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Affective Landscapes: Re-Negotiating the Ordinary in Contemporary Lebanese Cultural Production

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Affective Landscapes: Re-Negotiating the Ordinary in Contemporary Lebanese Cultural Production Affective Landscapes: Re-negotiating the Ordinary in Contemporary Lebanese Cultural Production by Zeina Tarraf A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Department of English and Film Studies University of Alberta © Zeina Tarraf, 2017 Tarraf ii Abstract This dissertation examines contemporary Lebanese cultural production and its shifting relationship to the everyday/ordinary as a site that unfolds in the midst of or in proximity to violence. I argue that attention to the ordinary is an effective mode through which to approach societies, like Lebanon, that are plagued by protracted conflicts. To this end, I advance an investigation of affect across a rich corpus of Lebanese cultural production, including novels, films, memoirs, documentaries, and art, to sidestep the rhetoric of exceptionality that inflects some work in trauma studies, and to illuminate how crisis in Lebanon becomes embedded in quotidian experience. As a result, I move away from centralizing the memory of the Lebanese civil war as the focal referent in studies on Lebanese culture to foreground the present as a dominant framework. Primarily, I thoroughly tease out the relationship between affect and literary form to show how literary works capture the ways the civil war radically reconfigured the contours of everyday life. Next, I turn to postwar films that represent everyday life to explore how the unfinished nature of the past intersects with contemporary oppressions and violences. I then turn to popular cultural productions, which I situate within a larger discursive context, to examine nostalgia as an ordinary affect in the postwar era and as fundamental to structures of belonging forming in the wake of loss. Finally, I think through cultural works that emerged in the wake of former prime minister Rafic Hariri’s assassination and the violent events that followed it. These works, I argue, evoke an understanding of how the violences of this period are profoundly sutured to the everyday. Such attention to the ordinary, as a continuing process of negotiation, ultimately positions me to accentuate the nexus of various temporalities, attunements, and realities that mediates representations wherein the past intersects with the flows and impulses of modernity. Tarraf iii Preface Chapter two of this thesis has been published as “Haunting and the Neoliberal Encounter in Terra Incognita and A Perfect Day” in Cultural Dynamics 29 (1-2): 29-62. Tarraf iv Acknowledgements While the writing of a dissertation often feels like a solitary endeavor, the work that has gone into this thesis has been shaped, inspired, supported, and encouraged by a network of people who were fundamental in allowing me to bring a project of this scope to fruition. I am grateful firstly for the funding I received through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which allowed me to write large portions of this dissertation from Beirut. I would like as well to thank my brilliant and hilarious supervisor, Karyn Ball who in the past five and half years has not only made me think, but made me laugh as well. Though it was often daunting to write for a supervisor whose work I hold in such high regard, I am grateful to her for continuously pushing my thinking forward and helping me sharpen my writing. I am thankful as well to my committee members, Susanne Luhmann, Julie Rak, and Donia Mounsef for their reassurance throughout this process, and their thoughtful and generous engagements with my work. I would also like to express my appreciation to Nat Hurley, who ran the writing workshop in 2014 and offered a space to manage the anxieties that infused the early stages of this dissertation. In the same vein, Teresa Zackodnik and Mark Simpson’s PhD colloquium was crucial in allowing me to navigate the tentative beginnings of this project and to envision its final structure. Thank you in particular to Teresa for gently encouraging us to see the value of discomfort and unsettlement in scholarly pursuits. In Edmonton, there are a few friendships that have been particularly life sustaining for me. Firstly, to my wonderful officemate, Marcelle Kosman, whose positive presence often made the labor of academic work not only bearable, but also enjoyable. I am grateful as well to Helen Frost and Thomas Dessein for their companionship over the past few years. Thank you in Tarraf v particular to Helen for an intellectually stimulating friendship that has enriched my life in and outside the academy. I am deeply indebted to Avi and Orly, my Edmonton family and the warmest household in the city. I will never forget the generosity and openness with which they welcomed me into their life, and that made my time in Edmonton so much more fulfilling. I would like to offer a special acknowledgment to my community of friends from Lebanon and our friendships that have miraculously managed to persist and flourish despite being stretched out across time and space. Thank you to Nadine Haraké, Farah Machlab, Dyala Badran, Issa Kandil, Alexandra De Aristegui, and Lara Kerbaj—our tenacious bonds across the years have inspired my connection to Lebanon and have motivated me to keep working. Thank you, of course, to my parents, Hoda and Charbel for all the sacrifices they have made to ensure the best possible life for us. I thank them for continuing to support me in numerous ways and for allowing me the space to carve out my own path. I am grateful as well to my younger sister, Samar, for never taking my self-doubts seriously, and to my twin sister, Rima, without whom I would be lost: thank you for being my biggest advocate and for always knowing how to make me feel better; it has meant the world to me. And finally I am incredibly grateful to Richard Njeim, who has generously and lovingly shouldered the emotional burden of this project with me from day one, even across oceans and continents. The completion of this dissertation is that much more meaningful because of him. Thank you for making me want to be the best version of myself, and for being an unwavering source of support, solace, and refuge. I love you so much, my calm in the storm. Tarraf vi Table of Contents INTRODUCTION: CONTINUING THE STORY ........................................................................................ 1 THE LEBANESE CIVIL WAR ................................................................................................................................................. 7 CULTURAL PRODUCTION IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR ............................................................................................ 11 Cultural Production as Counter-Hegemonic ........................................................................................................... 12 Cultural Production as Disillusionment .................................................................................................................... 13 The War as Tabula Rasa for Cultural Production ................................................................................................. 14 Moving Beyond the Centrality of the War ................................................................................................................. 15 TRAUMA THEORY AND BEYOND: THEORIZING LEBANESE CULTURAL PRODUCTION ................................. 17 THE TURN TO AFFECT THEORY: PRIVILEGING THE ORDINARY .......................................................................... 25 THEORIES OF THE EVERYDAY ......................................................................................................................................... 29 CHAPTER BREAKDOWN ..................................................................................................................................................... 32 CHAPTER ONE: STRUCTURES OF FEELING IN BEIRUT NIGHTMARES AND BEIRUT FRAGMENTS: RECONFIGURING THE ORDINARY ............................................................................ 36 LITERARY CONTEXT BEFORE THE LEBANESE CIVIL WAR .................................................................................... 39 NEW FORMS AND POLITICAL DISILLUSIONMENT ..................................................................................................... 43 AFFECT IN AESTHETICS ..................................................................................................................................................... 49 BEIRUT NIGHTMARES ........................................................................................................................................................... 67 BEIRUT FRAGMENTS ............................................................................................................................................................. 78 CHAPTER TWO: HAUNTING AND THE NEOLIBERAL ENCOUNTER IN POSTWAR BEIRUT: THE AFFECTIVE TERRAINS OF A PERFECT DAY AND TERRA INCOGNITA ....... 88 MEDIATING AFFECT ........................................................................................................................................................... 97 HAUNTOLOGIES .................................................................................................................................................................. 102 SOLIDERE AND THE CULTURE OF AMNESIA ............................................................................................................. 108 THE AFFECTIVE LANDSCAPES OF A PERFECT DAY AND TERRA INCOGNITA ..................................................
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