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This Is Not a Revolution: the Sectarian Subject's Alternative In This is Not a Revolution: The Sectarian Subject’s Alternative in Postwar Lebanon Diana El Richani Under the Supervision of Dr. Meg Stalcup Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the Master’s of Arts in Anthropology School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies Faculty of Social Science University of Ottawa ©Diana El Richani, Ottawa, Canada, 2017 Design by William El Khoury Photography by Diana El Richani ii Acknowledgment This work would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of the many people in my life, both in Canada and across the ocean, in Lebanon. Foremost, I thank my supervisor Meg Stalcup for her continuous support, guidance, and encouragement through the countless deadlines and panic-driven days, even weeks. I thank my committee members, Vincent Mirza and Thushara Hewage, for their advice, support, and interest in my work. I also thank my cohort for their support and encouragement throughout the storms. Without the sacrifices and support of my parents, Kamal and Maya, none of this would have been possible. I offer my thanks and love to them, whom I’ve deeply missed over the course of the last few years. And of course, I send love to my brothers, Jamil and Sammy. I thank my friends – William, Ely, Omar, and Zein - for the endless support, the painful laughs, and good company. The heavenly home cooked food definitely did help in those gloomy days. I love these people. I thank Kareem for his constant support and insight. I thank the amazing people that I have had the honor to meet because of this work. Knowing that such people exist in Lebanon gives me such great hope for what may come. I know the struggles of everyday life may be defeating, but they showed me how to truly put up a fight. I fell in love with that fire that keeps them going. iii Abstract The 2015 trash crisis in Lebanon resulted in the emergence of movements centered on rights and the state’s responsibility. The protests and outrage were about an entire political structure that had allowed for such a failure in infrastructure to come into existence. After numbers on the street began to fade, the alternative discourses transitioned from the streets to the May 2016 Beirut municipality elections. My research explores how these actors relate to the state as citizens (a term they themselves use) within a political structure that perpetuates a kind of sectarian citizenship, and asks what being a citizen means in such a failed state, and how alternative fronts can push for a reconceptualization of citizenship, on a backdrop of neoliberalism. iv Table of Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 Methodology ................................................................................................................................6 Chapter Summaries ......................................................................................................................9 Chapter One: The History of The (Re)Production of Sectarianism ................. 13 The Production of Nineteenth-Century Sectarianism ................................................................20 Sectarianism in Times of Independence and Civil War .............................................................24 The Trash Crisis of 2015 ............................................................................................................29 The Political Imaginary in Modern Lebanon .............................................................................35 Chapter Two: The Sectarian Citizen ................................................................... 38 Who is The Sectarian Citizen? ...................................................................................................41 Social Welfare as the Infrastructure of Sectarianism .................................................................46 Othering, Resiliency, and Compliancy: Characteristics of the Sectarian Citizen ......................49 Othering .............................................................................................................................................. 52 Resiliency ............................................................................................................................................ 53 Pragmatism ......................................................................................................................................... 56 The Activist ................................................................................................................................58 Chapter Three: The Political Imaginaries of the Alternative ........................... 62 Apolitical Technocratic and Ideological Political ......................................................................66 The Moral Framework of Lebanese Politics ..............................................................................74 Taking Back Politics Through the Everyday .............................................................................80 Conclusion: ............................................................................................................. 83 References: ............................................................................................................. 94 v Introduction I was set on walking from Mar Mkhayel to Hamra, passing through Beirut’s downtown where people protested the waste management crisis that had hit Beirut and Mount Lebanon just a few month prior. The walk was to reach the site where protestors chanted their demands and clashed with the police, and an excuse to snap pictures of the disappearing cultural buildings. As well, Beirut’s downtown was left with graffiti and protest art that I wanted to document and explore. In the summer of 2015, there was a wave of protests that was unprecedented in support. These protesters came out not in support of a political party or figure, but instead with the aim of achieving a common social goal: to establish sustainable waste management solutions. On August 29th, 250,000 people (according to the estimate by activist groups), gathered in Beirut’s downtown to protest (Beirut Syndrome 2015). Many scenes emerged from these protests and were widely circulated on social media and in the press: an elderly man passionately talked to a riot policeman as he urged him to realize that he, along with the other young men in the line of service, do not belong defending politicians whom they know quite well to be the cause of their daily struggles and hardships; a soldier crouches, in tears after a night of violence in Beirut’s downtown area, and protestors approach and offer water and comfort while taking him to an ambulance; a three-meter high wall, which protestors dubbed the “wall of shame,” is erected in order to keep protestors out of Parliament Square, but was used as fresh canvas for protest art, while also bouncing back a tear gas canister to the riot police that shot it. Over the course of the protests, the state escalated police violence with excess use of tear gas, water cannons (ironically in a country where access to water is scarce and limited), and rubber bullets. Mohammad Kassir, a 24-year old student, took a blow to his head by a tear gas canister shot at point-blank by the riot police. He was hospitalized and suffered from permanent injuries due to fractures in his skull. 1 Police beat Ali Jaber to the extent that his right eyeball left its socket. He was rushed to American University Medical Center’s (AUBMC) emergency room, but was evicted the next morning because his family was not able to pay the medical expenses. Ali’s mother pleaded with the Health Minister at the time, Wael Abu Faour, to hospitalize her son. The health minister complied. I walked along the barbed wire and the soldiers protecting Parliament Square after all of these events had passed. I did not want to lose my phone at the very start of my fieldwork so I ignored the shouts of a soldier telling me to stop taking pictures of the area, and grabbed a cab towards Hamra – it was too hot to walk anyways. The 2015 trash crisis in Lebanon resulted in the emergence of movements whose discourses centered on the rights of citizens and the state's role in providing these rights––mostly its failure to do so. In this sense, the protests and the outrage were about more than a garbage crisis. They were about the entire structure that had allowed for such a failure to come into existence. More than a year after the August 2015 demonstrations, the waste management crisis had persisted along other infrastructural failures. Although the movements had slowly left the streets, the alternative discourse continued to find its way in the May 2016 Beirut municipality elections. My research explored how these social movements, which consist of individuals contesting their relationship to the state, operate within a power-relation that they hope to alter the very structure of, in an attempt to reach a collective goal. There were different political imaginaries in the street movements and the alternative Beirut municipal campaigns. They differed with regards to how to organize and confront the state; there was no single and united discourse among the alternative. In writing about these social movements, I begin by asking how these actors relate to the state as citizens (this being the term they themselves use), then I address 2 how the political
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