Mobility, Memory, and the performance of Bousaadiya in Libya

Episode 159: Mobility, Memory, and the performance of Bousaadiya in Libya

In this podcast, Dr. Leila Tayeb, Assistant Professor in Residence in the Communication and Liberal Arts Programs at Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q), explores the cultural politics of mobility and memory in Libya. Looking at Bousaadiya, a figure who has been performed in many iterations throughout North Africa, she offers a reading of these performance practices as a space in which Libyans enact and contest practices of belonging. Tayeb describes how performance, and specifically dance, creates a frame through which to observe political, historical, and cultural phenomena. Highlighting repetition as an important element of performance, she argues that mimesis of certain practices over time can serve to reinstantiate – or disrupt – power structures. Bousaadiya performance practices, Tayeb argues, serve as a space in which Libyans grapple with the unresolved history of the trans-Saharan slave trade which took place in Libya for centuries and persisted even after it was
formally abolished. Reading Bousaadiya through these lenses allows for an excavation of this history, its legacies, and opportunities for repair.

Leila Tayeb is Assistant Professor in Residence in the Communication and Liberal Arts Programs at Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q). She earned her PhD in performance studies from Northwestern University and holds an MA in performance studies from New York University (NYU) and an MA in international affairs from The New School. Leila is an interdisciplinary scholar of performance and politics, focusing on topics including sound and militarism in daily life, dance studies, digital intimacies, race and indigeneity in North Africa, and state-sponsored performance. Her writing has appeared in the Arab Studies Journal, the Journal of North African Studies, Communication and the Public, and Lateral. Together with Adam Benkato and Amina Zarrugh, Leila is a founding member of the editorial collective of the multilingual, open-access publication Lamma: A Journal of Libyan Studies. The article that Leila discusses in this episode, “To Follow Bousaadiya: Mobility and Memory in Libyan Cultural Politics,” is forthcoming in the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication in English and is in the process of being translated into Arabic for subsequent publication. Leila can be reached at leila-tayeb@northwestern.edu.

This episode is part of the “Libya Studies” lecture series and was recorded via Zoom on the 22nd of February, 2023 by the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis (CEMAT) 

We thank Hisham Errish, a music composer and oud soloist, for his interpretation of “When the Desert Sings” in the introduction and conclusion of this podcast.

Posted by: Hayet Yebbous Bensaid, Librarian, Outreach Coordinator, Content Curator (CEMA).