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The Revolutionary Praxis of Civility in Tunisia and its Legacies
Abstract
This paper concentrates on a spontaneous practice that existed in various cities of Tunisia immediately after the fall of Ben Ali and which lasted for a short period (depending on the place, between a couple of days to a couple of weeks): This practice can be called suspension of violence, extreme civility or protective anarchism. By this, I mean the spontaneous actions by which people organized small committees to protect their neighborhoods; help to serve food and drinks to volunteers of these small committees; the forming of queues that were made to buy bread; or the practice of stopping at traffic lights, even if they were not working. Such practices, which were at least initially spontaneous, functioned as social magnets and helped structuring a new temporary revolutionary, egalitarian social order. I attributed such practices to a deep (quasi-unconscious) revolutionary strategy of re-appropriating and reinventing new legitimate means of collective violence, away from state apparatae. Such moment of civility, altruism, or self-government did not last long. Some of these practices generated the controversial leagues for the protection of the revolution, which performed a much more polarizing political role. The purpose of the paper is not to explain why such practices ceased to be performed and how they were politicized, but whether they still have a legacy at a level which fails to be recognized in macro-analyses of Tunisian politcs. Based on interviews with Tunisians in four different cities (Zarzis, Mednine, Sfax, and Tunis) in the summer 2015 and early 2016, this paper discuss whether certain acts of citizenship (Isin), such as cleaning street (like after the Kasserine violent protests of January 2016, campaigns to keep Tunisian sidewalks / trottoirs (#sayeb_trottoir), or other similar micro-phenomena (some less ordered, such as chaotic traffic behavior) cannot be connected to this initial revolutionary impetus. Thus revolutionary practices might still have, at the micro-level of social interactions, a real significance for certain citizens in renegotiating a more pluralist and democratic order in Tunisia.
Discipline
Sociology
Geographic Area
Tunisia
Sub Area
Theory