Author's note: This study was made possible by the Social Science Research Council's International Dissertation Research Fellowship, with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Fulbright–Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad award, and Northeastern University. I also thank the IJMES editors and anonymous peer reviewers as well as Laura Frader, Tom DeGeorges, Rachel Gillett, Stacy Fahrenthold, and Stephanie Boyle for their helpful comments and suggestions in the drafting of this article. Finally, I thank Simone Lellouche Othmani for making her private archive available to me while it was being classified for public use at the Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine in Nanterre, France. All errors are mine.

¹ Guy Sitbon, “Répression: Sur la terre du jasmin,” Le Nouvel Observateur, 24–30 October 1977.

² Al-Buʿazizi was a street vendor from Sidi Bouzid whose illegal fruit stand was humiliatingly confiscated by authorities for lack of permits, precipitating his desperate act.

³ For example, in 1988 the Museum of Contemporary History in Nanterre held an exhibition entitled May ’68, and several books addressing May ‘68 were issued by French publishers. In 1998, the Institut CGT d'Histoire Sociale memorialized May ‘68 with a series of exhibits focusing on the provinces outside Paris, and French publishers issued another wave of literature on ‘68. In 2008 the Bibliothèque Nationale de France held the exhibition Esprit(s) de mai, and similar exhibits were held in the provinces by organizations such as the Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyons and the city of Montpellier.

⁴ This dearth of historical accounts of Tunisian actions against the state can be attributed in part to the stability and longevity of two dictatorships (Bourguiba from 1957–87 and Bin ʿAli from 1987–2011), which enforced strict media regulations and the suppression of opposition parties. While the Tunisian ‘68 remains largely under studied, John Entelis has highlighted growing youth discontent in the related university strikes of February 1972, while Mohamed Dhifallah locates a rupture between Bourguiba and university students following a 1971 student congress. See Entelis, John P., “Ideological Change and an Emerging Counter-Culture in Tunisian Politics,” Journal of Modern African Studies 12 (1974): 543–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Dhifallah, Mohamed, “Bourguiba et les étudiants: Stratégie en mutation (1956–1971),” in Habib Bourguiba: La trace et l'héritage, ed. Camau, Michel and Geisser, Vincent (Paris: Editions Karthala, 2004)Google Scholar.

⁵ Rollinde, Marguerite, “Les émeutes en Tunisie: Un défi à l’État?,” in Émeutes et mouvements sociaux au Maghreb: Perspective comparée, ed. Saout, Didier le and Rollinde, Marguerite (Paris: Karthala, 1999), 111Google Scholar.

⁶ See Macey, David, The Lives of Michel Foucault: A Biography (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 203–205Google Scholar; and Kelly, Mark G. E., The Political Philosophy of Foucault (New York: Routledge, 2009), 17Google Scholar.

⁷ Certain prominent Tunisan activists have published autobiographical accounts that treat the events of March ‘68. However, historians have remained largely silent on the events. See Charfi, Mohamed, Mon combat pour les lumières (Léchelle, France: Zellige, 2009)Google Scholar; Naccache, Gilbert, Qu'as-tu fait de ta jeunesse? Itinéraire d'un opposant au régime de Bourguiba (1954–1979), followed by Récits de prison (Tunis and Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2009)Google Scholar; Othmani, Ahmed with Bessis, Sophie, Beyond Prison: The Fight to Reform Prison Systems around the World, trans. Garling, Marguerite (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008 [2002])Google Scholar. All of these memoirs were published either outside Tunisia or long after Bourguiba's removal from power in 1987. ʿAbd al-Jalil Buqura has also given an overview of Perspectives’ activities in Harakat Afaq min Tarikh al-Yasar al-Tunisi (Tunis: CERES, 1993). Michaël Béchir Ayari, in “S'engager en régime autoritaire, gauchistes et islamistes dans la Tunisie indépendantiste” (PhD diss., Université Paul Cézanne, Aix-Marseille-III, 2009), points out how the crackdown on leftists in 1968 created political space for Islamists in the 1970s.

⁸ In French historiography these are also known as “les années 68” (the years of 1968). For global perspectives on 1968, see Katsiaficas, George, The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968 (Boston: South End Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Suri, Jeremi, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Varon, Jeremy, Bringing Home the War: The Weather Underground, The Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2004)Google Scholar; and Horn, Gerd-Rainer, The Spirit of ‘68: Rebellion in Western Europe and North America, 1956–1976 (London: Oxford University Press, 2007)Google Scholar. See also the special two-part forum devoted to the global 1968 in American Historical Review 114–15 (2009).

