Tunisian novelist, Islamic scholar, art historian, and cultural critic Abdelwahab Meddeb first published his wildly experimental novel “Talismano” in Paris in 1979.  The story presciently traces the evolution of a popular rebellion as it winds its way through the cityscape of Tunis’ medina bearing a carnivalesque retinue of prophets, artisans, sorceresses, alchemists and prostitutes.  More crucially, the novel performs the concept of médiner – a term coined by Meddeb to signifier the meditative act of wandering through the medina – in order to interrogate the legitimacy of the modern nation-state.  As it meanders through the region’s diverse textual and topographic landscapes, the novel situates Tunisia’s performance of national identity within both Mediterranean and Arabo-Islamic mythologies of origin.  Favoring nomadic genealogies over sedentary narratives of origin, “Talismano” further disrupts the structural cohesion of the self, the symbolic order of language, and the bifurcation between secular and religious discursive traditions.

Sponsors: Arabic Program at the Department of Asian studies, African Studies Center, Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations, Center for Global Initiatives, Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies, Center for Global Initiatives, Romance Studies