Eulogies for the Resistance Hizbullah, Syria and the ‘Crisis Imaginary’

Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication 10 (2017) 272–292 MEJCC brill.com/mjcc

Jack Joy soas, University of London, uk [email protected]

Abstract

Recent studies into the notion of crisis argue that affective states of insecurity can offer an instrumental utility to elites seeking to sustain existing power relations. Through their discursive construction, such imaginative landscapes help legitimize previously illegitimate forms of political action, rationalize heightened forms of collective sacrifice and instill new disciplinary technologies among political subjects. Building on this growing body of scholarly work, in this study I use critical discourse analysis (cda) to address Hizbullah’s mobilization of a specific ‘crisis imaginary’ as part of its efforts to legitimize its ongoing involvement in the Syrian civil war.This perceptual regime works to uphold a ‘state of exception’ for Hizbullah, sustain the practice of martyrdom as a form of Girardian ‘mimetic desire’ and structure a wider moral universe that continues to bind the party’s audience to the resistance society while maintaining their continued docility.

Keywords

Hizbullah – Syria – crisis imaginary – resistance – Nasrallah – mobilization

Introduction

Walid El-Houri argues that Hizbullah’s ‘emergence and existence within a structurally unstable social, political and geographical context means that the presence of a crisis has always been underlying their political action’ (El- Houri 2012: 57). In the wake of the Arab Spring this argument has come to be accentuated by the party’s active involvement in the Syrian conflict. Since the first manifestations of revolutionary currents directed against the Assad

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/18739865-01002010Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 02:45:46PM via free access eulogies for the resistance 273 regime in March 2011, Hizbullah has resolutely stood by Syria, its ally and one-time political guarantor in Lebanon, incurred significant casualties, as well as seemingly irreparable damage to the symbolic capital of its ‘resistance’ ideology, which was founded on the very imperative of fighting oppression and social injustice on an existential level. Initially, Hizbullah vehemently supported the wave of protests that spread elsewhere across the region, perceiving them as the natural culmination of its own political philosophy. However, its contradictory stance over the ground- swell of anti-authoritarianism in Syria has invited much scrutiny and brought into question the integrity of this normative project, given that banal realpoli- tik considerations have been prioritized at its expense. Their pragmatic stance has not gone unnoticed among many of the constituencies Hizbullah claims to speak for. While the emergence and expansion of Sunni jihadi groups such as isis (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) and the Nusra Front have lent the party a level of retrospective justification, and though Hizbullah has consis- tently sought to frame its involvement as being in defense of the Lebanese nation, many pre-existing cleavages in Lebanese society have been exacer- bated. Furthermore, the wider regional backing that Hizbullah once enjoyed as the vanguard of Arab militant anti-Zionism has, arguably, largely turned to resentment. However, amid the broader discursive arena surrounding the conflict in Syria, the overwhelming support Hizbullah enjoys from its immediate and pre- dominantly Shia constituency in Lebanon has yet to significantly waver. While existing approaches to explaining the movement’s strength and longevity often focus on its coercive capacity (its use of arms), or on clientelist dynamics that are based on its self-appointed welfare role, in this study I explore how its social construction of a specific ‘crisis imaginary’ contributes to the durability of its power base. As argued by Murray Edelman in his study of spectacular politics, the materialization of threat and anxiety must be understood as a ‘political act’, rather than merely ‘recognition of a fact or a rare situation’ (Edelman 1988: 31). This assertion has gained further currency since the inception of the ‘War on Terror’ that has led to the growing prominence of the constructivist approach in international relations, which argues that political realities are shaped primar- ily by social interactions and flows of knowledge rather than material forces. With the emergence of this paradigm, many now seek to explore the political utility of crisis and its instrumentalization. These mechanisms are therefore increasingly acknowledged as a resource of power that is seen to structure perceptive environments through which to legitimize previously illegitimate forms of political action, mobilize heightened forms of collective sacrifice throughout the polis and ultimately endow elites with greater autonomy. These

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded 10(2017) from Brill.com09/30/2021 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access 274 joy all come to be rationalized by the need to mitigate insecurity, or often to pre- empt its ‘future birth’, which is nonetheless already an ‘affective fact’ (Massumi 2010). With reference to both ‘resistance’ as a specific ‘culture of communication’ and the wider material-ideational field against which it is articulated, in this study I explore how the performative notion of crisis is invoked in the party’s official narratives of the ongoing Syrian conflict, and in turn how this helps structure a wider ‘regime of truth’ that tends to be accepted. In doing so, I draw on eulogies delivered by the movement’s iconic secretary-general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, during commemoration ceremonies for such high-profile martyrs as Hassan al-Laqqis (d. 2013), the ‘Quneitra Martyrs’ (d. 2015) and Mustafa Badreddine (d. 2016). The value of the eulogies in the context of this study is reflected principally in the prominent profile of these ‘martyr-leaders’, whose statuses served to ensure that Hizbullah could justifiably undertake its own particular manner of spectacular mourning that helps bolster Nasrallah’s statements with a further affective resonance. I use critical discourse analysis (cda) as a form of ‘dissident research’ (van Dijk 2015: 466) to interrogate Nasrallah’s rendition of a specific condition of crisis and to explore how these narratives work to sustain Hizbullah’s continued domination over its constituency.In scrutinizing the composition of the rhetorical narratives and their constituent discourse strategies, this paper sheds light on the sustainability of the movement’s power at a time when it might reason- ably be expected to have eroded, and offers insight into both its foundational governing mentalities as well as the cultural practices through which these are translated into practice.

