In Tunisian Girl, Bnayyah Tūnsiyyah: Blogueuse pour un printemps arabe (Blogger for an Arab Spring) (2011), late Tunisian blogger, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee (2011) Lina Ben Mhenni acknowledges the role of resistance writing during the Tunisian revolution of December 2010 that brought down the totalitarian regime of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. She specifically refers to ‘the audacity of certain pens – uh … or rather certain keyboards!’ (‘l’audace de certaines plumes – euh … je dirais de certains claviers!’) (2011: 26). Ben Mhenni recognises the role of social media platforms in enabling and organising popular resistance movements and in advocating for social justice and democracy in the region. In so doing, she particularly reflects on her own experience, not only as an activist but as a female life writer for whom the private and the public have become intertwined in the virtual realm. This shift from ‘pens’ to ‘keyboards’ is compelling not only in relation to the changing tools, channels and formats of Arab women’s autobiographical practices but also in relation to the potential avenues of resistance that are enabled by these emergent mediums of self-expression. Considering that the focus of this book is on non-fictional literary modes of dissent by contemporary Arab women, it would be remiss not to address the way contemporary autobiographical discourses are influenced by the digital culture within which they are produced.

This final chapter looks at the radical shifts in the ways witness narratives are told, autobiographical voices are mediated, and dissent is expressed within the digital culture of the contemporary Arab world. More specifically, it examines the use of social media platforms by Arab women ‘typing’ in times of conflict and national struggles as emerging autobiographical sites for articulating resistance. These online platforms, I argue, mediate between the virtual/personal sphere of self-expression and the physical/public world of participation and activism. The chapter also demonstrates how online autobiographical narratives contest the traditions and elitist contours of conventional (print) life writing practices and thus highlight the genre’s flexibility in terms of forms and media of expression.