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Lebanon
Too Close for Comfort: Syrians in Lebanon
![[ICG logo. Image from crisisgroup.org]](/content_images/3/sm_Image-International_Crisis_Group-Logo.jpg "[ICG logo. Image from crisisgroup.org]"){kind=logo}
[The following report was issued by International Crisis Group on 13 May 2013.] Too Close for Comfort: Syrians in Lebanon Executive Summary Syria’s conflict is dragging down its neighbours, none more perilously than Lebanon. Beirut’s official policy of “dissociation” – seeking, by refraining from taking sides, to keep the war at arm’s length – is right in theory but increasingly dubious in practice. Porous boundaries, weapons smuggling, deepening involvement by anti-Syrian-regime Sunni Islamists on one side and the pro-regime Hizbollah on the other, and cross-border skirmishes, all atop a massive refugee inflow, implicate Lebanon ever more deeply in the conflict ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Simon Jackson, Diaspora Politics and Developmental Empire: The Syro-Lebanese at the League of Nations
Simon Jackson, “Diaspora Politics and Developmental Empire: The Syro-Lebanese at the League of Nations.” Arab Studies Journal Vol. XXI No. 1 (Spring 2013). Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this article? Simon Jackson (SJ): The article draws on my current book project, provisionally titled Mandatory Development: The Global Politics of Economic Development in the Colonial Middle East. The book is about the socioeconomic development regime in French Mandate Syria-Lebanon between the world wars, considered at a variety of scales, from the local to the imperial, international, and global. This particular article concentrates on the role of the Syro-Lebanese diaspora in ...
Keep Reading »Pierced Memories: The Lebanese Archive of Diab Alkarssifi
![[Fatima Hammdo in a traditional dress and an army uniform, from the Alkarsiffi family album, 1970s.]](/content_images/3/sm_FatimaHammdo_Alkarsiffialbum_TextImage.jpg "[Fatima Hammdo in a traditional dress and an army uniform, from the Alkarsiffi family album, 1970s.]")
[Text by Ania Dabrowska, photos courtesy of Diab Alkarssifi.] The Lebanese Archive of Diab Alkarssifi is a project about a collection of photographs belonging to an ordinary man with a passion and a story. It is also a project about the process of an artist (myself) transforming this collection into an archive within this particular cultural context: two migrants living in London, a Polish artist and a retired Lebanese journalist, an artist’s residency in a homeless people’s hostel. We are not supposed to believe that a treasure might one day unexpectedly land on our doorstep. Yet, this is precisely what happened when Diab Alkarssifi’s collection came into my life in ...
Keep Reading »Call for Papers -- Wither the Nation? National Identity in the Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Middle East and South Asia (25 May Abstract Deadline)
![[Orient-Institut Beirut logo. Image from orient-institut.org]](/content_images/3/sm_OrientInstitutBeirutlogoweb.jpg "[Orient-Institut Beirut logo. Image from orient-institut.org]")
Whither the Nation? National Identity in the Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Middle East and South Asia 27 - 29 September 2013 Beirut, Lebanon The Orient Institute and the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies at the American University of Beirut will be convening a two and half day conference in Beirut (27-29 September) on twentieth-century and contemporary political thought and its dealings with the question of national identity. The aim of the conference will be to discuss recent research on the different political and social ideologies that emerged in the Middle East and South Asia during the following historical ...
Keep Reading »There Can Only Be One: Tamam Salam and Lebanese Politics
![[View of al-Amin Mosque constructed by Rafiq al-Hariri between 2002 and 2007. Photo by James Gallagher via Flickr]](/content_images/3/sm_3222756556_63c65e94e0.jpg "[View of al-Amin Mosque constructed by Rafiq al-Hariri between 2002 and 2007. Photo by James Gallagher via Flickr]")
On Saturday 6 April 2013, the Lebanese Parliament overwhelmingly nominated Tamam Saeb Salim Salam to become the new Prime Minister. That the premiership in Lebanon should return to Beirut is not strange in and of itself. However, the return of the premiership to the Mseitbeh residence of the Salams—an old notable family that has played a pivotal role in Lebanon’s political life since the late Ottoman and French colonial periods—does not necessarily conform with the traditional meaning of notable politics. Rather, it sheds light on the current nature of (post-war) Lebanese politics, and specifically the transformation of the Sunni za’ama. To speak of the Sunni za’ama ...
