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Tunisia and Algeria Amidst the Arab Spring: Lived Experiences of Hope

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Tunisia and Algeria Amidst the Arab Spring: Lived Experiences of Hope Tunisia and Algeria Amidst the Arab Spring: Lived Experiences of Hope Uriel Abulof & Shirley Le Penne, Tel Aviv University and Cornell University Now that we have tasted hope, Now that we have lived on this hard-earned crust, We would sooner die than seek any other taste to life, Any other way of being human. -- Khaled Mattawa, Now that we have tasted hope Introduction Political life draws on a deceivingly obvious, forward-looking force: hope. After all, why would one vote, join a party or demonstrate, if not for imagining that things should, and can, get better, and one can help make it so? But if so, how can we explain that the Arab Spring’s moment of hope was ignited, literally, by Mohamed Bouazizi’s suicidal despair? This paper seeks to resolve this apparent paradox. We argue that, at the heart of the Arab Spring, as perhaps of every revolution, lies the interplay between political hope and despair. We show how political hope ascends by defying fear and fatalism, underlining the emergence, evolution, and outcomes of the Arab Spring in the Maghreb, comparing Tunisia 2011 and Algeria 2019. We tap into the lived experience of Arab protests by analyzing its discourse, focusing on key individuals (in the case of Tunisia) and symbols (in Algeria). We propose that the revolutionary hopeful process develops, dynamically and dialectically, from (personal) rage, through (moral) outrage, to (social) courage. Investigating the revolutionary matrix of hope and despair has much to benefit from, and contribute to, political theory. To-date, political scientists have hardly conducted dedicated research on this lifeline of politics. What transforms personal despair into socio-political hope, and vice versa? Answering the question through political phenomenology,1 we trace people’s evolving revolutionary experience. Rage rises from a growing, humiliating, gap between what one wants and has. Rage may then turn into a moral outrage by recognizing how unhappiness was wrought by a widening socio-political chasm between the ought and the is. Finally, when moral outrage finds social courage, the revolution finds hope. Theory The Arab Spring was a season out of nowhere. The popular uprisings ended four long decades of regime stability, which engendered a voluminous scholarship on structural causes that pushed and pulled people and their leaders into a status quo of “enduring authoritarianism.”2 No scholar of the region saw the revolutions coming. Gause wondered “Why Middle East Studies missed the Arab Spring,” and the same applies to the social sciences writ large.3 Tellingly, in the wake of the Arab Spring, scholars resumed the very mode of inquiry that has previously failed – searching for structural causes, effectively treating “people as puppets.” A plethora of explanations was brought to fore: 1 Thomas Groenewald, "A Phenomenological Research Design Illustrated," International Journal of Qualitative Methods 3, no. 1 (March 1, 2004 2004). 2 Eva Bellin, "The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective," Comparative Politics 36, no. 2 (2004). 3 F. Gregory Gause, "Why Middle East Studies Missed the Arab Spring: The Myth of Authoritarian Stability," Article, Foreign Affairs 90, no. 4 (2011). aging autocrats, rigged elections, new ICT, unemployment and inequality, youth bulge, crony capitalism, corruption, overt repression, rising food prices, sectarianism, and Western involvement.4 These structural causes are certainly important but can hardly answer some vexing questions. Since key causes were already in place, why 2011, and not sooner, or later? Why was Tunisia the first, and why did other Arab societies follow, or not? Looking for regularities, experts quickly noticed that the titular Arab republics were more fragile than the monarchies5 – what then made Algeria an exception to the rule (in 2011), until it wasn’t (in 2019)? Overall, structural causes cannot capture the revolutionary drive. As nicely indicated by The Economist “shoe- thrower index”, no casual complex, let alone a single variable, can predict the Arab Spring’s outcomes.6 This index, like others, omits one key factor – the human factor. After all, a revolution, perhaps more than any other prominent social phenomena, both defies the “people as puppets” paradigm, proving repeatedly that people are unpredictable. Revolution is not merely caused, it is made – by people, who reason, and act upon their reasoning, often choosing to risk their lives to make a change. Our research contributes to the study of (Arab) revolutions by turning the pivotal question “Why the Arab Spring?” onto the people themselves – asking them to answer why they took to the streets, hoping, against all odds. Effectively asking “What is the lived experience of the Arab Spring?” we seek to append causal accounts with an intersubjective analysis: delving into the experiences of activists. By tracing key revolutionary people and symbols, we analyze the decisive roles of hope and