Status Updates From Lebanon Adrift: From Battle...

Consumerism and commodification aren’t strictly economical, nor is it only about function. It’s the practice of self-identity. Identities are shaped by the symbolic meaning we attach to material possession.

Bauman consumerism is not about the satisfaction of desires but arousing the desires that cannot in principle be quenched. Thus the consumer society manages to render non-satisfaction permanent.

Memorials recall only past death or tragic events and provide places to mourn. They ritualize remembrance and mark the reality of ends. A segregated enclave.

Eg: Lincoln Memorial

Monuments contains elements of triumphalism. They remain essentially celebratory markers of heroic individuals. They embody the myths of beginning. They are perpetually present and part of life.

Eg: Washington Monument

Escaping into a re-enchanted past is less of a ‘flight’ and more of a catharsis. But there is an abundance of overlapping, conflicting and rivaling memories of the war (1975-1990 civil war).

So do we seek collective memory or collective amnesia?

An important caveat applies!

Forgetting always runs the risk of repetition.

O dreaded memories of the war. O atavistic internecine hostilities.

Lebanon is homogenized by fear. Fear is the tie that binds and holds them together. But it is also fear which keeps them apart.

Fear is the name we give to our uncertainty.

Fascinating to see the interplay/intersectionality between urban architecture, cloistered spaces, communal hostility and fear.

The billboards entreat us not to forget.

The usual interplay between internal divisions and external rivalries is exasperating the crisis.

Internal crises: Political successions, socioeconomic disparities, grievances ldn neglected groups and regions, contested national identity and foreign policy orientation.

Lebanon functions like an ever present palindrome. An endless cycle of mutual rhetorical vilification and dehumanization!

“Lebanon was once again an expedient and surrogate killing field”. A playground where foreign powers and regional brokers had a role in inciting and escalating hostilities. But the collective strife was largely incited by group solidarity and confessional loyalties.

Khalaf mentions how Eisenhower’s doctrine and Kissinger’s step-by-step diplomacy played a role in 58 and 75-92 respectively.

Go figure ha

Protracted and displaced collective violence:

Confessional loyalties were seen as viable sources of communal solidarity. However, confessional allegiances continued to supersede other public and collective interests.

The more vulnerable the emblem, the thicker the armor. Conversely, the thicker the armor, the more vulnerable and paranoid other communities become.

An intrastate, consociational Thucydides trap?

Displaced violence and surrogate character of victimization were the glaring issues of the war. It reached to the point where fighters were killing not those they wanted to kill but those they could kill.

Hannah Arendt: the practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is to a more violent world.

The need to remember and the need to forget: two conflicting positions lacking national consensus. Should amnesia be resisted, or should the atrocious recollections of war be forgotten?

“A society homogenized by commodification and amnesia while torn apart by the exaggeration of minor differences and reinvented memories”.

Perfectly captures the tribal and communal school of thought that endures and persist in Lebanon today.

Side note: ghassan definitely has some vivid psychoanalytic sociological kinks 🤨 but I do see his point tbf