Re-imagining the Nation through Female Characters in Post-2011 Tunisia: Šukrī al-Mabḫūt, Fātimah Bin Maḥmūd, and Sāmī al-Fahrī

Since the revolution of 2011, Tunisia has witnessed a striking renaissance of politically engaged artistic production. The newly consolidated sphere of civil liberties has provided the conditions for artists – long constrained under the censorship mechanisms of the republican era – to articulate their perspectives openly and to situate their work within broader debates on power, citizenship, and collective memory. At the core of this political discourse – whether articu- lated through expressions of dissent or through dissonant conceptions of the nation – the figure of the woman constantly emerges as a central and symbol- ically charged presence. This is anchored in a well-established genealogy of cultural and political discourses attested since the colonial era. The present article analyses the ways in which contemporary Tunisian narrative both in- herits and rearticulates this longstanding tradition, weaving together the rep- resentation of women with broader political discourses. Within this frame- work, the article interrogates the construction of female figures across two novels – Šukrī al-Mabḫūt’s al-Ṭaliyānī (The Italian, 2015) and Fātimah Bin Maḥmūd’s al-Malāʾikah lā tuṭīr (Angels Do Not Fly, 2021) – as well as two widely viewed television series written and directed by Sāmī al-Fahrī: Awlād Mufīdah (The Sons of Mufīdah, 2015-2017) and Barāʾah (Innocence, 2022).