Sextarianism: Sovereignty, Secularism, and the State in Lebanon

by Maya Mikdashi

The Lebanese state is structured through religious freedom and secular power sharing across sectarian groups. Every sect has specific laws that govern kinship matters like marriage or inheritance. Together with criminal and civil laws, these laws regulate and produce political difference. But whether women or men, Muslims or Christians, queer or straight, all people in Lebanon have one thing in common—they are biopolitical subjects forged through bureaucratic, ideological, and legal techniques of the state.



With this book, Maya Mikdashi offers a new way to understand state power, theorizing how sex, sexuality, and sect shape and are shaped by law, secularism, and sovereignty. Drawing on court archives, public records, and ethnography of the Court of Cassation, the highest civil court in Lebanon, Mikdashi shows how political difference is entangled with religious, secular, and sexual difference. She presents state power as inevitably contingent, like the practices of everyday life it engenders, focusing on the regulation of religious conversion, the curation of legal archives, state and parastatal violence, and secular activism. Sextarianism locates state power in the experiences, transitions, uprisings, and violence that people in the Middle East continue to live.

Genres: Lebanon, Sexuality, Nonfiction, Anthropology

264 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2022

Reviews

[Silvia Sorrentino · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would have given 5 stars if it wasn't for one main discomfort: the language used is very hard to follow, even for someone who is advanced in Middle Eastern Studies, Political Science and History. Apart from that, this book opens the door to a whole universe of thought regarding the deep connections between gender, religion and democratic rights. The political asset of Lebanon is a unique case in the world: a phenomenon that is not only interesting because of the religious diversity, but also because of the gender oppression at the core of it, and, in a more general way, at the very base of the nation-State model.

[Mariam Rawwas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The eponymous concept, "sextarianism," is meant to link, via portmanteau, three concepts for us: sexual difference, sectarianism, and the sovereignty of the secular state. More specifically, Mikdashi is interested in the ways in which the more-or-less contemporary (secular) Lebanese state always doubly approaches questions of inheritance (and thus property rights), voting rights, etc., via filiation, which is to say, via sect and sex simultaneously. Which is simply a long-winded way of saying that sect is always sexed. Fair enough, even if the thesis seems a bit obvious in retrospect.

[Niels Baars · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book with a strong argument. At times it is difficult to get through because of the introduction of several terms like 'sextarianism', 'evangelical secularism', and the 'epidermal state'. They all kind of come together at the end of the book, however. I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in sectarianism and how the state practices its sovereignty inward towards its citizens. This does not apply solely to Lebanon, but more broadly to the world at large.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

My professor gave my book review on Mikdashi’s Sextarianism an A-minus. My best work yet ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