Understanding Revolutions: Opening Acts in Tunisia
Author: Azmi Bishara
Date of publication: 2021
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
No. of pages: 328
Introduction: A New Branch of Knowledge
The first decade since the onset "Arab Spring" has occasioned tens of thousands of articles, books and studies; thousands of academic seminars and conferences; and countless hours of political meetings at regional and international levels, all dedicated to describing the events, analysing their repercussions and deliberating their ramifications. In effect, the Arab Spring has become a new field of research. Think tanks have been recruited for this very purpose. It has become required reading on university curricula and a focus for academic theses. It has engaged a constantly expanding international scholastic community whose roots date back to the waves of democratic transformation that began in Eastern Europe in the middle of the last century and Latin America before that.
Azmi Bishara's
Understanding Revolutions fits squarely in this complex political and intellectual context. It is essential reading for any academic student of the Arab condition and, as such, can only be read within the context of that extensive critical tradition in which discussions and debates are informed by the entire legacy of literature on political revolution and reform throughout the world.
Bishara organised the main body of this study into five chapters in which he presents (I base the order here on the work he published on the subject in Arabic in 2012(3) a "diary" of the revolution chronicling the events prior to and during the uprising, detailed discussions of the events as they unfolded phase by phase, a breakdown of the Arab versus specifically Tunisian aspects of the events, and an analysis of the social, cultural and political makeup of the forces that variously led and supported, or opposed and fought the revolution, and the regional and international contexts in which they operated. Perhaps most importantly, the author crowned the English edition with a theoretical prologue on revolution, which draws on, and elaborates on, his previous writings on the subject. In addition to the concluding remarks and epilogue on the transitional period, he added an open-ended postscript giving his views on the events unfolding in Tunisia at the time of writing.
* This study was published in the 10th issue of AlMuntaqa, a peer-reviewed academic journal for the social sciences and humanities, (pp. 29-48). You can read the full paper here.
