For more than a decade, the Arab Spring has been widely dismissed as a failure, often portrayed as a temporary outburst of idealism that collapsed into repression, war, and a return to authoritarianism. Tunisia’s uprising, which began with the self-immolation of street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi in Sidi Bouzid on December 17, 2010, is better remembered in this chronicle as a tragic prelude to dashed hopes than as a transformative political moment.
This interpretation is incomplete and misleading in important respects.
Bouazizi’s actions were not simply a response to police brutality, corruption, and economic exclusion, although all three were real. It was a moral rupture that shattered the quiet normalization of humiliation and exposed the ethical foundations of authoritarian rule. What followed in Tunisia, and soon throughout much of the Arab world, was not just a protest, but an awakening, a collective recognition of the limits of dignity, belonging, and submission.
The Arab Spring should therefore be understood not as a failed transition but as a lasting transformation of political consciousness. Its most profound effects have been experiential rather than institutional, reshaping the way people understand citizenship, legitimacy, and their own capacity to act. The changes did not disappear even if the regime survived or reasserted its control. It changed the terrain of contestation for power to this day.
For this reason, the uprising cannot be understood as an isolated national revolt. From Tunis to Cairo, Sanaa to Benghazi, different societies moved in parallel, shaped by different histories but animated by shared emotional and political grammars. The protesters weren’t just demanding material change. They claimed to be political actors and rejected the idea that power could deny them visibility, voice, and equal citizenship indefinitely.
The uprising was the implementation of this change. They redefined what legitimacy means and who can claim it. In occupying public spaces, people were practicing alternative ways of living together rather than simply opposing the regime. The Arab Spring was more a practice than a program, shaped through action rather than planning, and a living rethinking of political possibilities.
One of its most important aspects is that streets and squares have been transformed into places for collective learning. Spaces long monopolized by the coercive and symbolic power of the state have been reclaimed as spaces of participation and mutual recognition. In Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Tunis’ Bourguiba Street, and Sanaa’s Plaza de la Transformation, civilians organized security, cleaned the streets, debated demands, and negotiated differences. Public space has become a school of politics.
The reason these moments were important is simple. He showed that democracy is not just a constitutional arrangement, but a social practice learned through action. The protesters weren’t just demanding rights. they took responsibility. Even if these spaces were later cleared or violently reclaimed, the experience of living there left a lasting mark. Once people experience democracy, even if it is only for a short period of time, they retain that memory.
The Arab uprisings also revealed why cities matter. Revolts are often launched in the periphery or periphery, Sidi Bouzid being the strongest example, but they persist or are defeated in urban centers. This is not a claim about virtue, but a claim about structure. Cities concentrate institutions, social networks, and historical memory. They bring people into direct confrontation with power structures such as ministries, courts, and security agencies, making authority concrete rather than abstract.
City life fosters a rich repertoire of sociability, including trust, cooperation, debate, and solidarity built in markets, neighborhoods, mosques, and universities. These networks allow collective action to persist beyond the initial moment of collapse. Without these, the rebellion risks remaining temporary. With them you gain durability, even under oppression.
Of course, the repression was swift and brutal. The early months of euphoria were followed by counterrevolution, militarization, and war. In many Arab cities, regimes responded by reasserting control of bodies, spaces, and memories. It would be disingenuous to glorify what happened after that.
However, the repression did not erase the symbolic struggle sparked in 2011. Across the region, protesters targeted not only rulers but also the symbols and rituals that maintain authoritarian power. Portraits were torn up, slogans were scrawled on symbols of domination, and statues were defaced. These acts were not theatrical excesses; They were an attempt to dismantle emotional structures of fear and submission.
Such moments leave a mark even if defeat follows them. The experience of collective transgression, of crossing lines once considered inviolable, changes the way we see and feel about authority. People learn that they can stand up to authority, even temporarily, and be ridiculed and invalidated. That knowledge cannot be erased by oppression.
This is why the Arab Spring is not over, despite continued efforts to portray it as a historical error or a cautionary tale. What survived was not a set of institutions, but a pedagogy of freedom. This pedagogy, learned through public action and reflection, reshaped the way people understood agency, responsibility, and resistance.
Its influence is visible today in quieter, more fragmented struggles. Across the region, young people are rallying for social justice, environmental degradation, and public accountability. They may not evoke 2011, but they operate with an inherited rejection of fatalism. Graffiti in Hay Ettadamen, a marginalized suburb of Tunis, depicts a deep-seated skepticism: “Is Tunisia a republic, a monarchy, an animal farm, or a prison?”
Here lies the Arab Spring’s most lasting contribution. It demonstrated that even acts initiated from liminal spaces can reshape the collective imagination and expand the horizons of possibility. Bouazizi’s defiance did not immediately create democracy. But it ignited critical consciousness and continued to animate struggles against injustice and exclusion.
The uprising did not fail. The form changed, but the meaning remained the same.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