⁹ This lacuna is addressed in Samantha Christiansen and Scarlett, Zachary A., eds., The Third World in the Global 1960s (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012)Google Scholar. While a significant contribution to the field for its focus on the Third World, this volume does not include North Africa or the Arab world more generally. For a rare and outdated exception dealing specifically with Tunisian activism in this period, see Moore, Clement H. and Hochschild, Arlie R., “Student Unions in North African Politics,” Daedalus 97 (1968): 21–50Google Scholar.

¹⁰ For example, Julia Clancy-Smith has commented on the absence of the “people located on the margins of non-Western states” in Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems theory. See Clancy-Smith, Julia A., Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, and Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800–1904) (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1997), 2Google Scholar.

¹¹ The notion of “webs of empire” is borrowed from Tony Ballantyne's discussion of transcolonial information exchange in the British empire, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (New York: Palgrave, 2002). For another groundbreaking work on transnational migration networks, see McKeown, Adam, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, and Hawaii 1900–1936 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

¹² See McDougall, James, “Dream of Exile, Promise of Home: Language, Education, and Arabism in Algeria,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 43 (2011): 253Google Scholar; and Ayari, “S'engager en régime autoritaire, gauchistes et islamistes dans la Tunisie indépendantiste,” 12.

¹³ Afef Ben Rouina, “Islamisme et démocratie: Le cas de la Tunisie, 1970–1990” (master's thesis, Université de Tunis, 2000).

¹⁴ Dhifallah, “Bourguiba et les étudiants,” 316.

¹⁵ UNEF has a complex history of vacillating between positions on both the Algerian revolution and Palestinian liberation. In 1960 it finally called for peace in Algeria, for which it was lauded by UGET. See telegram from UGET in Tunis to UNEF, 27 October 1960, in Archives d'Association: UNEF, AN-19870110, Article 130, Archives Nationales, Fontainebleau.

¹⁶ Chenoufi, Kamel and Gallo, Gilles, La Tunisie en décolonisation (1957–1972): Genèse des structures de développement et des structures de la République (Le Pradet, France: Éditions LAU, 2003), 201Google Scholar.

¹⁷ See Table 18, “Effectifs (élèves) de l'enseignement primaire (secteur public),” in Abdeljabbar Bsais and Christian Morrisson, “Les coûts de l’éducation en Tunisie,” Cahiers du C.E.R.E.S., Série Economie 3 (Tunis: Université de Tunis, 1970), 76.

¹⁸ I was unable to locate figures for all locations where Tunisian students attended universities abroad in this period, but one study for the academic year of 1965 and 1966 lists approximately 500 Tunisians at universities in Paris. “Recensement des effectifs universitaires au 30 juin 1966 et analyse démographiques pour l'année 1965–1966,” in Éducation Nationale: Direction Coopération, AN-19771275, Article 28, Archives Nationales, Fontainebleau.

¹⁹ See Table 20, “Effectifs de l'enseignement supérieur,” in Bsais and Morrisson, Cahiers du C.E.R.E.S., 83.

²⁰ Interview with Chérif Ferjani, Lyons, 2010.

²¹ Moore, Clement Henry, Politics in North Africa: Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1971), 171Google Scholar.

²² Also known as the Groupe d’Études et d'Action Socialiste Tunisienne (GEAST), the organization was often referred to by the name of its theoretical journal, Perspectives Tunisiennes, which was eventually shortened to “Perspectives” to describe the group. Perspectives formed in Paris as a splinter group of Marxists, Trotskyists, and Maoists (both students and professors) who sought an alternative to the PSD-dominated UGET.

²³ About 30 percent of Tunisian students, or 3,000 in total, were card-carrying members of UGET. Perspectives was much more loosely organized and did not keep official records, though some members estimate that there were 200 to 500 members internationally. Clement Henry Moore, Politics in North Africa, 170; and interview with “Jamil,” Tunis, 2011.

²⁴ Yusufists were supporters of Salih bin Yusuf, Bourguiba's rival within the Neo-Destour who represented a more isolationist approach to governance and advocated a sharper rift with France. He was condemned to death for treason because of his open opposition to Bourguiba and was assassinated in exile in 1961 at a hotel in Frankfurt; his supporters continued to identify as Yusufists after his death.

²⁵ The other six wilāyāt were located in Algeria proper. See Haroun, Ali, La septième wilaya: La guerre du FLN en France, 1954–1962 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1986)Google Scholar. On student cooperation, see “Motion UNEF-UGEMA du IVe Congrès à Tunis,” July 1960, in Archives d'Association: UNEF, AN-19870110, Article 128, Archives Nationales, Fontainebleau.

