Tunisian Uprising Research Articles

«I was in exile before leaving the country». Tunisia and the Feminist Continuities of Activism

What happened to the women who participated in the 2010-2011 Tunisian revolutions and subsequently left the country? While scholarly work has extensively delved into the engagement of the young generations who participated in these transformative times, there has been a limited attention to the experiences of women who subsequently underwent journeys of exile. This article seeks to empirically fill this gap by looking at the political trajectories of six women activists, spanning from their participations in the 2010-2011 Tunisian uprisings to their experiences in exile. Drawing on ethnographic research and life history interviews conducted between 2021 and 2023, this article shows the transformations in these activists’ political trajectories before they left the country. Furthermore, it outlines how, even in exile, queer and feminist activism has provided these women a space of engagement through a “multiple identifications” of their political attitudes and interests. Adopting a social movement approach focused on the continuities of engagement, this article contributes to two fields of the literature that have been traditionally studied in isolation: the literature on gendered borders and the literature on gendered transformations throughout revolutionary times. Finally, the article emphasises the importance of studying the transformations of meanings of engagement while analysing political continuities.

Sensing the next battle: An overshadowed prehistory of creative dissent in Tunisia

When analysing the Tunisian uprising through its aesthetics, the premonitory and subversive agency of the artistic sphere becomes intelligible. This contribution, therefore, engages in a reconstruction of an often overlooked local and historical sequence of aesthetic contention and asks if this sequence prefigured the Tunisian uprising. This seditious premonitory subversion grew into a generalized practice as it emerged into full daylight during the liberation phase of the uprising as an important mediator of the fundamental changes the country was taking itself through. The specific practices that structured the aesthetics of Tunisian uprising were thus already formed a decade before the self-immolation of Tarek el-Tayeb Mohammed Bouazizi. This insight is not only fruitful in relation to the ongoing debates reconstructing the historical dynamics that preceded the revolution, but also gives important insights into the visionary subversive dynamics the artistic sphere is still engaging in today, maybe sensing the next battle coming.

Mapping the Tunisian Uprising in Tahar Ben Jelloun's Par le feu and Leyla Bouzid's À peine j'ouvre les yeux

This article examines two fictional works, Par le feu by Tahar Ben Jelloun and À peine j'ouvre les yeux by Leyla Bouzid, made after the Tunisian uprisings. Both works offer a parallel exploration of pre-revolutionary Tunisia through the ordeal of Mohammed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation started the Arab Spring, and the coming-of-age story of a young woman. I argue that both authors are social commentators engaged in the democratic process they are witnessing, devising narrative strategies similar to those used in neorealism or coming-of-age stories to remain true to the spirit of the time while probing the future of Tunisian society.

Regime change and elite behaviour: the case of the 2010–2011 Tunisian uprisings

ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on the practices, decisions and transformations experienced by the Tunisian Politically Relevant Elites (PRE) during the popular uprising of 17 December 2010 – 14 January 2011. Based on a series of interviews with these PREs, we show that this event constituted a political crisis leading to regime change without defection from security, economic and political elites. In other words, Ben Ali's authoritarian regime fell without any regime crisis, i.e. without any break in the relations and rule of command between the major PREs.

The Developments of Trafficking in Women in Post-Revolution Tunisia

The Tunisian Uprising of 2011 played as a catalyst in relation to the development of trafficking in women into reaching today's notions, categories and numbers of victims. The increase in the rate of female victims of trafficking at the local and transnational levels has urged the Tunisian authorities to pay more attention to the shortcomings of the laws and the legal national framework in general. This study will discuss the historical and legal developments of the issue of trafficking in women in Tunisia. It will explore the case studies of certain categories of local and transnational female victims and focus on the re-victimization of women throughout the trafficking process and after. My research will depend basically on first-hand resources for accurate, yet new information, statistics and testimonies. I obtained my information through interviewing governmental and non-governmental officials. I have reached out to all concerned civil society actors who work on the issue of trafficking for statistics and data relevant to victims and traffickers and also in an attempt to know the role these actors play in fighting trafficking. This research depends on official data from different governmental bodies, mainly the Ministry of Interior and Justice. I am using also newspapers articles and things written on the different forms of internal and transnational trafficking in Tunisia like the Jihad al-Nikah3 and forced prostitution, and others examples. I managed to collect data through conducting interviews with officials, getting statistics and having access to law cases from Tunisian courts.