Securitization and the Political Utility of Crisis

If the linguistic turn in western philosophy has encouraged us to scrutinize how language functions to alter our comprehension of a seemingly external reality—and by extension the ontology of abstract concepts, such as identity and sexuality—we are forced to question how it might be used to sustain prevailing forms of power inequality. This impetus is demonstrated by the emergence of the Copenhagen School of securitization theory, and, more recently, by wider efforts to elaborate the nature of citizenship in the neolib- eral era, which highlight the bio-political instrumentality of threat perception in enabling states to act further upon political subjects. Indeed, as Peter Nyers argues, the concept of ‘security’ should be considered not solely as a noun, but also as a verb, in that it ‘plays a crucial part in the

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded from 10 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access eulogies for the resistance 275 process by which modern political subjectivities are formed’ (Nyers 2004: 205). For Engin Isin, contemporary governance is now increasingly characterized by a form of neuropolitics in which subjects are encouraged to shape their social conduct around the perception of multifarious forms of imminent and immanent threat, and ‘not as a passive, cynical subject but an active subject whose libidinal energies are channelled towards managing its anxieties and insecurities’ (Isin 2004: 232–233). This suggests a ‘paradoxical form of rule that claims legitimacy through assuaging public fears and containing dangerous threats, but is at the same time dependent upon this nervousness, and so actively cultivates public anxieties’ (Nyers 2004: 206). The original basis of the Copenhagen School, as developed by Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde (1997), among others, tied the concept to J.L. Austin’s (1962) theory of speech acts and to the understanding of utterances as ‘performative rather than constative’ (Balzacq 2010: 61). In other words, as outlined by Matt McDonald, the very utterance of the word ‘security’ by a state- representative moves a particular development into a specific area and thereby claims a special right to use whatever means necessary to block it (McDonald 2008: 567). The September 11, 2001 attacks and the ensuing ‘War on Terror’ have renewed scholarly focus on the social construction of crisis as a means of establishing a Schmittian ‘state of exception’—a condition in which a sovereign or leader is able to transcend pre-existing legal constraints to their power in times of danger (Agamben 2005). Governance, in response to such threats, frequently takes on an entirely new appearance, seemingly operating in a non-political and non-ideological manner to provide technical solutions (Ong 2006). More- over, this condition is compounded by the ways in which citizens frequently ‘misrecognize domination’ as heroism and greatness (Kerr 2008: 203), particularly when such crisis narratives are performed with the rhetorical capacity to achieve a ‘persuasive rendition of the context’—a capacity that only heightens the need to interrogate not ‘what is the situation, but how it is situated’ (Grint 2005: 1471). As such, crisis narratives not only function to pacify and depoliticize constituencies, but also have the power to further demarcate the legitimate chan- neling of civic energies. The wider political utility of such narratives has been demonstrated in Sandaran and De Rycker’s (2013) study of how the discourse of George W. Bush after 9/11 mobilized citizens into specifically state-led voluntary community service. By re-contextualizing the social practice of voluntary engagement as a component of a broader struggle against a national threat of Islamic fundamentalism, the prevailing sense of national crisis was instrumen- talized to encourage forms of charitable participation, and further, to privilege this centrally administered form over other non-governmental initiatives.

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded 10(2017) from Brill.com09/30/2021 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access 276 joy

Certain language devices and discourse strategies are central to these processes. Ron Kerr, for example, highlights how the use of metaphor and metonymy typically function to conflate antagonists with seemingly Manichean metaphysical concepts in order to render them into ‘abstract meta-actors’ (Kerr 2007: 207). Cognitive linguist George Lakoff (1991) also notes that the perceived efficacy of a ‘state-as-person’ tool in us political discourse before the first Gulf War in 1991 obscured the anticipated human cost to the wider Iraqi society by focusing exclusively on the demonization of Saddam Hussein. Similarly, Fed- erica Ferrari explores the strategic use of the ‘emotive metaphor’ leading up to the 2003 invasion; this use positioned the conflict in an existential ontological framework that gained resonance in its ‘rhetorical realization in terms of physi- cal struggle’, representing the United States with the ‘pathos of victims’ (Ferrari 2007: 615).

Hizbullah and the Resistance Dispositif

Any attempt to explore the social construction and instrumentalization of crisis in Hizbullah’s narratives of the Syrian conflict must be situated against ‘resistance’ as a discourse formation and episteme. In one regard, this is enabled through consideration of the movement’s ‘culture of communication’, defined by Atef Alshaer as the ‘compendium of religious, historical, literary and mytho- logical references used by a community as valid tropes for all times and, as such, are acted upon and treated as having authenticity’ (Alshaer 2008: 104). But this approach also warrants a more genealogical study of ‘resistance’— a complex pursuit beyond the scope of this paper—that entails analysis of the socioeconomic realities of a post-Nakba Lebanon, the galvanization of the Lebanese Shia around Imam Musa al-Sadr (who later disappeared while on a trip to Libya) throughout the 1970s, and the ‘demonstration effect’ of Khome- inism in Iran, among other sociopolitical forces informing wider social belief. It is important, nonetheless, to note that it was principally out of these discourse formations that Hizbullah first emerged as a militant jihadi organization in the early 1980s against the backdrop of the Lebanese civil war, and then mobilized around the relatively mundane issues of oppression, marginaliza- tion and impoverishment—issues that were viewed through a Third Worldist counter-hegemonic lens, yet were expressed in the vernacular of contemporary revolutionary Shii thought. The 1989 Taif Accords signaled both the end of the Lebanese civil war and a watershed for Hizbullah. Indeed, the group, in light of the death of Ayatol- lah Khomeini and the ongoing rapprochement of Iran and the West, began

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded from 10 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access eulogies for the resistance 277 to follow an increasingly pragmatic course in a marked departure from the codified radicalism of its early ‘Open Letter to the Downtrodden of Lebanon and the World’ published in 1985. However, as Joseph Alagha (2006) suggests, it is important to recognize that despite the change in course, the movement did not entirely abandon its foundational objectives, but rather the means for their realization evolved into a gradualist approach that legitimizes participation in Lebanon’s partially amended consociational (power-sharing) political system. The reconciliation of Hizbullah’s worldview with on-the-ground realities has come to be understood as its infitah (or ‘Lebanonization’), in which the group’s pursuit of power shifted toward what should be understood as a Gramscian ‘passive revolution’ undertaken through civil society. Accordingly, everyday social practices, tastes, habits and common sense knowledge have come to constitute the principal fields through which to contest western cultural hegemony. In the post-civil war period, this calculus is principally encountered through what is known as the ‘culture of resistance’ that forms the crux of the movement’s contemporary discourse. For Hizbullah, this normative project entails not just an increase in levels of popular piety, but also the inculcation in individuals of ‘notions of sacrifice, worship, emancipation, transnational solidarity and civic community’, establishing a ‘way of thinking, being and acting’ that can be applied throughout everyday life (Sadiki 2010: 350–358). For Alastair Crooke, resistance is analogous to ‘personal coaching’, with a view to instilling ‘a psychology of willpower’ and ‘steadfastness’, but also ‘the willingness to sacrifice on behalf of the community’ (Crooke 2009: 177). The mobilizing power of this ideological project rests in part on how it provides a multi-dimensional discursive space that seamlessly incorporates the explicit political goals of the movement with everyday individual forms of human practice along one uni- tary trajectory and within a singular overarching meta-narrative. This is sus- tained at a surface level by the term’s sheer ubiquity throughout Hizbullah’s communications, and by how the term has been overwhelmingly monopolized by the movement despite its previous secular-leftist connotations. As Khatib notes, ‘resistance connotations come up every time Hizbullah is mentioned or even thought about, no matter what the context’ (Khatib 2013: 42). Hizbullah’s vast institutional dispositif plays a central role in sustaining this relationship, embedding resistance in the social fabric and providing a quotidian means through which to undertake its constitutive strategies of subject formation. Its media and cultural organizations can frequently be seen to work toward its construction as a political spectacle—one that seeks ‘the fundamen- tal reorganization of the subject’ and ‘the construction of an observer’ that serves as a vital ‘precondition for the transformation of everyday life’ (Crary

