Anna Antonakis' analysis of the Tunisian transformation process (2011-2014) displays how
negotiations of gender initiating new political orders do not only happen in legal and
political institutions but also in media representations and on a daily basis in the family and
public space. While conventionalized as a model for the region this book outlines how the
Tunisian transformation missed to address social inequalities and local marginalization as much
as substantial challenges of a secular but conservative gender order inscribed in a Western
hegemonic concept of modernity. She introduces the concept of dissembled secularism to explain
major conflict lines in the public sphere and the exploitation of gender politics in a context
of post-colonial dependencies.