Educate. Empower. Revolt

This analysis examines how citizen journalism in two very resource-poor areas in India is mobilizing communities and sparking movements demanding change. The Video Volunteers and CGNET Swara are two citizen journalism organizations that work in Central India, in areas whose human and development indexes are among the lowest in the country. Citizen journalism has been studied both as a consequence and as an instigator of social revolution. The Arab Spring movement and the case of Mohamed Bouazizi in the 2010 Tunisian uprisings are prominent recent examples. But citizen journalism in these and similar cases usually focus on the framing of martyr narratives where individuals and their protests or reactions against human rights atrocities make them “a symbol of the struggle for justice, dignity and freedom.” Through a content analysis of 400 news stories posted in the year 2015–2016 and qualitative interviews with 30 participants and a focus group of 15 participants, this study analyses how the Video Volunteers and CGNET Swara train citizens to produce news, the kinds of frame that are used to mobilize audiences, and encourage them to articulate outrage against the many human rights atrocities that occur in these areas. Findings show that citizen journalism succeeds because of the culturally resonant frames used and effective frame alignment that resonate with their main audiences and producers. The news produced and disseminated activates connective structures to facilitate collective action among audiences and communities who earlier had little means or recourse to address such issues. This collective action encourages participants to gather offline to fight for their demands and positively transform their communities.

‘Dégage RCD!’ The rise of internal dissent in Ben Ali’s Constitutional Democratic Rally and the Tunisian uprisings

This article examines the historical evolution of Tunisia’s Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) from its beginnings in 1987, when President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali took power, until his ousting in 2011 when the party was outlawed. I argue that the RCD evolved from a political force with wide popular support during a short democratic era (1987–89) into a repressive interest group in the 1990s, when the regime cracked down on political dissidents and popular freedoms whilst rewarding party members with lucrative benefits. In the 2000s the RCD adopted a quasi-mafiosi structure that profited the Ben Ali family, which increasingly monopolized economic and political power. Tunisia’s transformation into a near dynasty marginalized many RCD members and its wider networks, a central dynamic to understand Ben Ali’s ousting in 2011.

‘La Femme’ Before and After the Tunisian Uprising: (Dis)continuities in the Configuration of Women in the Truth Regime of ‘Tunisianité’

The rights of Tunisian women have been safeguarded in the aftermath of Tunisia’s popular uprising, despite initial and widespread fears of the contrary following the democratic victory of the Islamist Ennahdha party. Article 46 of the new constitution not only reinforces ‘les droits acquis’ of Tunisian women, but also seeks to expand them. The post-uprising preservation of women’s rights can be explained by the persistent hegemony of the image of the professional, modern and emancipated ‘Femme Tunisienne’ – since independence presented as a role model for women to live up to – and its crucial role in the truth regime of Tunisian modernist identity (‘Tunisianité’). In order to understand the (dis)continuities of this imaginary after the overthrow of Ben Ali, the paper traces the origins of the hegemonic yet ambiguous ‘Femme’ and discusses the role of Tunisia’s women’s movements in its reconstruction since the uprising.

The Making of the Tunisian Revolution

The rapid fall of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia on January 14, 2011 has not only sparked a wave of uprisings across the Arab region, but has also raised many questions about the rotes of socio-economic inequality, youth unemployment, corruption, and government oppression in the making of the Tunisian uprisings. This paper argues that what seemed to be an island of stability in the region was in fact a ticking time bomb that was set off by Mohamed Bouazizi in December 2010. It further argues that the overthrow of the Ben Ali regime could not have taken place had it not been a leaderless revolt. As a result, the paper provides a critical analysis of the making of the Tunisian revolution by investigating the key factors that maintained stability, and the mechanisms that set the stage for the uprisings. In doing so, the analysis reveals the radical social transformation that took place since the early 1990s leading to the breakdown of the social contract, and the gradual drift of the middle class away from its implicit support of the Ben Ali regime. The new political landscape opens up a real opportunity for democratic transformation, vibrant civic engagement, and sustainable economic revival. Therefore, our analysis would be incomplete without a careful look at the new dynamic between the forces of political Islam, secularism, and the middle class. Finally, the paper closes with a summary and some concluding remarks.

Lispector, the Time of the Veil

On January 18, 2011, the Public Broadcasting Service Newshour ran a compelling photo in its coverage of the Tunisian uprising. The photo's background shows a large crowd, presumably of protesters, while in the foreground, we see a young man raising his right arm high in the air, and gazing intently at something outside the frame of the image. But what is most compelling about this young man is the garment he is wearing. It is a plain white t-shirt, on which he appears to have drawn, with a black marker, a clock, its hands indicating exactly 3 o'clock. And above this clock, he has written, in capital letters, the word TIREZ [SHOOT].

The Tunisian Uprising and the Precarious Path to Democracy

The popular uprising in Tunisia, which took place at the start of the year and which one can cautiously hope will lead to the first genuine democratic state in North Africa, took everyone by surpri...