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded 10(2017) from Brill.com09/30/2021 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access 278 joy

1989: 100). The group’s highly pedagogical output reflects its consistent efforts to act on its audience, particularly by shaping their perceptive and affective environment. The programming of Hizbullah’s satellite channel Al-Manar is perhaps most indicative of this strategy. Daily scheduling extends from regular news coverage, religious guidance shows and aerobics classes to stylized dramatizations and documentaries, all of which are engineered around notions of individual self-improvement and the wider social imperative of ‘knowing thy enemy’ (Harb and Leenders 2005). The semiotic malleability of the term ‘resistance’ ensures that it can be encountered across its mediating infrastructure, and brought into being through any of the identity poles Hizbullah lays claim to, whether these be Muslim, Shia, Lebanese, or Arab. As such it can be performed (and resisted) through personal tastes and behavioral norms such as dress sense or leisure choices (Deeb and Harb 2013); while as a discourse formation it is also material- ized, and endowed with further resonance through the movement’s extensive social welfare programs, all of which are framed through the same constella- tion of meanings. In light of the absence of an effective Lebanese state, the scale of these services is matched by their sophistication; these range from the provision of rudimentary material aid to rural development programs (Palmer Harik 2004), vocational training schemes (Fawaz 2005), micro-finance initiatives, and even include a vast education network that schooled some 25,000 students in 2005 (Le Thomas 2010). Yet while these all help situate the family and the individual in an ostensibly organic web of solidarity, they also serve as components of a disciplinary apparatus through which the movement further blurs the boundary between public and private settings (Fawaz 2005). Often, these programs are characterized by the rigorous behavioral criteria that applicants for welfare must meet in order to qualify for support, and serve as a means of surveillance that sustains Hizbullah’s panoptic control over its areas of autonomy. These, in turn, can encourage constituents to enter into a clientelist relationship with the party and perform public expressions of solidarity in order to improve their material condition. The resonance of this all-encompassing project rests heavily on its claim to represent an epistemological struggle against the hegemony of western culture and the spiritual malaise of secular liberalism. Yet though the rhetoric of collective empowerment and the utilization of Shia cultural capital dress such a ‘methodology’ in a certain emancipatory garb while Hizbullah’s important redistributive programs project its philanthropic nature, resistance is still underpinned by mechanisms of domination and a perception of the popula- tion as a resource to be controlled for political ends determined exclusively by the party elite. As Walid El-Houri highlights, this is enabled in part by how

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded from 10 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access eulogies for the resistance 279

‘resistance’ serves as an ‘empty signifier’ that obscures its direct object, renders ambiguous its more foundational meaning, and thus functions to ‘hide its contingency’ (El-Houri 2012: 51–56). Semantically, the concept annuls time and space, helps to convey an appearance of ideological continuity, papering over its internal contradictions, and seemingly connects Hizbullah’s support base with the meta-narratives of oppression that mark Shia heritage.

Speaking for Hizbullah: Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah

While it must be acknowledged that resistance is rooted in a wider dispositif and reproduced or resisted performatively throughout everyday life, official discourse still provides valuable and readily available insight into the con- trivances of elites as they seek to engineer it as a broader discourse formation around the prevailing material-ideational landscape. The data used for the critical discourse analysis (cda) here draws from three eulogies delivered by Hizbullah’s secretary-general, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, during public commemorations for high-profile martyrs. These highly emotive settings provide complex ‘situational configurations’ (Halliday 1990: 38) in which to discursively construct the prevailing conflict in Syria, particularly because they are paradox- ically couched in affects of loss and violence, which also invoke the rich sym- bolism of martyrdom and jihad as ritualized practice in a Shia cultural heritage. While the sample used here rests on several implicit assumptions about the extent to which Nasrallah represents Hizbullah as a whole, these are assuaged somewhat by his iconic status and the nuanced nature of his charismatic authority. These are clear reflections of the political and military successes the movement as a whole has enjoyed under his 25-year leadership. Moreover, while he does not possess the elevated status of marjaʿ, Nasrallah’s clerical training and the unwavering legitimacy he is invested with from the wilayat- i faqih, Ayatollah Khamanei, imbues him with a further religious authority. Both are counterbalanced, however, by the populist credentials of the ‘Sayyed’, particularly his ascetic appearance and regular demonstrations of solidarity and equality with the party’s followers. Dina Matar suggests that Nasrallah has come to be identified among Hizbullah’s base as not only ‘patriarchal’, but also ‘intimate’, ‘credible’, ‘one of us’; thus, he reflects a form of ‘mediated charisma’ that functions to narrow the Durkheimian gap between the sacred and profane (Matar 2009: 148–150). This was most notably underscored by the martyrdom of his son Hadi in an operation against Israeli forces in 1997—a loss that helped situate him among the many families of the movement’s supporters who have suffered and sacrificed similarly.

