Lecture by Iheb Guermazi
Chaired by Eugenia Lean

This talk examines the relationship between political authority and urban monumental form in Tunis from the colonial period through the post-independence and post-revolutionary eras. It traces a historical trajectory from explicitly figural and didactic monuments—exemplified by the statues of Jules Ferry, Cardinal Lavigerie, and Habib Bourguiba—to the emergence, from the late 1980s onward, of a new form of urban monumentality. The analysis situates this aesthetic transformation within the broader framework of what has been described as the postpolitical condition: a retreat from ideological contestation and symbolic representation in favor of managerial governance and depoliticized spatial practices. Through close attention to the formal and spatial logic of these monuments, the article argues that the silent, non-referential character of recent urban installations signals not the absence of power, but a reconfiguration of its modes of appearance. In this context, spontaneous appropriations of these structures—climbed, vandalized, or reinterpreted—can be read as attempts to reinscribe political agency onto an increasingly mute urban landscape.

Fall Thursday Lecture Series events are open to Columbia-affiliated faculty, students, and invited guests. All others interested in attending, please email the SOF/Heyman at [email protected].

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