despair in revolutionary politics. People’s perspectives and the role of hope have not been absent from scholarship. Several works rely on fieldwork, mostly involving interviews with activists, to provide “bottom-up” views on the uprising.7 Still, unlike studies of structural mechanisms, these works largely avoid substantial theorization. We seek to make a theoretical contribution by unpacking key concepts at the heart of the revolutionary experience: fear, despair, and hope. The latter, however, still merits a rigorous analysis in the context of revolution. For example, an edited volume about the Arab Spring by leading scholars feature “hope” in its title, but does not include a single piece dedicated to decoding the role of hope in the upheaval.8 How do rogue regimes – whether authoritarian or not – survive? Why don’t their citizens revolt? Fear is an obvious answer. Sans fear, we may readily presume, the people will rise against a regime that works against them. But fear has many faces. We propose to unpack fear into three modes: Fright is about facing immediate, concrete and visceral danger; angst is fear of freedom, fearing our own choices and actions; finally, anxiety is about fearing uncertain, mostly 4 Ricardo Rene ́ Laremont, ed., Revolution, revolt and reform in North Africa: the Arab Spring and beyond (New York: Routledge, 2014); Kjetil Selvik and Bjørn Olav Utvik, eds., Oil states in the new Middle East: uprisings and stability, Routledge studies in Middle Eastern democratization and government (Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2016). 5 Nur Koprulu and Hind Abdulmajeed, "Are Monarchies Exceptional to the Arab Uprisings? The Resilience of Moroccan Monarchy Revisited," Digest of Middle East Studies 28, no. 1 (2019). 6 The Economist online, "Build your own revolutionary index: An interactive index of unrest in the Arab world," The Economist, 14 March 2011, 2011, The Economist, https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2011/03/14/build-your-own- revolutionary-index. 7 Asaad Al-Saleh, Voices of the Arab Spring - Personal stories from the Arab revolution (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015); Layla Al-Zubaidi, Matthew Cassel, and Nemonie Craven Roderick, Diaries of an unfinished revolution: voices from Tunis to Damascus (New York: Penguin Books/Penguin Group, 2013). 8 Mark L. Haas and David W. Lesch, eds., The Arab Spring: the hope and reality of uprisings, Second edition. ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2017). outside, dangers. While fright is certain, both angst and anxiety linger in the imagination of the uncertain. When we are “afraid of the dark,” we might experience fright of the darkness itself; or anxiety about possible looming dangers; or angst – about certain thoughts running through our mind. Fright is not the most effective tool of subjugation. It requires the regime to create and sustain an immense apparatus of coercion, capable of constantly terrorizing each and every citizen, read subject. This costly strategy is hardly viable. Constant complete coercion is unsustainable; you cannot hold a gun to the head of each and every citizen, or subject all to torture. Angst and anxiety are far more cost efficient, thus sustainable, to help regimes survive. With angst, citizens dodge their freedom and succumb to determinism, essentialism, and, most useful for a rogue regime, fatalism – believing that they have “no choice,” and that no matter what they do, the regime is bound to survive. With anxiety, citizens are fearful of lurking dangers around every dark corner: the regime’s arbitrary might pulls hidden strings to manipulate and crush them at any given moment; the citizens need not behold that crushing power, just be constantly cognizant of its existence. How can revolution break this wall of fear? We suggest it does so by breeding hope out of despair. We propose that the revolutionary hopeful process develops, dynamically and dialectically, from (personal) rage, through (moral) outrage, to (social) courage – combating fright, angst and anxiety, respectively. Rage rises from a growing, humiliating, gap between what one wants and has. Like fright, rage too is visceral, immediate, instinctive, but while fear is passive (one is an object of danger) and internal, rage is active, externalized against an object of frustration. From reflex to reflection, rage may turn into a moral outrage by recognizing how unhappiness was wrought by a widening socio-political chasm between the ought and the is. For example, an activist confessed to us that her husband demanded her to choose between her family and the revolution. Feeling the urge to be on “the right side of history,” she chose the revolution. By engaging the moral dilemma, making a choice, and reasoning it, one embraces, rather than escapes (as in angst), freedom, however costly (the activist ended up divorcing). Finally, when moral outrage finds social courage, the revolution finds hope. Courage, like anxiety, involves imagination and uncertainty. But while anxiety traps us in a state of paralysis, courage imaginatively translates a potential into a course of action.
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