Beyond words
Non-dialogical public reason in (post) revolutionary Tunisia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3031980 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Charis Boutieri (0000-0001-7223-1076, King's College London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 984-1002 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-05 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1359-0987 • E-ISSN: 1467-9655 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9655.14317 |
| OpenAlex | W4414031574 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 29 |
In the widely demonized municipality of Ettadhamun, the heavy hand of Zin al Abidine Ben Ali's police state was partly lifted in 2011 and replaced by the softer touch of aid promoting international democracy. This aid architecture supported the burgeoning civil society to train Ettadhamun residents in the skill of 'interpersonal communication' (tawasul bayna al-afrad) for the purpose of managing social conflict. Yet the members of the only non-religious association in the neighbourhood of Nogra reject the liberal recommendations of their trainers and carve out a tense neighbourhood co-presence without dialogue with their Salafist neighbours. Counter-intuitively to deliberative theories of democracy, I suggest that in this non-dialogical co-presence inheres a public sphere with social and political possibilities. Neighbourhood residents trade liberal argumentation for dwelling together beyond words, which does not attempt to reform one another and engenders solidarity. The suspension of dialogue reflects a minoritarian articulation of the aftermath of the 2011 revolution as 'the reconstitutive phase of the political'. This articulation refuses the curated narrative of the postcolonial Tunisian nation and pries open the teleology of liberal democratic transition
Dialogical self · Epistemology · Political science · Sociology · History · Islamic Studies and History · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · Philosophy · Political and Social Issues
Liberalism and Empire
Politics of Piety
Events of citizenship
The Extraordinary Politics of the Tunisian Revolution
The “Failure” Of Radical Nationalism and the “Silence” Of Liberal Thought in the Arab World
Civil Society, Tribal Process, and Change in Jordan
Dashed Hopes and Extremism in Tunisia
Discourses of Power and State Formation
Norms of Self-Determination
What Is Liberalism
The Idea of Public Reason Revisited
The ruse of consent and the anatomy of 'refusal
Analysing revolutionary Islamism
Beyond words
Post-Colonialism and the Political Imagination
The Politics of the Governed
Kin-Work in a Time of Jihad
Totalitarian Tears
The Politics of Deliberation
Imagining Solidarity
Hacker practice
Beyond the Arab Street
The vernacularization of democracy
Dwelling as resistance, dwelling as repair
Community fashioning
Why don't I forgive? They didn't ask for forgiveness
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |