Acknowledgements

This book owes everything to the dozens of Tunisian activists who agreed to share their inspiring social and political trajectories with me and share personal documents. I hope to have done some justice to all their experiences over the following pages. Special thanks to Samia D., Lazhar A., Chokri H., Hichem A., Mohsen D. and Ahmed M.

This book started as a doctoral thesis, and I am very grateful to Fiona Adamson and Charles Tripp for their encouragement and unfailing support in this research project. I am also deeply indebted to all those inspiring scholars and colleagues who provided insightful comments and suggestions on different parts and at different stages of this project; and to amazing friends who proofread chapters of this book and pretended they did not hate me too much for my terrible Franglais. My deepest gratitude goes to all of them: Hira Amin, Houda Ben Hamouda, Pauline Brücker, Céline Cantat, Hadrien Collet, Charlotte Coureyye, Bérénice Crunel-Bedouet, Jocelyne Dakhlia, Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun, Elodie Druez, Hamza Esmili, Benjamin Gourisse, Vincent Geisser, Caterina Giusa, Abdellali Hajjat, Béatrice Hibou, Choukri Hmed, Perry Iles, Solenne Jouanneau, Hanane Karimi, Célia Keren, Intissar Kherigi, Stathis Kouvelakis, Karine Lamarche, Wajdi Limam, Mayada Madbouly, Nadia Marzouki, Rory McCarthy, Ophélie Mercier, Ghofran Ounissi, Victor Pereira, Déborah Perez, Stéphanie Pouessel, Pauline Poupart, Olivier Roy, Louise Rebeyrolle, Gerasimos Tsourapas, Michael Willis, Sean Yom and Sarra Zaïed. Maybe more than anyone amongst them, my deepest thanks go to Margot Dazey. Mille mercis, enfin, pour leur soutien indéfectible: à Saïd, à mon frère et à mes parents, sans qui rien ne serait possible.