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Tunisia
Conference: Mapping and Remapping the Tunisian Revolution
![[Protest in Tunis, 2011. Image from unknown archive.]](/content_images/3/sm_Gana_Conference_Tunisia.jpg "[Protest in Tunis, 2011. Image from unknown archive.]")
[The following conference announcement was sent to us by its organizer, Professor Nouri Gana.] The Tunisian revolution had taken the world by surprise. Never before in the history of the modern Arab world had a grassroots uprising toppled an entrenched dictator of Ben Ali’s caliber and longevity without recourse to any established ideology or political party nor to foreign intervention, which has until now been bandied about as the only midwife to real democracy in the Arab world. The aim of this conference is not only to map and remap the Tunisian revolution, but also to reflect on its worldwide resonances and implications and foster interdisciplinary approaches to the ...
Keep Reading »Special Bodies, Speculative Personhood: Bradley Manning and Mohamed Bouazizi
![[Image from lawanddisorder.org]](/content_images/3/sm_Guantanamo.jpg "[Image from lawanddisorder.org]")
He was very sincere. We are like soulless bodies since he left. –Basma Bouazizi, sister If Brad Manning, 22, is the Collateral Murder and Garani massacre whistleblower then, without doubt, he’s a national hero. –Wikileaks He may be a mutilated trunk dismembered all about, the spirit removed all around and separated from the limbs, yet he lives and breathes the vital air. –Lucretius, De Rerum Natura Bradley Manning and Mohamed Bouazizi’s names have become known because they galvanized world attention through what has been perceived as incalculable personal sacrifices. By comparing the respectively imprisoned and immolated bodies of two of the ...
Keep Reading »Conference: “Tunisia and Egypt's Revolutions and Transitions to Democracy”
![[Image from unknown archive.]](/content_images/3/sm_EgyptTunisiaPinConference.jpg "[Image from unknown archive.]")
The Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) will hold its 12th Annual conference, this coming Friday, in Washington DC. The main theme for this year’s conference is “Tunisia's and Egypt's Revolution and Transitions to Democracy”. The last few months have been momentous in the history of the Middle East and North Africa. The whole thing started when Mohamed Bouazizi, immolated himself on Dec. 17th in Sidi Bouzid, a small town in Southern Tunisia. Within days, demonstrations spread to all cities and towns, and in less than 4 weeks on Jan. 14th, President Ben Ali who ruled Tunisia for the past 23 years with an iron fist, fled to Saudi Arabia. ...
Keep Reading »الخطة الشعبية المجربة لإسقاط الأنظمة المتجبرة [The Tested Popular Plan for Toppling Powerful Regimes]
![[Fireworks in Cairo's Tahrir Square, February 11, 2011. Image from AFP/Getty]](/content_images/3/sm_FIREWORKSEGYPT.jpg "[Fireworks in Cairo's Tahrir Square, February 11, 2011. Image from AFP/Getty]")
قد يكون أبلغ دروس الثورتين المصرية والتونسية أن ثورة شعبية سلمية، يشارك فيها عشرات الألوف أو مئاتها، هي ما يمكن أن تهدم هياكل سلطة باطشة كهذه القائمة في أكثر الدول العربية. لا يعدو هذا «الدرس» أن يكون تسجيلاً لما حصل بالفعل في البلدين. لكن هذا التسجيل لما هو عارض، مبدئيا، معقول وضروري وقابل للتعميم. أو هذا ما ستحاول هذه المقالة قوله. منذ سبعينيات القرن العشرين، وفي مناخات الحرب الباردة وما بعد هزيمة حزيران المهينة، استقرت في حكم البلدان العربية المركزية نخب سلطة لا قضية لها تسمو على البقاء الأبدي في الحكم. ولهذا الغرض عملت على تحطيم الجيش وتمزيقه، أو تقزيمه، وفي الوقت نفسه بناء وحدات عسكرية وأجهزة أمنية جبارة وموثوقة، مدربة على القسوة، ولا تأبه للحياة البشرية. ...
Keep Reading »Paradoxes of Arab Refo-lutions
![[Collage by Jadaliyya. Images from unknown source]](/content_images/3/sm_asef.jpg "[Collage by Jadaliyya. Images from unknown source]")
Serious concerns are expressed currently in Tunisia and Egypt about the sabotage of the defeated elites. Many in the revolutionary and pro-democracy circles speak of a creeping counter-revolution. This is not surprising. If revolutions are about intense struggle for a profound change, then any revolution should expect a counterrevolution of subtle or blatant forms. The French, Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and Nicaraguan revolutions all faced protracted civil or international wars. The question is not if the threat of counter-revolution is to be expected; the question rather is if the ‘revolutions’ are revolutionary enough to offset the perils of restoration. It seems that ...
Keep Reading »Civil Society in Arab Lands: By Ballot or by Bullet?
![[Image Source: Unknown]](/content_images/3/sm_TunisiaProtests.jpg "[Image Source: Unknown]")
Each time I attend a panel, workshop, forum, conference, symposium, brainstorming session, or congressional session on civil society in the United States, I am disappointed yet optimistic! I am disenchanted because at least since 9/11, the Bush administration as well as the Obama administration has not understood the real dynamics within the Arab and Middle Eastern civil societies. Rather than begging for money from the U.S., civil society actors in this region are asking U.S. policymakers to cease baking the Arab Ceausescus -who kept them in the Dark Age for more than four decades- in order to be able to establish a genuine democracy in the region and enjoy its ...
Keep Reading »Let's Not Forget About Tunisia
![[Sit-in Protestors in Qasbah Square. Image from uknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_01_Sit-in_protestors_in_Qasbah_Square.jpg "[Sit-in Protestors in Qasbah Square. Image from uknown archive]")
Now that world attention has irresistibly moved on to the next hotspot, Egypt, it is crucially important not to forget Tunisia. In the very same manner that revolutionary change in Tunisia has spread to Egypt and Yemen and, hopefully, will continue to travel to other parts of the Arab world, any setback in Tunisia may set in motion a reverse effect and may prove counterproductive in the long run. Failure is no less contagious than freedom. While our hearts and minds are with our brothers and sisters in Egypt, let’s not forget Tunisia lest the new interim government should intimidate Tunisians into submission to more of the same old new police state. The latest cabinet ...
Keep Reading »Tunisia's Glorious Revolution and its Implications
![[Image from unknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_Protesters-stand-off.jpg "[Image from unknown archive]")
Last December 17th disturbances erupted in Tunisia after Mohamed Bouazizi, a young unemployed high school graduate who was condemned to sell fruits and vegetables on a street stall for a living, immolated himself in protest after authorities had beaten him and impeded him from exercising his unlicensed activity. His act crystallized and incarnated the Tunisians’ feelings of humiliation and lack of justice to which they had been subjected by one of the most brutal Arab authoritarian regimes that strived on infamous corruption and nepotism. A spontaneous nationwide uprising ensued, resulting in the downfall of President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali who was serving his ...
Keep Reading »The Tunisian Revolution: Initial Reflections [Part 2]
![[Image from unknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_TunisiandictatorBenAli.jpg "[Image from unknown archive]")
[This is the second and last installment. See Part 1 here] The revolution in Tunisia was a response to a sense of closed possibilities. Nowhere do we see any identifiable “structure of opportunities” that could have made it possible. Everywhere we see the opposite—absence of any opportunities whatsoever. The pre-revolutionary climate displays a scene of extreme desperation and exasperation. And it is precisely that scene that was so poignantly allegorized in the protest-suicide of a young man after the police took away from him the last meager resource he had for leading a decent life. Revolution here is triggered in a closed political cosmos. Obviously, regime’s ...
Keep Reading »The Tunisian Revolution: Initial Reflections [Part 1]
![[Image from unknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_TunisiaProtest.jpg "[Image from unknown archive]")
At the moment it is abundantly easy to sense everywhere in the Arab World elation at what appears to be one of greatest events in modern Arab history. A genuine popular revolution, spontaneous and apparently leaderless, yet sustained and remarkably determined, overthrew a system that by all accounts had been the most entrenched and secure in the whole region. The wider implications beyond Tunisia are hard to miss. Just as in the case of the Iranian revolution more than three decades ago, what is now happening in Tunisia is watched by all in the Arab world--as either a likely model of the transformation to come in their respective countries, or at least as a badly needed ...
Keep Reading »Al-Shabbi's "The Will to Life"
Abu Al-Qasim Al-Shabbi The Tunisian poet Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi (1909-1934) is well known and appreciated throughout the Arab world. His words are committed to memory and reproduced in textbooks. With the recent Arab uprisings, his poems, and more particularly “The Will to Life” and “To the Tyrants of the World,” have witnessed a revival, yet with a whole new tone. It seems that the Arab spring has infused "The Will to Life" with a newly found hope, a new urgency, and new life. Its opening ...