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded 10(2017) from Brill.com09/30/2021 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access 280 joy

I use critical discourse analysis here to explore the process by which discourse is constituted through language use, the rationalization of certain forms of social practice and to determine how patterns of domination come to appear as natural. As such, I approach the analysis of Nasrallah’s conflict narratives through two often-overlapping analytical frameworks. First, the analysis is informed by the socio-psychological focus of Teun van Dijk (1997, 2001, 2006), who argues for triangulating discourse, cognition and society, thereby empha- sizing the importance of mental constructs and models, as well as the manipulation of short and long-term memory. Despite the complexities of the cognitive theory that underpins many of his studies, van Dijk’s understanding of ‘linguistic markers’ provides a valuable multidisciplinary toolkit; this encourages us to pay attention to lexical systems, syntactic forms, the use of rhetorical figures, as well as employment of hyperbole, euphemism, metonymy and metaphor. Second, there is a focus on broader ‘interaction strategies’, such as positive or negative representations for in or out-groups, macro speech acts, including the making of and defense against accusations, broader topic selection, and the use of local speech acts to sustain more ‘global’ statements (van Dijk 1997: 23–37). This micro-level approach is counterbalanced by James Paul Gee’s call for a more holistic exploration of context-specific ‘discourse models’—understood as the ‘largely unconscious theories we hold that help us to make sense of texts and the world’ (Gee 2005: 54). Such an appreciation facilitates the study of the general forms of activity that are undertaken in both talk and text. Accordingly, as he asserts, it is necessary to consider cultural systems to help situate certain meanings within distinctive social identities. Gee defines his analytical framework as the ‘seven building tasks of language’ (2005: 100– 104), and although, like van Dijk, this framework includes the study of topic selection and identity construction, it also encourages exploring the allocation of significance, how connections and social relationships are articulated, and it places greater emphasis on systems of signs and symbols within which language use operates. The eulogies examined in this study were delivered in highly choreographed public occasions held in Dahiyeh, the southern suburbs of Beirut where Hizbul- lah enjoys dominance. For security reasons Nasrallah spoke via television address on a giant screen set against a carefully stylized stage, simultaneously broadcast live on Al Manar. The first eulogy was delivered in December 2013, two weeks after the assassination of the commander and purported chief of military procurement Hassan al-Laqqis, who was gunned down by an uniden- tified gunman outside his house in the Hadath district of the Beirut. While Hizbullah asserts that Israel was to blame for this assassination, the Lebanese

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded from 10 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access eulogies for the resistance 281

Sunni militant group Ahrar al-Sunna Brigade (that has since pledged allegiance to Islamic State) claimed credit for the attack. The second eulogy I analyze followed a January 2015 attack by an Israeli helicopter gunship on a convoy traveling through the Quneitra province of southern Syria; it resulted in the martyrdom of eight resistance fighters and an accompanying Iranian general. Significantly, one of these figures was Jihad Mughaniyeh, whose father Imad is also an iconic martyr-figure in resistance discourse. The final address I explore in this study was delivered in May 2016, a week after the death of Mustafa Badreddine, a senior military leader who was killed in an explosion in the out- skirts of Damascus—the circumstances of which remain unclear. A longstand- ing central figure in Hizbullah’s security apparatus, in 2011 Badreddine was indicted and tried in absentia by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (stl) over his alleged involvement in the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. In the days following his death the party publicly accused Israel of being behind the attack; they later retracted this, and were also forced to deal with widespread global media allegations regarding Badreddine’s purported secret life as a Christian jeweler in the coastal town of Jounieh, where it is claimed that he kept a string of mistresses and lived a life of luxury.

The Mise-en-Scène of Continuous Conflict

Since the beginning of the Syrian uprising there has been a growing impression across much of the wider Arab community that Hizbullah has been ‘overtaken by the people it always seemed to represent’ (El-Houri 2012: 200). The eulogies I analyze here demonstrate that the employment of specific framing strategies and language devices in Nasrallah’s conflict narratives work directly to mitigate this perception. Central to this are his efforts to re-situate Hizbullah as the vanguard of the same tireless struggle against oppression and humiliation, and thereby obscure any suggestion that its involvement on the side of the Assad regime represents an ideological departure, or that issues of social justice and empowerment catalyze the revolution in Syria. Discursively, this is undertaken through the projection of a mise-en-scène of conflict informed by the same Manichean worldview that has long structured Hizbullah’s articulation of resistance, which simultaneously serves to amplify the character of the imminent threat, but also renders it far more comprehen- sible for his audience as it conforms to shared ‘schematic structures’ rooted in social cognition of Hizbullah’s constituents (van Dijk 2006: 367). Accordingly, Nasrallah can be seen to place great emphasis on both the singularity and the familiarity of the conflict:

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded 10(2017) from Brill.com09/30/2021 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access 282 joy

The battle is one, the enemy is one, and the scheme is the same. nasrallah 2016

They [the us/Israel] founded the Takfiri groups such as ‘isil’, Nusra, and other groups. The core is one; the mind is one; the nature is one. They do not differ from one another. nasrallah 2016

The group of Quneitra martyrs expresses the unity of the cause, the unity of fate, and the unity of the battle. nasrallah 2015

We can identify Nasrallah’s rhetorical strategy by demarcating specific identity groups in these conflict narratives, and in turn, observe Nasrallah’s situation of agency. For example, Hizbullah has long-positioned its counter-hegemonic struggle against a ‘us-Israeli’ colonial project, but since the beginning of the Syrian conflict, this has been extended, initially to a ‘us-Israeli-Takfiri’ axis, and now, in the Badreddine address, at a time when tensions in the Gulf monar- chy are increasingly fraught, it is waged against an even more cumbersome ‘us, Israeli, Takfiri, Saudi scheme’ (Nasrallah 2016). As Matar notes (2010), crises provide valuable contexts through which to restructure identity groups and undertake such strategies of inclusion and exclusion. Just as Nasrallah articulates a specific out-group, he also makes wider associational claims that work to endow Hizbullah with the symbolic capital to speak for a broader community on whose behalf it seemingly acts. In doing so, he once more implicitly amplifies the nature of the prevailing threat, but also couches the movement in a larger web of association from which it draws greater legitimation. As the party has undertaken its ‘Lebanonization’ over recent decades, such a discursive strategy has become increasingly typical; this is evident in Nas- rallah’s eulogy for al-Laqqis. In the address, he celebrated Lebanese national sovereignty, the ‘safety belt’ of its army, and claims to champion religious and political pluralism amid what is represented as a domestic environment of intolerance and sectarian hostility (Nasrallah 2013). This strategy is also undertaken with the movement’s broader audiences in mind, particularly given the purportedly transnational ideals of Hizbullah’s resistance project. During the commemorations for the Quneitra martyrs, for example, Nasrallah listed the expressions of sympathy and solidarity received from as far afield as Maurita- nia and Pakistan. Moreover, his attacks on other Arab states reveal his efforts to tie the resistance to a purported Arab civilizational identity, one set apart from the ‘so-called Arabs’ referenced in his eulogy for Badreddine:

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded from 10 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access eulogies for the resistance 283

Some exaggerate and say there are no Arabs. Well, no, there are Arabs; rather, there is no Arab League. In fact, those who are steadfast and confront this challenge in Palestine, in Lebanon, in Syria, and in the neighbouring countries are indeed Arabs. They are the children of the region and the peoples of the region. nasrallah 2015

In both its dynamics and its scale, the prevailing conflict conforms to the internal logic of resistance discourse, which enables it to draw on the resources of this culture of communication and thereby convey an impression of continuity. In doing so it also works toward the legitimation of Hizbullah’s involvement in Syria, through a process of crisis transference in which both Lebanon and the universal ethical framework of the resistance are repositioned at the epicenter of the conflict. Given that the semantic resonance of resistance depends heavily on the constant specter of oppression, the conflict subsequently becomes ‘agentalized’ (Van Leeuwen 1995: 96) through the articulation of a condition of victimhood that sustains the dichotomizing logic of Hizbullah’s all-encompassing oppressor-oppressed moral binarism. Following the death of Hassan al-Laqqis in December 2013, for example, Nasrallah asserted that his martyrdom ‘expresses a state we’ve been living [in] for a long time. I call it “the state of paying the price”’ (Nasrallah 2013). While in one regard he claims that this is founded on Hizbullah’s victories over Israel in 2000 and 2006, he also ties this to the additional claim that Hizbul- lah is now a specific target because of its purported ideological consistency, which is manifested most immediately in its active involvement in the Syr- ian conflict: ‘We are paying the price for our continuous adherence to the cause of the resistance, our persistence in the resistance position’ (Nasrallah 2013). The pathos of victimhood is nurtured further by Nasrallah’s representation of a wider discursive arena marked by an ever-growing domestic and regional hostility toward the party. In efforts that reflect Ranciere’s (2004) notion of the ‘distribution of the sensible’, Hizbullah increasingly seeks to articulate imminent and immanent threats to the resistance in new realms as part of efforts to shape the perceptive landscape of its constituents. This is epitomized by its establishment of the Centre for Soft War Studies,1 which is designed to counter what it portrays as growing forms of epistemic violence and to foreclose popular exposure to certain cultural products. The Centre disseminates its own

1 Centre for Soft War Studies: http://www.softwar-lb.org/.

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded 10(2017) from Brill.com09/30/2021 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access 284 joy research and that of other media organizations on topics such as the damaging effects of social media and how Disney depictions of princesses are harmful to girls. The idea of a ‘Soft War’, conceptualized around Joseph Nye’s (2004) understanding of soft power, is situated at the level of the individual in a private set- ting, and represents Hizbullah’s efforts to further demarcate and police exposure to the extraneous apparatuses of interpellation and thereby construct resistance as a wider aesthetic order. In each of the addresses explored here, we can discern this preoccupation as Nasrallah seeks to discredit competing conflict narratives by positing them as an epistemic and normative component of the same Manichean conflict in which his audience now find themselves. ‘The machine’, he asserts in his eulogy for Badreddine, is working against the resistance and Hizbullah ‘to distort their image, esteem, morals, and the faith of their masses’ through a ‘global media siege’, that once again seeks the subju- gation and disempowerment of the community—‘we are not allowed to talk’ (Nasrallah 2016). In reference to speculation about the extent of Hizbullah’s losses in Syria by the end of 2013, Nasrallah also sought to convey the perception of an immanent ‘psychological war’ that Hizbullah has encountered throughout the wider discursive arena—a war waged to cast ‘tension, doubt, suspicion, or a state of anger amid the masses of the Resistance … they are trying to man- ufacture this atmosphere’ (Nasrallah 2013). Engagement with such discourse is subsequently represented as a subversive practice and a deviant form of participation in this all-encompassing existential conflict.

Mobilizing Martyrdom, Mobilizing Morality

Given the centrality of Husayn’s martyrdom to Shia identity, what Hamid Dabashi (2011) subsequently terms the ‘Karbala complex’, commemorations such as these undoubtedly provide valuable contexts in which resistance can resonate more deeply as both a culture of communication and a ‘methodology’, while simultaneously foregrounding a shared cultural history of persecution against which the successes of Hizbullah are implicitly indexed. ‘Mediating upon death’ as Amira Mittermaier notes, ‘helps construct pious lives,’ and, as such, is ‘closely tied to projects of ethical self-cultivation … necessary to the formation and sensibilities that undergird correct conduct’ (Mittermaier 2015: 590–591). With reference to Hizbullah’s ongoing involvement in Syria, these eulogies can be seen as important vehicles by which to sustain martyrdom as a form of Girardian ‘mimetic desire’ (1976), and also to rationalize more mundane and collective forms of social practice that maintain existing power

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded from 10 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access eulogies for the resistance 285 relations. In the context of a conflict framed around an ethical dualism, such performative acts ultimately invoke questions about how to justify such sacrifice, while they simultaneously suppress any space for neutrality or indiffer- ence (Stocchetti 2007). This strategy is not straightforward though. However resonant the motif of martyrdom may be in political Shii thought on revolution, these emotive contexts are still marked by the affects of violence and loss. Nasrallah is evidently aware that this requires some form of negotiation, as reflected by how, at the beginning of each address, he imparts both his ‘consolations’ and ‘congratula- tions’ to the respective families ‘for these dear ones receiving the sublime divine award’ (Nasrallah 2015). The metaphors of ‘blood’ and ‘tears’—both vividly material themes in Shia cultural heritage—appear in each eulogy. In addition, collective practices of mourning are frequently referenced, and Nasrallah himself admits that following the death of the Quneitra martyrs he cried, albeit off camera. Yet, martyrdom, as a ‘good ending’ (Nasrallah 2013), a ‘great honour’ (Nasrallah 2015), and ‘the passion of every resistance fighter and every leader’ (Nasrallah 2016), is still discursively constructed and affirmed as an object of desire. In order to exploit the mobilizing capacity of these deaths, a level of gener- alization is required that makes it a more replicable framework of aspiration among his audience. As Mittermaier (2015) notes, such forms of sacrifice raise complex issues regarding intentionality, agency, and choice, all of which are blurred—and the subject erased—through its representation in the genre of martyrdom. This is not lost on Nasrallah, whose eulogies typically relegate the memorialization of specific identities behind a more generic elaboration on the virtues of the practice, particularly in the case of the Quneitra martyrs given their numbers. The only exception to this is found in his depiction of Badreddine, which came in light of allegations over a private life at odds with resistance culture. Otherwise, this strategy is epitomized in the eulogy for al- Laqqis, in which Nasrallah claims that in life these ‘personalities’ had ‘fused, melted, and dissolved in this Resistance and in this procession’ (Nasrallah 2013). The resistance therefore comes to embody these identities, and to serve it is to justify their sacrifice. A central process in countering the immobilizing effects of violence and loss lies in ensuring that martyrdom is comprehended as a fundamentally productive practice, the value of which far exceeds the symbolic dimensions of ritualized imitation. The necessity of such action is only heightened by the ever- growing number of young Shii militants who have died in Syria in defense of the Assad regime. In a society already saturated with motifs of death and sacrifice, its growing ubiquity runs the risk of suffering the same fate as that identified by

