Spazi post-rivoluzionari. Al centro di Tunisi, due anni dopo la Rivoluzione

More than forty years ago, Henri Lefebvre wrote that either the revolution will be urban or it will not be. References to Lefebvre appear in many interpretations of the Arab Spring, highlighting the necessarily urban character of the revolutionary events of 2011. These interpretations view the city as the very space of politics in which public spaces re-emerge as symbols of a renewed social and political vitality. Building on the results of a three-week long fieldwork during the spring of 2013, this paper presents the public spaces of the centre of Tunis where the main events of the Revolution of 2011 took place. Being inspired by the principles of the non-representational theory, the authors follow the everyday practices in their making and records emotions, meanings, images and memories associated to the most symbolic spaces of the Revolution. The paper thus aims at identifying the signs of a change in the perceptions and the uses of public urban space, which from being a space of injustice, inequality and oppression, is then perceived, conceived and lived as a space of contestation, openness and possibility.