Keep Reading »Essential Viewing: Five Tunisian Films from a Postrevolutionary Perspective
It is impossible to watch a Tunisian film today from an exclusively prerevolutionary perspective. The present historical juncture will stealthily thrust itself to center stage. Besides, the value of film does not reside solely in its appropriateness to its own historical moment of production, but equally in its relevance to other, yet to come, historical moments. It becomes highly productive, not to say inevitable, that we rethink postcolonial Tunisian film through the lenses of the revolutionary and now ...
Keep Reading »من يوميات صحفية عن ثورة تونس [From the Diary of A Journalist in the Tunisian Revolution]
اليوم وقد نجحت ثورة تونس في إحداث أول ثقب في جدار القمع العربي، وأبهرت العالم وألهبت خيال الحرية لدى العرب، فقد آن الأوان لطرق أبواب الفضاء الإعلامي بعد أن عمته موجة من الهواء النقي المعتق برائحة الياسمين الثائر. هواء الحرية والديمقراطية حرر الألسن والأقلام وجعل الصورة تحاكي وتحكي. وأطلق عنان الصحفي ليرتوي ويروي محيطه، فقد تفنن النظام السابق على امتداد 23 سنة بإجلاء الصحفيين من مجال الابداع الاعلامي. اليوم وقد تحررنا من النسور والعقبان المحوّمة في بياض أوراقنا بحثا عن ...
Keep Reading »Teach-in: Democratization, Empire, & the Arab Revolt of 2011
In light of revolutions, or refo-lutions as captured by Jadaliyya contributor Asef Bayat, Jadaliyya teamed with the US Palestinian Community Network-DC to organize a teach-in targeting the progressive left community in the DC metro area. The teach-in entitled "Democratization, Empire, & the Arab Revolt of 2011" and held at St. Stephens Church in DC, featured Professors Mervat Hatem (Howard University), Noureddine Jebnoun (Georgetown University), Bassam Haddad (Georgetown University), and ...
Keep Reading »The Arab Revolts: Ten Tentative Observations
The extraordinary developments in Tunisia and Egypt during the first six weeks of this year, and more recently in Bahrain, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere, have inaugurated a revolutionary moment in the Arab world not experienced since 1958. If sustained uprisings continue and spread, it has the potential to develop into an Arab 1848. Based on what we have witnessed thus far, the following observations appear relevant: 1. The Arab world is a fundamentally different beast than Eastern Europe during the late ...
Keep Reading »Egypt, Tunisia, and 'The Resumption of Arab History'
The recent popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt attest above all to the indomitability of the human spirit, and the extraordinary capacity of collective action to bring out the very best in humanity. In these respects the daring, creativity, discipline, resolve, perseverance and euphoria of the people of Egypt and Tunisia - while primarily theirs – belongs to us all, joining as they do an endless caravan of successful, aborted, hijacked and failed challenges to illegitimate authority across the ...
Keep Reading »My Mother and My Neighbor's Dog on the Tunisian Revolution and Its Aftermath
[Take a look at this crap first] When Mohamed Bouazizi immolated himself in protest and set off a wave of much bigger protests in Tunis, and then elsewhere, speculation arose as to the extent to which the revolution will spread. Or, is it indeed a revolution? Maybe it was a mini-revolution, kind of like Sa`d, or baby Jesus. Alternatively, some opined, it might be just a coup. But Tunisia is old news. Protests spread quickly like, literally, a flame, to Algeria, Yemen, a teeny weeny bit in Morocco, ...
Keep Reading »Cartoons: Tunisia and Recent Events
Original cartoons for Jadaliyya by Khalil Bendib. [Jadaliyya is inaugurating its cartoon and arts sections. We encourage the submission of cartoons and other art work. Email your material to post@jadaliyya.com]
Keep Reading »What Happens in Tunisia Stays in Tunisia
Hope is in the air—or so it seems. The overthrow of (now) former Tunisian President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali has created some guarded optimism among close observers of Arab politics inside and outside the region. The people of Tunisia have rid themselves of 23 years of Ben Ali’s rule, paving the way for an opportunity for meaningful political change in a region that once seemed so resistant to democratic development. The events in Tunisia also tempt us to ask whether what we are observing in Tunis is a ...
Keep Reading »Why, What, Where To, and How? Tunisia and Beyond
[Admittedly, I wrote this post before Bin Ali fled, and before the Tunisian protests escalated. It was kind of interrupted by the events on the ground and, so, not much due jubilation here. I added some references posthumously but kept its pre-government collapse spirit at the expense of dampening the mood: Where to? . . . even if dictatorships fall. Where to? Oh, I don’t provide an answer] The problem is that once it happens [when a dominant form of oppression collapses], it might happen for ...
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