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

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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 Eulogies for the Resistance Hizbullah, Syria and the ‘Crisis Imaginary’ 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 sacri- fice 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 contin- ued 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 politi- cal utility of crisis and its instrumentalization. These mechanisms are there- fore increasingly acknowledged as a resource of power that is seen to struc- ture perceptive environments through which to legitimize previously illegiti- mate 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 cri- sis and to explore how these narratives work to sustain Hizbullah’s continued domination over its constituency.In scrutinizing the composition of the rhetor- ical 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 iden- tity and sexuality—we are forced to question how it might be used to sus- tain 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 estab- lishing 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
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