²⁶ There were approximately 75,000 Tunisians in France at the time of the March 1968 protests, the majority of whom were workers and likely not heavily involved in activist communication networks until the immigrant-worker strikes of the 1970s.

²⁷ See Dhifallah, “Bourguiba et les étudiants,” 318.

²⁸ Entelis, “Ideological Change and an Emerging Counter-Culture in Tunisian Politics,” 543–68.

²⁹ Ibid., 550–51.

³⁰ Many Perspectives participants in the events claimed that police officers, under instruction of the PSD, in fact sanctioned the violence against the Jewish community. Interviews with Simone Lellouche Othmani, Paris, 2010, and “Jamil,” Tunis, 2011.

³¹ L'Action, 8 June 1967.

³² “Mémoires de militants,” Perspectives Tunisiennes, brochure no. 3 (December 1968).

³³ A former member of the Neo-Destourian Party, Slimane became an anti-Bourguibist and co-founded the PCT's journal Tribune du Progrès, which was banned along with the PCT under Bourguiba in 1963, following Slimane's increasingly scathing critiques of the government.

³⁴ “Lettre rédigée signée par les membres du Comité de Solidarité avec le peuple vietnamien et remise à l'ambassade des U.S.A. pour le vice-président Humphrey,” 7 January 1968, in Fonds Simone Lellouche et Ahmed Othmani (Fonds Othmani), SOL 28 bis, Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine (hereafter BDIC), Nanterre.

³⁵ From 1964 to 1969, Bin Salah implemented a socialist plan to nationalize agricultural land into a series of collectives. The plan was largely unpopular with peasants, many of whom battled government corruption and lost their private holdings of small plots.

³⁶ “La lutte des étudiants en Tunisie . . . et dans le monde,” Tribune Progressiste 1 (1968).

³⁷ See “Appel du Comité pour la libération de Ben Jennet et des autres militants anti-impérialistes,” undated, in Fonds Othmani, SOL 28, BDIC, Nanterre.

³⁸ See Brown, Timothy S., “‘1968’ East and West: Divided Germany as a Case Study in Transnational History,” in special forum on “International 1968,” American Historical Review 114 (2009): 69–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁹ Brown, “‘1968’ East and West,” 75.

⁴⁰ “Motion sur la Tunisie adoptée à l'unanimité par les participants à la journée internationale de solidarité anti-impérialiste du 21 février 1970,” in Fonds Othmani, SOL 3, BDIC, Nanterre.

⁴¹ Perspectives members in Paris solicited the help of French activists in protesting Bourguiba's diplomatic visit with French President Georges Pompidou. See “Un seul combattant: le peuple!,” 24 June 1972, in Fonds Othmani, SOL 2; and “Tunisie: La curé néo-colonialiste,” Politique Hebdo 35, nouvelle série (29 June 1972).

⁴² “Tunisie: Le divorce étudiant,” Jeune Afrique 377, 25–31 March 1968.

⁴³ “Communiqué de Presse,” dated 25 March 1968 and signed Le Comité pour la libération de Ben Jennet et des autres militants anti-impérialistes, Paris, in Fonds Othmani, SOL 28, BDIC, Nanterre.

⁴⁴ “Sur les journées de solidarité avec Mohamed Ben Jennet,” Perspectives Tunisiennes, review, numéro spécial, no. 18 (18 June 1968): 3. Razgallah accused UGET of representing the PSD's desires regarding student demands.

⁴⁵ Naccache, Qu'as-tu fait de ta jeunesse?, 97.

⁴⁶ Mohamed Dhifallah, “Bourguiba et les étudiants: stratégie en mutation (1956–1971),” 321.

⁴⁷ See Othmani, Beyond Prison, 11; Tribune Progréssiste 3 (1968): 1; Jeunesse Démocratique (1976): 25–26; and Naccache, Qu'as-tu fait de ta jeunesse?, 136, 160. According to Naccache, women activists such as ʿAʾisha bin ʿAbid were not spared torture; her breasts were scarred from cigarette burns while she was detained.

⁴⁸ See “À la lumière du procès G.E.A.S.T.: Les acquis et les perspectives de la lutte révolutionnaire en Tunisie,” Perspectives Tunisiennes, brochure no. 4 (1969); and Naccache, Qu'as-tu fait de ta jeunesse?, 101.

⁴⁹ “Mémoires de militants,” Perspectives Tunisiennes, brochure no. 3 (1968): 9. The law protecting the images of “heads of state” dates back to the colonial period, when it was applied to protect powerful beylical families from public criticism.

⁵⁰ Cited in ibid., 4.