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded 10(2017) from Brill.com09/30/2021 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access 286 joy

Lori Allen, who, in her study of martyr funerals during the second Palestinian intifada, speaks of the ‘banalization of death and resistance’ (Allen 2006: 126) and the decline of their ideological resonance given their routinized nature and political exploitation. Each eulogy in this study demonstrates efforts to frame these deaths as productive; nonetheless these are almost exclusively articulated through their respective symbolics. In Nasrallah’s address after the death of Mustafa Badreddine, for example, he notes that the blood of ‘senior martyr-leaders’ provides a ‘thrust forward, a new spirit, a new responsibility, a new challenge, and a new zeal’ (Nasrallah 2016). Similarly, his eulogy for the Quneitra martyrs frames this as, the ‘first achievement made by the blood of the martyrs’; it brought about an Israeli ‘recognition of the value, capability, and readiness of the Resistance’ given its resulting anxiety over a Hizbullah retali- ation that led to a large-scale military mobilization in the days after its attack (Nasrallah 2015). Beyond justifying martyrdom in this manner, Nasrallah also establishes it in a way that articulates a wider moral universe around the practice, and situ- ates his audience therein. He pursues this by exploiting the affective contexts of mourning in order to project a sense of collective obligation and in turn mobilize the constituency in ways that seemingly fulfill this sense of duty. Nas- rallah’s references, in each eulogy, to the immediate families of martyrs serve as a valuable illustration of this, as does his self-appointed authority to speak for them. Following the assassination of Hassan al-Laqqis, Nasrallah claimed that ‘what consoles the families of martyrs and the souls of the martyrs is that their achievements are reserved, guarded, and being developed too’ by those ‘who are loyal to their oaths and promises’. Later in the same eulogy this is undertaken more explicitly: ‘You visit the families of the martyrs … “Oh Allah, accept this sacrifice that we have offered to you.” Is this not the logic of the families of martyrs?’ (Nasrallah 2013). In these addresses, Nasrallah expands further on the family and its associ- ated system of meaning. After Badreddine’s martyrdom he refers to himself and his audience as ‘partners with the parents in consolation’,given that he was ‘the son of his small family and the son of his big family.’With regard to the Quneitra martyrs, he notes how many of the group were second- or third-generation martyrs for the resistance—‘the culture of our fathers, ancestors, children and grandchildren.With their martyrdom, our children are expressing this concept’ (Nasrallah 2015). These discursive strategies therefore work to sustain a wider societal expectation even across temporal boundaries, and in doing so they cite a specific identity construct that confers recognition on the subject. With reference to the Quneitra martyrs, Nasrallah insists that ‘only processions of martyrs make victories. Processions of martyrs have already made victories, and they

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded from 10 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access eulogies for the resistance 287 will make more and more victories’ (Nasrallah 2015). In addressing al-Laqqis and other ‘martyr-leaders’,Nasrallah invokes this obligation with the illocution- ary force of a ‘promise’: ‘You, our dear leaders, have achieved your goals, and we promise that we will carry on moving in our path and we will never alter should the horizons fall heavily to earth’ (Nasrallah 2013). Such a moral universe and its accompanying web of obligation is elaborated as a means of establishing a more rigid demarcation of inclusion/exclusion, and rationalizing both individual and more collective forms of sacrifice. Yet in confronting the ‘danger’ facing the resistance, Nasrallah rhetorically mobilizes the need for restraint and order among his constituents, rather than mobilizing more direct action, and calls on them to exercise ‘tolerance and patience’ for which ‘all of us must assume responsibility’ (Nasrallah 2015). Similarly, ‘revenge’ for the death of Badreddine can only be achieved through the ambiguous process of ‘guarding the Islamic Resistance and protecting it and developing it’ (Nasrallah 2016). While this is indicative of Hizbullah’s aversion to a wider conflict at the time, it also sheds light on how the party constructs an important disciplinary foundation through which it can actively marshal forms of civic action later, when these are appropriate. Badreddine’s death, for example, coincided with municipal elections across much of Lebanon, and thereby provided a valuable frame through which to exploit this ‘mobilized docility’ for the very prosaic goals of the Resistance:

Before wrapping up my speech with a final word on Sayyed Mustafa … and our obligation towards his blood, I want to say a word which may be way off topic. However, since there are municipal elections in the South on Sunday, I have a couple of words to say. We call for the highest level of participation in the South! Brothers and sisters! Our people! Our Resistance fighters and wounded fighters! Even the wounded are invited to go in their wheelchairs before the eyes of the cameras to vote to address the world with their message. nasrallah 2016

These commands obscure the power dynamics that convey the impression that his ‘message’ is that of his constituents, rather than one shaped exclusively by the party’s elites, and that it is his audience and supporters as individuals who will be seen by a global audience to be empowered. Such a strategy corrobo- rates what Joseph Alagha identifies as the implicit invocation of taklif al-shariʿa (religio-legal obligation) when participating in Lebanon’s consociation demo- cratic processes. Here voting ‘becomes an act of obedience … rather than an expression of free political will’ (Alagha 2006: 212); it demonstrates the politi-

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded 10(2017) from Brill.com09/30/2021 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access 288 joy cal opportunism with which the movement perceives the memorialization of martyrs and its mobilizing potential.

