The undeniable geo-temporal differentials between living through an event and reconstructing it retrospectively as an epistemological object of knowledge are oftentimes complicated by the politics of remembering/amnesia, ideological constraints/concerns, and methodological limitations. For instance, approaches to the Tunisian revolution—and now to the Egyptian revolution—have initially been erratic but soon consolidated themselves around one master narrative at the center of which there is one triggering factor or symbol—Mohammad Bouazizi in the case of Tunisia and Wael Ghonim in the case of Egypt. This paper wants to argue that there is no master narrative of the Tunisian revolution and certainly not a theory of its origins that might explain adequately, let alone justifiably, what happened on January 14, 2011. I am interested in a multidimensional and multidirectional theory of the Tunisian revolution, but I will focus herein on one enduring aspect that I think has frequently been overlooked in the many recent analyses of and commentaries on the revolution whether in the media or in academic circles. I believe there is a repository of critical dissent that has been sustained and consolidated by the insurgency of various cultural practices and the advent of secular modernity, not to mention the robust educational system that was put in place since independence. Of course, critique has not always been manifest or explicit even though some critics have quite explicitly opposed Bourguiba’s and Ben Ali’s regimes and paid a high price for doing so. Whoever studies Tunisian literature and culture since independence would not miss, however, the latent or indirect critique it carried and disseminated. Sociopolitical and cultural critique is there in cinema, in theater as well as in poetry and music. In the months leading up to the revolution, critique has become vocal, particularly on YouTube and Facebook which circulated, among other things, explosive hip hop videos that had instantaneous effects. I will therefore devote a large part of this paper to an examination of the role of hip hop as a vehicle of popular discontent against the regime before and after the revolution. Hip hop insurgency, I will argue, kept alive the critical repository on which the mass mobilization of Tunisians hinged. Psycho-M and El-General will be my main focus but others will be discussed in the process.