Imaginaires

From the Visibility of Action to the Visibility of Actors Shifts in Modes of Appearance in the Tunisian Revolution

Kaouther Douzi

This article examines the Tunisian revolution through modes of appearance in protest practices, drawing on interviews with participants involved between December 7, 2010 and January 14, 2011. Modes of appearance are understood as the different forms through which protest becomes publicly visible. It argues that January 14 marks not only the collapse of the regime, but also a turning point in protest appearance. Under the authoritarian regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, protest tended to produce visibility through collective action, such as confrontations, gatherings, and hit-and-run dynamics, while the public visibility of identifiable individuals remained limited. Appearance was thus tied less to self-representation than to the capacity of action to render power and violence perceptible, in line with what Butler describes as a politically conditioned process. January 14 signals a shift. As repression receded, possibilities of appearance expanded, bringing faces, names, and trajectories to the fore. Appearance was no longer mediated through action, but increasingly linked to actors’ capacity to represent themselves. This transformation remained uneven. Interviews show that some participants struggled to position themselves within this emerging regime, where individual visibility became more central. The revolution can thus be read as a shift from a visibility grounded in actions to one that foregrounds actors. The article concludes that the revolution not only reconfigured the political field, but also reorganized the conditions of appearance, producing uneven forms of visibility, raising questions about how actors recognize themselves within them.

Queer Visibility in Mainstream Nepali Cinema: Between Stagnation and Progress

Sudipta Karki

Despite Nepal’s international recognition for advancing the rights of sexual and gender minorities, the relationship between queer visibility and cinematic representation in mainstream Nepali cinema remains insufficiently explored. This article focuses on commercially oriented films produced within Nepal’s domestic film industry and examines representations of queer and gender-nonconforming identities from the early 2000s to the present. Drawing on Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity and José Esteban Muñoz’s work on queer visibility, dominant publicity, and disidentification, the analysis considers films featuring cross-dressing characters, trans women, third-gender protagonists, hijra communities, and same-sex relationships. The findings indicate that queer representation in mainstream Nepali cinema has been shaped by both progress and stagnation. Although queer visibility has increased over time, these representations are frequently framed through humour, pity, melodrama, violence, and spectacle. Rather than indicating a linear progression toward inclusion, mainstream films often perpetuate familiar stereotypes and commercial conventions that limit queer subjectivity. The article argues that mainstream Nepali cinema reveals a movement from invisibility to stereotyped visibility, in which queer identities become increasingly present on screen while remaining constrained by dominant representational frameworks. By interrogating the relationship between visibility, representation, and social change, this study contributes to the limited scholarship on Nepali cinema and queer screen cultures in South Asia.

Mapping Heterotopias: Looking Beyond the Security-Obsessed Aesthetics of the Border Discourse on the Turkey-Syria Border

Mustafa Can Günay

This research, conducted between 2023 and 2024, analyzes the security-obsessed discourse of the Turkey-Syria Border as constructed by mass media narratives. The paper aims to reconstruct this state-imposed aesthetics of the border discourse in Turkey by using architectural methods and revealing the alternative spatial implications of bordering to what is served to the public. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in May 2023 in five Turkish provinces bordering Syria (Hatay, Gaziantep, Sanliurfa, Mardin, Batman), the research utilizes data from semi-structured interviews and participant observation conducted in the region. The findings from the fieldwork, combined with GIS mapping tools, enabled the identification of heterotopic spaces along the border, in order to be subsequently spatially analyzed and illustrated. By synthesizing these findings using literature from border, migration, and media studies, the paper proposes a counter-mapping methodology to look beyond the imposed aesthetics of the border as a security mechanism in the mass media narrative. Ultimately, this research challenges the limited understanding of conventional cartographies and mobilizes alternative maps to confront the logic of design and the project of the border.

“I’ll Be a Teacher, Just Like Mama”: Miss Vera and the Politics of Racist Education in Little Marvin’s Them

Imen Yaakoubi

Little Marvin’s Them: Covenant (Amazon Prime Video, 2021), the first installment of the anthology series Them, mobilizes supernatural horror to expose the enduring legacies of racism, segregation, and intergenerational trauma in the United States. This paper examines how Them: Covenant uses horror conventions, such as haunted-houses and supernatural monsters as allegories for the structural violence confronting African Americans, and more specifically explores how the series exposes the racialized mechanisms embedded within educational institutions in postwar America. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, this paper situates Them: Covenant within the broader tradition of Black horror, a genre that reclaims horror conventions to expose racial oppression and the persistence of systemic inequality while bringing historically marginalized experiences into mainstream cultural narratives. The paper focuses on the character of Miss Vera, a narrative device through which the series explores how White supremacist ideology shapes the educational experiences of Black children and restricts their access to social mobility through exclusion, surveillance, and psychological violence. Alongside Miss Vera, the paper examines other forms of supernatural "hauntings" in the series to highlight the connections between educational exclusion and broader histories of racial trauma and displacement, challenging narratives of colorblindness and meritocracy that continue to underpin American institutions.

Negotiating the Mainstreaming of a Long-Silenced Testimony in John Ridley’s 12 Years a Slave

Margaux Collin

This paper examines the adaptation of Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave through the lens of John Ridley’s screenplay, arguing that the process of mainstreaming a marginalized narrative is carefully negotiated at the level of writing. Rather than treating the screenplay as a purely technical or descriptive document, the analysis positions it as a key site of mediation, where the conditions of legibility and representation are actively worked through. Drawing on close readings of stage directions, the article shows how Ridley’s script translates Northup’s testimony into a cinematic form that remains both accessible and critically demanding.