Conclusion

In light of recent analyses of the political utility of crises, I have sought to determine whether Nasrallah’s representations of the prevailing Syrian conflict reveal a similar form of instrumentalization, and if Hizbullah’s construction and presentation of a ‘crisis imaginary’ may help explain the durability of its power base. Using critical discourse analysis of the high-profile eulogies delivered by the movement’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, I argue that we can identify two discursive strategies that work to uphold Hizbullah’s domination over its constituency. These strategies involve situating the ongoing conflict as a component of a broader timeless Manichean struggle, not least by unit- ing these individual deaths with a common thread despite their circumstantial variance. In doing so, its military involvement in Syria is rendered as faithful to the internal logic of resistance; it conveys the discursive impression of continuity, while simultaneously Hizbullah’s historic successes are implicitly indexed given that the Syrian conflict comes to be positioned on the very same unilinear trajectory upon which this counter-hegemonic struggle is discursively situated. Though Nasrallah actively intensifies the nature of the threat facing his audience, its mitigation is always represented as ‘in hand’, so as to underscore the redemptive potential of this ethical system. Consequently, he frames support and sacrifice for Hizbullah not only as the most viable means of escaping the affective state of crisis, but ultimately as a way to contribute to the same timeless utopian project for which ranks of martyrs had previously given their lives. Such a conflict narrative ultimately enables Nasrallah to undertake the discursive manipulation of these martyr commemorations as specific situational configurations through which to sustain the practice as a form of ‘mimetic desire’, and to present the basis of a moral obligation for wider collective sacrifice. Hizbullah’s saturation of society with motifs of death and violence has not led yet to its ‘banalization’ in such a way that it incites resistance to the resistance from within the Shii community. Yet, as martyrdom is exploited for prosaic goals such as municipal elections—as demonstrated in the addresses explored in this study—and as long as the numbers of casualties in Syria con- tinue to increase, it will be interesting to explore how the aesthetic monopo- lization of Hizbullah’s martyr frame is challenged. New media formats increasingly render practices of memorialization more commonplace and heteroglos- sic. Mourners are now better able to digitally preserve individual identities

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded from 10 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access eulogies for the resistance 289 typically subsumed and obscured in cultural practices of resistance, and in communicating a sense of loss they can more readily reach wider audiences and provide a valuable foundation for the development of networked publics within which new understandings of martyrdom, resistance, and their relationships with Hizbullah can be negotiated further. Securitization theory highlights the ways in which modern governments increasingly exploit the political utility of crisis, particularly in order to instill disciplinary technologies among populations. Yet in light of Michel Foucault’s assertion that power and resistance represent two sides of the same coin, for Hizbullah’s resistance ideology to retain its efficacy in mobilizing the constituency—rendering it docile and binding it to incumbent elites—it is, to some extent, reliant on the constant specter of domination, oppression and threat, ‘at least as an icon, as a representation of something else or as a fetish, a visible object connected to a much broader, frightening and partially invisible reality’ (Stocchetti 2007: 237). As Didier Bigo (2002) and Matt McDonald (2008) note, securitization is still typically conceptualized through elite discourse and in specific moments, rather than in the more quotidian rhythms of everyday life. If we are to develop a more nuanced understanding of Hizbullah’s relationship with the notion of crisis, and the movement’s mobilization of other forms of affect in a range of comparable discursive repertoires, a closer analysis of other modes of social performance is necessary, and with it, consideration of how these also work toward the sacralization of resistance and its disciplinary power across diverse settings and through a variety of media.

References

Abboud, Samer N. and Benjamin J. Muller (2012). Rethinking Hizballah: Legitimacy, Authority, Violence. London: Routledge. Agamben, Giorgio (2005). State of Exception. London: University of Chicago Press. Alagha, Joseph (2006). The Shifts in Hizbullah’s Ideology: Religious Ideology, Political Ideology and Political Program. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Allen, Lori A. (2006). The Polyvalent Politics of Martyr Commemorations in the Pales- tinian Intifada. History & Memory (18) 2: 107–138. Alshaer, Atef (2008). Towards a Theory of Culture of Communication: The Fixed and the Dynamic in Hamas’ Communicated Discourse. Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication (1) 2: 101–121. Austin, J.L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon. Balzacq, Thierry (2010). Constructivism and Securitization Studies. In Myriam Dunn

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded 10(2017) from Brill.com09/30/2021 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access 290 joy

Cavelty and Thierry Balzacq (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Security Studies, pp. 56–72. Abingdon: Routledge. Bigo, Didier (2002). Security and Immigration: Toward a Critique of the Governmen- tality of Unease. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 27:63–92. Burr, Vivien (2007). Social Constructionism. London: Routledge. Centre for Soft War Studies (2016). What You Don’t Know About the Zionist Entity and Social Networks. Centre for SoftWar Studies. Available online: http://www.softwar-lb .org/article.php?id=4515&cid=289&catidval=0. Accessed 6 August 2016. Chilton, Paul (2004). Analyzing Political Discourse: Theory and Practice. London: Rout- ledge. Crary, Jonathan (1989). Spectacle, Attention, Counter-Memory. In October 50: 96–107. Crooke, Alastair (2009). Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution. London: Pluto Press. Dabashi, Hamid (2011). Shiʾism: A Religion of Protest. London: Belknap. Daher, Joseph (2016). Reassessing Hizbullah’s Socioeconomic Policies in Lebanon. In Middle East Journal (70) 3: 399–418. Deeb, Lara (2006). An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shiʾi Lebanon. Oxford: Princeton University Press. Deeb, Lara and Mona Harb (2013). Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shiʾite South Beirut. Woodstock: Princeton University Press. Edelman, Murray (1988). Constructing the Political Spectacle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. El-Hosseini, Rola (2008). Resistance, Jihad and Martyrdom in Contemporary Lebanese Shiʾi Discourse. In Middle East Journal (62) 3: 399–414. El-Houri, Walid (2012). The Meaning of Resistance: Hezbollah’s Media Strategies and the Articulation of a People. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Fairclough, Norman (2001). The Discourse of New Labour: Critical Discourse Analysis. In Margaret Wetherell, Stephanie Taylor and Simon Yates (eds.), Discourse as Data: A Guide for Analysis, pp. 229–266. London: Sage. Fawaz, Mona (2005). Agency and Ideology in Community Services: Islamic ngos in A Southern Suburb of Beirut. In Sarah Ben Nefissa, Nabil Abd al-Fattah, Sari Hanafi and Carlos Milani (eds.), ngos and Governance in the Arab World, pp. 229–255. New York: American University of Cairo Press. Ferrari, Federica (2007). Metaphor at Work in the Analysis of Political Discourse: Investigating a ‘Preventative War’ Persuasion Strategy. In Discourse Society (18) 5: 603–625. Flanigan, Shawn Theresa and Mounah Abdel-Samad (2009). Hezbollah’s Social Jihad: Non-Profits as Resistance Movements. Middle East Policy (16) 2:122–137. Girard, Rene (1976). Deceit, Desire and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure. London: John Hopkins University Press.