Keep Reading »أحمد الواصل عن "الخروج من المعبد" أو الهدم طريق الغناء العربي
["كتب" هي سلسلة تستضيف "جدلية" فيها الكتاب في حوار حول أعمالهم الجديدة، نرفقه بمقاطع من الكتاب.] أحمد الواصل عن "الخروج من المعبد" أو الهدم طريق الغناء العربي: محاولة لقراءة الهوية والذاكرة العربية والمسكوت عنه مشروع قادم ... أن يكون الغناء العربي بمدارسه ومراكزه، واتجاهاته وروزه التلحينية والشعرية والغنائية ظواهر اجتماعية تعيد القراءة وضع شهادة على الذاكرة والهوية والثقافة. هذا ما يحاول أن يقدمه الناقد أحمد الواصل في كتابه الجديد "الخروج من المعبد: توليفات في أنثروبولوجيا الغناء العربي"(دار العين للنشر، 2013). في هذا الحوار يتحدث عن ظواهر مهمشة ومن عداد المسكوت عنه في تاريخ الغناء العربي، وهو يكرس في هذا الكتاب ...
Keep Reading »Melancholia and the Possibility of a Geopolitics of Mourning
Nouri Gana, Signifying Loss: Toward a Poetics of Narrative Mourning. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2011. In the preface to his recent book, Signifying Loss, Nouri Gana argues that “[i]n a world marked by the swift and sanitized infliction of loss and suffering, especially as a result of the insidious banalization of global warfare and everyday violence,” “signifying loss is crucial to adjusting to a persistently mutating and alienating reality and, simultaneously, to carrying out sociopolitical changes.” Indeed, the opening claim implicitly yet clearly announces that the following pages will demonstrate how contemporary understandings of loss and suffering ...
Keep Reading »Reconciling Return and Rights: Palestinian Refugees and the Emergence of a "Political Society"
![[Portion of mural in Aida Refugee Camp. Image by Alan Mayers via Flickr]](/content_images/3/sm_aidacamp987.jpg "[Portion of mural in Aida Refugee Camp. Image by Alan Mayers via Flickr]")
Analyses and debates on the reconfiguration of rights, democracy, social justice, and dignity in the Arab region suffer from a chronic methodological nationalism—which perpetuates the idea that people seek and fight for rights and self-determination solely in their national state and territory, seen as the natural context for achieving a full social and political personhood. When refugees and displaced persons (short or long terms alike) are discussed, they appear by and large as volatile figures or fortuitous victims, or as an indistinct mass in need of humanitarianism, living transient non-lives and awaiting compensation and return. They are hardly ever represented as ...
Keep Reading »بورتريه غير وافٍ عن بسام حجار
![[الشاعر بسام حجار]](/content_images/3/sm_bassamhajar.jpg "[الشاعر بسام حجار]")
قيل فيه كلام كثير. أصدقاء وشعراء ونقاد وفنانون وزملاء مهنة ودارسون اجتمعوا حول ورق الصحف ليملؤه في اليوم التالي لوفاته. كان رحيل بسام حجار في السابع عشر من شباط 2009، بمثابة فاجعة أدبية. حتى أولئك الذين نبذوه مهنياً، وتناقلوه من قسم ثقافي إلى آخر، حزنوا من أجله، وربما ندموا. ذلك أن رحيل ذلك الرجل الخجول لم يكن مجرد موت، عرفنا جميعاً أننا سنفتقد أحد أهم الأسماء في الشعر، وفي الترجمة أيضا. كان موته ضربا من خيبة الأمل، لأننا كنا نعتمد كثيراً على بسام حجار في نقل ترجمات إلى العربية، قبل أن نتوقف عند شعره. لذلك فإن فقده كان شبيها برزمة من الخسارات التي نثرت في وجوهنا. وفي واقع الأمر، هناك دائما مبرر لخسارة شخص، تسليم بأمر المرض، أو الفنائية أو الباب الذي سنعبر منه "إلى ...
