Forgotten Voices Power and Agency in Colonial and Postcolonial Libya

In "Forgotten Voices," Ali Abdullatif Ahmida employs archival research, oral interviews and comparative analysis to rethink the history of colonial and nationalist categories and analyses of modern Libya. He explores the ambiguities, failures, and silences manufactured by current colonial and nationalist scholarships, and he presents the voices of the Libyan people as they have confronted contradictions of modernity, the nation-state, and alienation in the contemporary nation. "Forgotten Voices" analyzes the context of power and human agency to capture the complex social history of Libyan peasants, tribesmen, women, slaves, and victims of fascist concentration camps in their diverse strategies for survival.

Introduction: Listening to and Theorizing Libyan Society
Chapter 1 Regionalism and State Formation
Chapter 2 The Discovery of Awalad Muhammad in Fezn (1551 -1813) Sources and Significance
Chapter 3 From Tribe to Class: The Origins and Politics of Class Formation in Colonial Libya
Chapter 4 The Myth of Benign Italian Fascism: The views of the Libyans in the Colonial Concentration Camps
Chapter 5 Engaging Modernity: Two views on Pedagogy and Urbanization from 20th Century Libya
Chapter 6 Identity and Alienation in Post-colonial Libyan Literature
Conclusion Qadhafi and Beyond: Social and Cultural Origins of the Jamihiriya State

Ali Abdullatif Ahmida is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of New England.