⁵¹ Gilbert Naccache notes that the May ‘68 events in France made a deep impression on Bourguiba while he was visiting Spain and that his advisers confirmed Tunisian opposition leaders had been influenced by French “subversives.” See Naccache, Qu'as-tu fait de ta jeunesse?, 99.

⁵² See Bathily, Abdoulaye, Mai 68 à Dakar: Ou la révolte universitaire et la démocratie (Paris: Éditions Chaka, 1992)Google Scholar; and Gobille, Boris, Mai 68 (Paris: La Découverte, 2008)Google Scholar.

⁵³ In an effort to reach working-class Tunisians in the early 1970s, activists in Paris published the bilingual journal al-ʿAmil al-Tunsi (Le travailleur tunisien). It primarily targeted Tunisian immigrants in France and had minor clandestine distribution in Tunis but did not make significant inroads into these communities. More successful were groups jointly founded by intellectuals and immigrant workers such as Le Mouvement des Travailleurs Arabes, which emerged in the early 1970s and included a number of Tunisians (and other North Africans) residing in France.

⁵⁴ Perspectives Tunisiennes 16 (December 1967).

⁵⁵ For examples of correspondence between Perspectives and UGET sections in Paris and Tunis, see Fonds de la Fédération des Tunisiens pour une citoyenneté des deux rives, Carton G2/2 (1), UGET Paris, Génériques, Paris.

⁵⁶ An attorney anonymously interviewed by Tunisian Communist students regarding the legality of the university's actions stated that the Tunisian National Assembly should have been consulted first and that such decisions could normally be made only in the presence of a delegation of students and professors. In addition, the attorney cited a breach of Article 35, decree no. 60–98 of 31 March 1960, which—like the laws protecting the premises of the Sorbonne that were broken by Parisian police in May ‘68—required special permission from the attorney general before state authorities could access university grounds. See Tribune Progressiste 3 (1968): 4; and L'Action, 28 March 1968.

⁵⁷ “Sur les journées de solidarité avec Mohamed Ben Jennet,” 12.

⁵⁸ “Solidarité des étudiants tunisiens avec leurs camarades français: Vive la lutte juste des étudiants français et tunisiens,” 14 May 1968, in Fonds Mai 68, Carton 8: dossier 14, Centre d'Histoire Sociale du Vingtième Siècle (hereafter CHS), Paris.

⁵⁹ See Tribune Progressiste 5 (1968): 30–35.

⁶⁰ Letter from UNEF to the Comité National Bulgare pour le festival, 30 June 1968, in Archives d'Association: UNEF, AN-19870110, Article 107, Archives Nationales, Fontainebleau.

⁶¹ “Intervention de la section étudiante de Paris du GEAST au Congrès de l'UNEF de Marseille,” undated, in Fonds Mai 68, Carton 8: dossier 14, CHS, Paris.

⁶² The majority of Tunisian students in Paris resided at the Maison de la Tunisie, which became a site for political meetings. Tribune Progressiste 5 (1968): 25.

⁶³ In lieu of mandatory military service, many French youth opted to serve as coopérants, meaning they would work abroad, often as teachers or in some other development capacity.

⁶⁴ Othmani, Beyond Prison, 17. Geismar confirmed this in email correspondence, January 2011.

⁶⁵ Interview with Raymond Beltran, Carcassonne, 2010. In 1968, Beltran was a representative of FEN in Tunis, of which SNESup was an affiliate.

⁶⁶ Ibid.

⁶⁷ Othmani, Beyond Prison, 8.

⁶⁸ See D. Trombadori's interview of Foucault, Paris, 1978, published in “Le rôle politique et culturel de Perspectives et des Perspectivistes dans la Tunisie indépendante,” Mouvements nationaux tunisiens et maghrébins, series 3, 17 (2008): 50.

⁶⁹ See petition of the CISDHT regarding a 4 December 1972 hunger strike signed by Foucault and a letter from Professor Paul Kraugi to Simone Othmani, undated, in Fonds Othmani, SOL 28 bis, BDIC, Nanterre.

⁷⁰ Foucault joined intellectuals such as Gilles Deleuze and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as French and Arab students from Comités Palestine, to protest the racist killing of an Algerian adolescent in a Parisian immigrant neighborhood, the Goutte d'Or, in October 1971. See Abdellali Hajjat, “Alliances inattendues à la Goutte d'Or,” in 68: Une histoire collective, 521–27. CISDHT also linked the Jalali affair to the long-term imprisonment of Foucault's former student Ahmed Othmani. See “On réprime ici [Paris], on réprime là-bas [Tunis],” undated, in Fonds Othmani, SOL 28 bis, BDIC, Nanterre.

