The Period of Insurrection as a “Political Moment”: Tunisia 2011

Tunisia 17 December 2010 – 14 January 2011. A revolution foreshadowed or unexpected? The same question could be asked about all revolutions. Behind the contrast between being foreshadowed or unexpected is the issue of to what extent causality or unpredictability, determinism or indeterminism are responsible. If, in the first place, this article lists various failings of the authoritarian Tunisian regime as possible causes of its demise, it also shows that as, a result of the interactive crystallisation of a series of events, the launch of an insurrection led to the fall of the Ben Ali régime. Drawing mainly from the sociology of crises and social movements, the article identifies four elements of a drama which, each isolated in their own sphere just as in previous crises in Tunisia, would not have been enough on their own but which, thrown together into the melting pot of maximum structural uncertainty in which the country found itself, led to the revolution of 14 January 2011 : an unimportant event transformed, a local insurrection destined to remain leaderless and become ubiquitous, made sensational in real time which, on a world scale, provided the opportunity for cyber-dissidence nationally and discord at the very highest levels of the state as to how the situation was viewed and managed. This all led to the implosion of the régime’s keystone, the innermost circle of power and to the somewhat ambiguous start of the process of political transition.