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded from 10 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access eulogies for the resistance 291

Grint, Keith (2005). Problems, Problems, Problems: The Social Construction of ‘Lead- ership.’Human Relations 58: 1467–1494. Halliday, Michael A.K. and Ruqaiya Hassan (1990). Language, Context, andText: Aspects of Language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harb, Mona and Reinoud Leenders (2005). Know Thy Enemy: Hizbullah, ‘Terrorism’, and the Politics of Perception. Third World Quarterly (26) 1: 173–197. Huffington Post Arabia (2016). Warning … Disney Depictions of Princesses are Harmful to Girls. Huffington Post Arabia. Available online: http://www.huffpostarabi.com/ 2016/06/28/story_n_10706238.html. Accessed 8 June 2017. Isin, Engin (2004). The Neurotic Citizen. Citizenship Studies (8) 3: 217–235. Kerr, Ron (2008). Discourse and Leadership: Using the Paradigm of the Permanent State of Emergency. Critical Discourse Studies (5) 3: 201–216. Khatib, Lina (2013). Image Politics in the Middle East: The Role of the Visual in Political Struggle. London: I.B. Tauris. Khatib, Lina, Dina Matar and Atef Alshaer (2014). The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication. London: Hurst & Co. Lakoff, George (1991). Metaphor and War: The Metaphor System Used to Justify War in the Gulf. Journal of Urban and Cultural Studies (2) 1: 25–32. Le Thomas, Catherine (2010). Socialization Agencies and Party Dynamics: Functions and Uses of Hizballah Schools in Lebanon. In Myriam Catusse and Karam Karam (eds.), Returning to Political Parties? Partisan Logic and Political Transformation in the Arab World, pp. 217–249. Beirut: Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies. Massumi, Brian (2010) The Future Birth of Affective Fact: The Political Ontology of Threat. In Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (eds.), The Affect Theory Reader, pp. 53–70. Durham, nc: Duke University Press. Matar, Dina (2010). Performance, Language and Power: Nasrallah’s Mediated Charisma. In Reem Bassiouney (ed.), Arabic and the Media: Linguistic Analyses and Applica- tions, pp. 141–158. Leiden: Brill. McDonald, Matt (2008). Securitization and the Construction of Security. European Journal of International Relations (14) 4: 563–587. Meyer, Michael and Ruth Wodak (2002). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. Lon- don: Sage. Mitchell, Timothy (1991). The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics. American Political Science Review (85) 1: 77–96. Mittermaier, Amira (2015). Death and Martyrdom in the Arab Uprisings: An Introduc- tion. Ethnos (80) 5: 583–604. Nasrallah, Sayyed Hassan (2013). Address in Honour of Martyr-Leader Hassan al-Laqqis. Al-Ahed. Available online: http://www.english.alahednews.com.lb/essaydetails.php ?eid=25059&cid=454#.V6XPNZN96b9. Accessed 9 July 2016. Nasrallah, Sayyed Hassan (2015). Address in Honour of the Quneitra Martyrs. Al-Ahed.

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded 10(2017) from Brill.com09/30/2021 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access 292 joy

30 January 2015. Available online: http://www.english.alahednews.com.lb/ essaydetails.php?eid=28563&cid=562#.V6XPjJN96b9. 5 July 2016. Nasrallah, Sayyed Hassan (2016). Address in Honour of Martyr-Leader Mustafa Badred- dine. Al-Ahed. 20 May 2016. Available online: http://www.english.alahednews.com .lb/essaydetails.php?eid=33478&cid=570#.V6XPupN96b9. Accessed 6 July 2016. Noe, Nicholas (2007). Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. London: Verso. Nye, Joseph (2004). Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs. Nyers, Peter (2004). What’s Left of Citizenship? Citizenship Studies (8) 3: 203–215. Ong, Ahiwa (2006). Neo-Liberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sover- eignty. Durham, nc: Duke University Press. Palmer Harik, Judith (2004). Hezbollah: The Changing Face of Terrorism. London: I.B. Tauris. Ranciere, Jacques (2004). The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. London: Bloomsbury. Sadiki, Larbi (2010). Reframing Resistance and Democracy: Narratives from Hamas and Hizbullah. Democratization (17) 2: 350–376. Sandaran, Shanti C. and Antoon de Rycker (2013). The Political Use of National Crisis: Bush’s Legitimation of the usa Freedom Corps in the Wake of September 11. In Antoon De Rycker and Zuraidah Mohd Don (eds.), Crisis and Discourse: Critical Perspectives, pp. 187–214. London: John Benjamins. Skilling, Peter (2014). Everyday Emergency: Crisis, Unease and Strategy in Contempo- rary Political Discourse. Critical Policy Studies (8) 1: 61–77. Stocchetti, Matteo (2007). The Politics of Fear: A Critical Enquiry into the Role of Violence in 21st Century Politics. In Adam Hodges and Chad Nilep (eds.), Discourse, War and Terrorism, pp. 223–241. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Van Dijk, Teun A. (2001). What is Political Discourse Analysis? In Jan Bloomaert and Chris Bulcaen (ed.), Political Linguistics, pp. 11–52. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Van Dijk, Teun A. (2006) Discourse and Manipulation. Discourse & Society (17) 2: 359– 383. Van Dijk, Teun A. (2015) Critical Discourse Analysis. In D. Tannen, D. Schriffin and H. Hamilton (eds.), Handbook of Discourse Analysis, pp. 466–485. Chichester, uk: Wiley Blackwell. Van Leeuwen,Theo (1995). Representing Social Action. Discourse & Society (6) 1: 81–106.

Middle East Journal of Culture and CommunicationDownloaded from 10 Brill.com09/30/2021 (2017) 272–292 02:45:46PM via free access