ABSTRACT
The resonance of Ben Ali’s image is more subtle than that, seeking to play on the anxieties of those who gather with no idea of the future but who insist upon opening it up in all of its potentiality. The sovereign affects that emanate from Ben Ali’s image are very different from joyous affects of the royal wedding and from resentful affects or the silent disco. The image of Mohamed Bouazizi’s bedside is a surface through which sovereign dread and hope might be transferred. This chapter looks at the image, thinking about it as an intervention in a contest of sovereign affects. In the image, as in protests that were occurring just miles away, Bouazizi had already played his last card. The image was meant to reach large swathes of the Tunisian populace. It was part of the dual strategy to offer concessions to those that would save the sovereign order and to crush those who would continue to revolt.
