uprising.’ The Libyan Event had too much ‘happening’—the real stuff of revolutions, much more than ‘homogeneity’—not to be called a ‘revolution.’ Libyans still use the term ‘thawra’ (revolution) when they talk about 2011. Let us listen to these post-evental subjects then, let us patiently observe them in the long-term projects of embracing the Event in order to devise an interpretation of its complexities.

Doubtlessly, it is not up to us to establish whether Libya has experienced a revolution since the experiential emergence of the Event cannot be explained through a neutral, erudite gaze of knowledge. However, we still believe that it is crucial to maintain a tension between knowledge and experience, since an Event, by revealing what was repressed, aims at a fundamental reformulation of knowledge. In following this line of argument, the opening article of the issue by Matteo Capasso ‘The Libyan drawers: “stateless society,” “humanitarian intervention,” “logic of exception” and “traversing the phantasy”’ tackles some of the coordinates commonly used in the scholarship on Libya. In particular, the article pinpoints the Orientalist nature of the notion of ‘state-less-ness’: a concept largely used by academics to unpack the peculiar nature of Qadhdhafi's rule. The article shows how, in making use of this notion, scholars have adopted unquestioningly the Western political mocking of Qadhdhafi's ideas. In a sense, the Western focus on ‘state-less-ness’ also has prevented us from understanding that behind Qadhdhafi's anti-state policies there was a strong presence of power and of the state. In addition, Capasso also confronts the NATO intervention, and in doing so, he demonstrates how ideology in Western academia functions to legitimate the political choices of Western powers. The kernel of the critique is to show that, although Libyans had a genuine revolutionary desire for change, the West purposely (mis)interpreted this desire—which entailed multiple views of Libya's future—as an aspiration for Western-style liberalism and a free market economy.

In a similar vein, Igor Cherstich's ‘When Tribesmen do not act Tribal: Libyan Tribalism as Ideology (not as Schizophrenia)’ rigorously deconstructs one of the most discussed—and most misunderstood—aspects of Libyan society: tribalism. The article develops a constellation of elements for a more nuanced reading of tribal discourse as an ideology. The article deconstructs the derailing dichotomous method—one founded on the dichotomy tribal vs. national—by showing that Libya is not a ‘schizophrenic’ country where national unity is constantly undermined by ‘tribal disturbances.’ Rather ‘national’ and ‘tribal’ coexist as two available narratives (or ideologies) that Libyans, as navigators of complexity, combine in different ways in different situations. By relying on both field-work and anthropological literature on tribalism, the article also suggests that Libyans are not tribal people who are inherently anti-state. On the contrary, according to Cherstich, Libyan tribesmen often recur to tribal means only because it is the only way to live a functional life in a time when the state is incapable of providing social security.

A similar attempt to highlight multiplicity can be found in Ines Kohl's ‘Libya's “Major Minorities”: Berber, Tuareg & Tebu: Multiple narratives of citizenship, language and border control.’ Kohl suggests that the lives of Libya's non-Arab minorities have been marked by a complex interplay of state-propaganda and race-discourse. In an attempt to demonstrate the complexity of this phenomenon, the article unpacks one of the less-studied aspects of Qadhdhafi's internal policies: his attempt to manipulate the Libyan minorities in order to strengthen his rule. According to Kohl, on the one hand, Qadhdhafi applied his usual homogenizing measures (the false notion that Tuareg are Arabs like all other Libyans), and on the other hand, he highlighted diversity by introducing the false notion that Tuareg are completely unrelated to Berbers. Central to the article is the concept of ‘social pigmentation,’ which Kohl proposes in order to grasp the multiple narratives of race-politics in Qadhdhafi's Libya, particularly in relation to under-studied groups like the Tebu.

While Kohl's article deals with un-represented minorities, the last article in the issue focuses on un-represented topics in the scholarship on Libya. Elvira Diana's ‘Literary Springs’ in Libyan Literature: Contributions of Writers to the Country's Emancipation,' is one of the few academic articles to provide a comprehensive presentation of Libyan literature. Diana re-introduces the political weight of literature within the study of Libya's political imaginary. Her article allows us to discover the significant role of Libyan writers and poets in the revolution, and in doing so it indirectly puts forward the notion that the study of Libya's ‘micro-narratives’ (as opposed to abused historical and political macro-narratives) is particularly revealing. In particular, Diana's article shows that Libyan literary works had a multiple purpose: they both provided a detailed picture of the socio-political reality of the country and contributed to foster the seeds of the 2011 revolution. Unsurprisingly, academia has dismissed the importance of literature as a site through which Libyans expressed their own grievances and resistance against the regime. This phenomenon, as Diana's article argues, not only is related to the recent unfolding of events that took place in the country. Rather literature always has offered a viable and more plastic space through which utterances of discontent and critique of society were formulated from the colonial period to the Qadhdhafi era. And—most likely—it will keep functioning as a site where the power of words can subvert and mock both political elites and government structures.

These four articles do not cover all the expressions of multiplicity in post-revolutionary Libya. Rather they demonstrate that the authors have encountered Libyan multiplicity in various forms in their research. In light of this consideration, it is important to clarify that Libya's multiplicity of narratives is neither stable nor static. The country's politics constantly are changing with new developments unfolding every day. To put it in the language that we have deployed in this Editors' Note, the complexities of the Libyan revolutionary Event are still in the process of revealing themselves. When faced with these ever-changing dynamics, one might ask: How does this Special Issue relate to changes that currently are taking place? By highlighting narrative multiplicity, this Special Issue aims to present analyses that provide insight about the changes that are occurring—and that will continue to occur—in the country, changes that need to be analyzed with a sensibility for complexity. If one does not develop this attention to multiplicity, the scholarship on Libya will fall prey to false, Orientalist, ideological notions, journalistic simplification and lack of academic care. Libyans are complex people who deserve to be understood.

Notes

¹ J. Davis (1987) Libyan Politics: Tribe and Revolution (London: I. B. Tauris), p. 3.

² G. Deleuze & F. Guattari (2007) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (London: Continuum), p. 13.

³ J. Kallinikos (1997) Classic review: Science, Knowledge and Society: the Postmodern Condition Revisited, Organisation, 4(1), pp. 114–129.

⁴ D. Harvey (1992) The Conditions of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (London: Wiley).

⁵ Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 13.

⁶ See also I. Cherstich (2014) The Body of the Colonel: Caricature and Incarnation in the Libyan Revolution in Pnina Weber, Martin Webb and Kathryn Spellman-Poots (eds) The Political Aesthetics of Global Protest – The Arab Spring and Beyond (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).

⁷ T. Adorno (2003) Negative Dialectics (New York: Continuum).

⁸ With reference to Qadhdhafi's ‘Green Thought’ as presented in his ‘Green Book:’ Mu'ammar Gathafi (2005) The Green Book (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press).

⁹ See B. Bosteels (2001) Alain Badiou's Theory of the Subject: Part I. The recommencement of Dialectical Materialism?, in Pli: Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 12, p. 205. See also footnote 9 in S. Žižek (2008) The Ticklish Subject (London: Verso), p. 163; and A. Badiou (2005) Manifesto of Affirmationism. Available at: http://www.lacan.com/frameXXIV5.htm, accessed October 17, 2014.

¹⁰ Badiou (2003) Saint Paul – The Foundation of Universalism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press), p. 17.

¹¹ Ibid, p. 63.