By Nurçin İleri. This essay centres on a series of photographs, which I first came across at an auction in November 2020. These black and white images depict Istanbul’s first urban scale power plant, the Silahtarağa campus and extension of the grid to the city in the early 1910s.
By Zehra Betül Atasoy. In early Republican Turkey, women workers – predominantly in tobacco, weaving, and the food industry – were gathered mainly in the city of Istanbul. Although the number of female workers in industrial production gradually increased, gender-based wage differences continued, with women earning less, and these workers were subjected to long hours and inadequate health and safety conditions.
By Arbia Selmi. Despite its important role in the history of Tunisia, the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) is one of the most telling examples of the perpetuation of gender inequalities in Tunisia. The trade union environment is considered a male universe and is dominated by a patriarchal culture where women, until today, do not really find their place.
By Elizabeth Bishop. A photograph near the bottom of the wall caught my attention at the Habib Achour exhibit in the Kerkennah branch of the Union Générale des Travailleurs Tunisiens (UGTT, General Union of Tunisian Workers). A caption provides the information that the black-and-white photograph was taken on 26 January 1978.
By Alyssa Miller and Arbia Selmi. Since the time of its foundation in 1946, the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) has shifted its focus from trade union activism to political action. Due to its participation in the independence struggle, alongside the national liberation movement led by the Neo-Destour party, the UGTT has enjoyed unparalleled historical legitimacy on the Tunisian political scene.
Interview with El Meya by Katarzyna Falęcka. The artist Maya Benchikh El Fegoun (El Meya) was born in 1988 in Constantine, Algeria. Her paintings, often populated by women, respond to different visual legacies that include Orientalist images and the iconography of the Algerian War of Independence. El Meya is interested in the interiority of women, their dreams, desires, sins, life forms, and sociability.
L’artiste Maya Benchikh El Fegoun (El Meya) est née en 1988 à Constantine, en Algérie. Ses peintures sont souvent peuplées de femmes, car elle réagit à différents héritages visuels, notamment les images orientalistes ou l’iconographie de la guerre d’indépendance algérienne.
By Hala Auji and Nurçin İleri. Capitalism’s far-reaching social, industrial, and cultural implications on the socio-political aspects of production, labor, and class struggle are well-documented. Scholarship on labor has emphasized the social and economic aspects of the capitalist economy and the history of working classes in a global context.
By Farouk El Maarouf. There is a Moroccan community (based particularly in the Rabat/Sale regions) of vernacular dealers, connoisseurs, and savvy art practitioners, who, like their classic elite fellows, have a great deal of knowledge about the fine arts.
The Maghreb and the Mashriq have always been sites of multilingualism and multiculturalism, of artistic production and innovation, of struggle and contestation. This blog series explores the aesthetic and cultural practices of these regions in motion, with a particular interest in how they mediate different temporalities.
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research is a platform for scholars in the humanities and social sciences who are interested in transregional exchange and research on current issues. TRAFO is the blog of the Forum Transregionale Studien (Berlin) and the Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland (Bonn).
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