Keep Reading »أطياف الربيع العربي فوق بيروت
لطالما شكلت المطالب المعيشية في لبنان مادة للنكايات السياسية ليس إلا. وكثيراً ما ارتضت الحركة النقابية اللبنانية التي كان الاتحاد العمالي العام يشكل فصيلها الأبرز، أن تتحول إلى ما يشبه الأداة في يد قوى سياسية تستخدمها ساعة تشاء، وتلوك خطابها المطلبي، قبل أن تتخلى عنها وعن المطالب التي رفعتها، عند أول فرصة. ولهذه العلاقة القاتلة أكثر من سبب لعل أبرزها سياسة الإضعاف الممنهج الذي تعرضت له الحركة النقابية على يد الوصاية السورية والطقم السياسي اللبناني الحليف لها، وفقاً لتقسيم العمل الأخوي بين "المقاومة" و"الإعمار". والواقع أن تقسيم العمل هذا جعل من الرئيس المغدور رفيق الحريري عنوان النسخة اللبنانية لسياسات النهب المنظم التي تم تكييفها مع الواقع ...
Keep Reading »February Culture
Jadaliyya's February Culture Bouquet is our most colorful so far! Our new series Visuals in 1500 returns with contributions by artists Doris Bittar and Sundus Abdul Hadi. Pierre Joris and Habib Tangour share their introduction and selections from their massive anthology of written and oral literature of the Maghreb. Emily Drumsta translates a poem by the pioneer Iraqi poet Nazik al-Mala'ika. Sebastian Anstis translates Libyan writer Omar Al-Kikli. Nicole Fares translates an excerpt from a novel by the Lebanese writer Sahar Mandour. Sinan Antoon translates a poem by Muzaffar Al-Nawwab. Spread the word! * Nazik al-Mala'ika, "Revolt Against the Sun" (tr. ...
Keep Reading »32 by Sahar Mandour
![[Sahar Mandour. Image from As-Safir ]](/content_images/3/sm_saharmandour.jpg "[Sahar Mandour. Image from As-Safir ]")
[Sahar Mandour was born in Beirut in 1977 to an Egyptian father and a Lebanese mother. She is a novelist and journalist. She has been working for As-Safir newspaper since 1998, and is currently on a fellowship at Oxford University, where she was selected for the Said-Asfari Fellowship at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Mandour's work largely deals with the intricacies of daily life in Lebanese society, charting the navigation of social codes and their impact on work, love, families and friendship. She has published four novels. 32 (Beirut: Dar al-Adab, 2010), her third novel, follows the life of a young woman in her thirties, her four female friends, ...
Keep Reading »New Texts Out Now: Wendy Pearlman, Emigration and the Resilience of Politics in Lebanon
Wendy Pearlman, “Emigration and the Resilience of Politics in Lebanon.” Arab Studies Journal Vol. XXI No. 1 (Spring 2013). Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this article? Wendy Pearlman (WP): Five years ago I began to read widely about Lebanon in preparation for a trip there. While there are so many fascinating things about the country, I was most intrigued by its one hundred and fifty-year history with international emigration. There is hardly a corner of the globe in which Lebanese have not settled, ...
Keep Reading »Windows to Refuge: Camp Life through the Eyes of Palestinian Youth in Lebanon
“The pact that binds us to photographers puts our sight in their hands.” (From the introduction to Lahza, a book of Palestinian children’s photographs by ZAKIRA, Amers Editions, Beirut, 2009.) The Project These photographs were taken in July 2012 by Palestinian youth living in four out of the twelve refugee camps in Lebanon. The photographers, students aged eleven to fifteen, were participants in an intensive summer project called SHINE coordinated by both LEAP, an educational empowerment program ...
Keep Reading »The Active Feminine: Performance Art in Lebanon with Reference to Marya Kazoun
In the setting of the current Arab art boom and the political flux ignited by regional uprisings, the difficulty in differentiating between performance art and activism increases, further intertwining the abstract borders that divide them. Nonetheless, while activism pushes its way as a societal form of rejection, performance art conversely sneaks into the social sphere as an accepted method of protest, encouraged by the public as a sign of cultural sophistication. Within the context of Lebanon, ...
Keep Reading »Palestinian Refugees from Syria in Lebanon
[The following report was issued by American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) in April 2013.] Palestinian Refugees from Syria in Lebanon A Vulnerable Community Following their expulsion from Palestine in 1948, many Palestinian intellectuals, businessmen, and craftspeople fled to Syria and established themselves as an integral part of Syrian society. Today that life has been broken and many Palestinian refugees from Syria have joined the ranks of Lebanon’s Palestinian ...