⁷¹ In April 1968, Bourguiba purportedly assured Marangé that he would investigate the torture accusations and liberate any detainee who had been wrongly imprisoned. Le Monde, 16 August 1968; interview with Raymond Beltran, Carcassonne, 2010.

⁷² On the day of Tunisia's commemoration of armed resistance, Bourguiba announced that it was time “to turn the page” by releasing many of the condemned students. Presse de la Tunisie, 17 January 1970.

⁷³ “Sur les journées de solidarité avec Mohamed Ben Jennet,” 12.

⁷⁴ From Discours: Général Charles de Gaulle, transcription by the Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l'Europe (Paris: CLT, 30 May 1968).

⁷⁵ Gobille, Mai 68, 88.

⁷⁶ Vaïsse, Maurice, ed., Mai 68 vu de l’étranger (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2008), 93Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ See Tribune Progressiste 5 (1968): 24.

⁷⁸ See letter from Simone Lellouche to the French embassy in Tunis, undated, in Fonds Othmani, SOL 28, BDIC, Nanterre.

⁷⁹ Letter of support from Jean-Maurice Verdier to Mohamed Charfi, undated, in ibid.

⁸⁰ “Lettre ouverte de la Fédération Internationale des Droits de l'Homme au Président Bourguiba,” signed and dated by General Secretary Suzanne Collette-Kahn, Paris, 13 September 1968, published in Tribune Progressiste 5 (1968).

⁸¹ See Chabert interview with Ayari, Michaël Béchir, Jailleux, Bourgoin, 2005, in Parcours et discours après l'indépendance, ed. Ayari, Michaël Béchir and Bargaoui, Sami (Tunis: Éditions DIRASET, 2011)Google Scholar.

⁸² The Observer, 22 June 1969; and CISDHT, Bulletin no. 1, undated, in Fonds Othmani, SOL 28 bis, BDIC, Nanterre.

⁸³ Gattégno wrote a series of letters to Le Monde from April to September 1968. Le Monde's editorial staff responded by noting the censorship of Le Monde in Tunisia. See Fonds Othmani, SOL 28, BDIC, Nanterre.

⁸⁴ The webs created out of the March events also proved vital to a series of demonstrations in February 1972, set off by the sentencing of Simone Lellouche Othmani for her involvement in March ‘68.

⁸⁵ Destourien, Parti Socialiste, La vérité sur la subversion à l'université de Tunis (Tunis: Parti Socialiste Destourien, 1968)Google Scholar; L'Action, 4 August 1968.

⁸⁶ “Tunisie: Le divorce étudiant.”

⁸⁷ L'Action, 21 March 1968.

⁸⁸ L'Action, 27 March 1968 and 28 March 1968.

⁸⁹ Liberté pour les condamnés de Tunis: La vérité sur la répression en Tunisie (Paris: Maspero, 1969). Maspero also published a series of Perspectives brochures from 1967 to 1972.

⁹⁰ Ibid., 3–4.

⁹¹ Ibid, 36–40.

⁹² L'Action, 6 April 1968.

⁹³ Ibid.

⁹⁴ La vérité sur la subversion à l'université de Tunis.

⁹⁵ Ibid, 43.

⁹⁶ “Mémoires de militants,” Perspectives Tunisiennes, brochure no. 3 (1968): 14.

⁹⁷ Le Monde, 16 August 1968.

⁹⁸ For further discussion on the question of ruptures between historical periods, see Clancy-Smith, Julia A., “Ruptures? Governance in Husaynid-Colonial Tunisia, c. 1870–1914,” in Colonial and Post-Colonial Governance of Islam, ed. Marcel Maussen, Veit Bader, and Annelies Moors (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011), 65–88Google Scholar.

⁹⁹ See Balandier's preface in La situation postcoloniale, ed. Marie-Claude Smouts (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2007), 24.

¹⁰⁰ Horn, The Spirit of ‘68.

¹⁰¹ The Tunisian League for Human Rights, created in 1977, is still in existence, as is the Tunisian section of Amnesty International in 1981, both of which included former members of the CISDHT.

¹⁰² After recent reintegration as a legal political party in 2011, al-Nahda has emerged as a dominant force in post-Bin ʿAli Tunisia. The two-decade interdiction of its leader, Rashid al-Ghanushi, who recently returned from exile in London, echoes the suppression of “fanatical Muslims” in the ‘68 livre blanc. The Tunisian Workers’ Communist Party has also been legalized under the new government; it is headed by former Perspectives member Hama al-Hamami, who was imprisoned after having spoken to French media during the 2011 revolution and later released.