Keep Reading »تمام سلام رئيساً للحكومة اللبنانية: شركة غير تنافسية
أن تعود رئاسة مجلس الوزراء إلى بيروت ليس بالأمر المستغرب. أما أن تعود إلى "دار المصيطبة"، دار آل سلام، التي كانت محوراً للسياسة اللبنانية منذ ما قبل الاستقلال العام ١٩٤٣، فهذا ما يطرح العديد من الأبعاد التي ربما تكون فقدت معانيها التقليدية ويساهم في المقابل بتقديم تفسيرات جديدة حول واقع السياسة اللبنانية وما آلت اليه في سنوات ما بعد الحرب، خصوصاً أبعاد تحولات الزعامة السنية. وهنا، حين نقول الزعامة السنية لا نفترض أن تمثيل الطائفة السنية، أو أي طائفة أخرى، ينحصر بمرجعية واحدة فقط. لا بل نشير ...
Keep Reading »Women Under Seige: Stateless in Lebanon
Lebanon, and its capital Beirut, are often represented by the media as islands of freedom in the Middle East. The well-heeled neighborhoods of Achrafieh and Downtown are reminiscent of a Parisian boutique; while nightlife in Gemmayze and Hamra could compete with the scene in Berlin. But, behind the glossy images of ultra-futuristic skyscrapers and flawless female bodies, Lebanon is a country where women are not allowed to pass citizenship on to their children, or to their non-Lebanese husbands. The ...
Keep Reading »Ghosts of Comfort and Chaos
When I was invited to write this article for the series Visuals in 1500, I was asked to begin with an image that would help clarify my thinking about the work I do as a visual artist. I decided to focus on a little-known painting that I first became familiar with through a reproduction in Kamal Boullata’s book Palestinian Art: 1850-Present. The painting is attributed to the Palestinian artist Daoud Zalatimo, who was born in Ottoman controlled Jerusalem in 1906 and died in Israeli controlled ...
Keep Reading »A (Neocolonial) Musical Introduction to Lebanese Political Actors, complete with Wikipedia Hyperlinks
Lebanon has been in the news a lot lately. From union strikes to legal advocacy to intermittent Sunni-Shiite violence to daily Israeli violations of Lebanese sovereignty to the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees currently living in Lebanon to the election crisis to the resignation of Prime Minister Miqati, Lebanon has been boiling for (at least) over two years. While the most interesting political developments have been the work of activist, civil society, and union groups in Lebanon, it is ...
Keep Reading »Petition: Stop the "Green Building" Draft Law in Lebanon
For the past six months, the Lebanese government has been stalling in implementing the salary adjustment and wage scale for public employees it had approved in September 2012. The last few weeks have seen an increase in workers’ unions' organized strikes across Lebanese cities demanding the immediate application of the authorized salary increase (see Khaled Saghieh’s article in Jadaliyya for more analysis). The government claims it is still looking into sources of revenue to fund this adjustment. One of ...
Keep Reading »Lebanon's Sect Addiction
Lebanese MPs outraged secularists and campaigners opposed to sectarian politics this past week by provisionally approving a voting law that would make it so citizens could only vote for candidates of their own sect. The so-called Orthodox Gathering draft law still needs to pass a parliamentary vote—but activists and youth groups have already decried it as a step back from representative democracy and a lurch towards confessional – some claimed racist – politics. The bill was championed by ...
Keep Reading »Watching Jacob
In the late 1980s to mid-1990s, Eugène Delacroix's wall painting "Jacob Wrestling with the Angel" at San Sulpice in Paris became a symbolic and iconic painting for me, a prism that reflected East and West dynamics. This exploration turned to obsession. However, before I delved into this painting and many others by Delacroix, I was a student of Edward Said in my approach; a visual inquiry that paralleled Said’s literary one. Said’s Orientalism, The Question of Palestine and After the Last Sky ...
Keep Reading »Don'ti Mixi: A Song by The Great Departed (Video)
The following song/video was released by a recently formed Lebanese band, The Band of the Great Departed (Sandy Chamoun, Imad Hsheishou, Abed Qbeisi, Ali Al-Hout, and Khaled Soubeih). The song was inspired by Egypt's President Morsi. During a recent talk in Germany, Morsi mixed Arabic and English while speaking, despite having an interpreter. Hence the title and lyrics of their song, which play on this issue and the Egyptian accent: "Don’ti mixi!" While the band certainly ...
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