Notes

For G.M.

"I had never been more afraid in my entire life", I said. One had to be crazy not to be afraid in these times, and that still didn't prevent me from walking uptight; I walked so slow, without my usual haste, as if the peril was too imminent to be avoided, and I mustered with difficulty the words of Oswald in King Lear: "And give the letters which thou find'st about me to Edmund earl of Gloucester; seek him out upon the British party: O, untimely death!". It was such a dark morning, the grey entered into your bones, and washed away all the feelings, all the words, all the instances of time; transforming all the gestures into a cruel wholeness, pristine white, suffocating even the water, into itself. An everlasting present, touching you so close, until the point of feeling nothing at all. Even the sounds disappeared, together with the heartbeats, leaving only the screeching noise of the water, as it died by drowning. Every morning looked the same, and as I merged into it, the nightmare seemed so kind in comparison; I trembled with fear, even in the most prosperous summer days.

I had gone to sleep in tears, and the pond of salt water around my ears was lukewarm, in comparison to the morning hours. And yet the same nightmare, full of wrinkles and dried lips, from the travels, departures, displacements. "When will you be home again?", she asked. "I've never been there", seemed to be an answer too laconic in response to such tenderness, as I had never felt in myself. So many hours in the sun, in the carnivals and the processions, conversations like this, smiles like that, but nothing. The cold remained housed in the bones, and had already set up a little coffee table in them, adorned with flowers and magazines. Every morning the same promise: "This will be a delicious breakfast, with eggs and fruits and bacon and marmalade". But then nothing... Not one word. Not even a silence. Then follows the starvation, hopping from ashtrays to coffee cups, and back. There were some small pleasures too, but I couldn't remember them. How joyful were those days, of jolts, at the lyceum, memorizing an ancient Greek song:

"I have not had one word from her

Frankly I wish I were dead
When she left, she wept

A great deal; she said to me, "This parting must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly."

I said, "Go, and be happy
but remember (you know
well) whom you leave shackled by love

"If you forget me, think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared

"all the violet tiaras
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck

"myrrh poured on your head
and on soft mats girls with
all that they most wishes for beside them

"while no voices chanted
choruses without ours,
no woodlot bloomed in spring without song..."

I whispered the lines in the nervous quiet, as I was crossing the small streets and then bridges, the roads and the avenues. I was afraid all the time, and wondered why the rest of the people weren't. Every step in the direction of my non-destination appeared haunted but unoriginal. I watched the cars, the bycicles, the bus lines, tried to remember the hues of colors, the beautiful part of faces, the smells of foodstuffs from the vendor carts. "What if I died?" was the only thing I asked myself. "What if I would fall from the bridge?", that too. "What would be my last words?", and I could imagine everything, the inability to speak, thoughts about this or that friend, perhaps some letters I wish I had written, some succulent dinner still to be had. All of it would be to no avail. "What if he is murderer?", I asked myself about the man that asked me for the time everyday in the corner, even though I never had a watch. "Who can measure time, anyway?", the answer. I would be terrified if people ever ask me why I look unhappy, but am not brave enough to wear sunglasses.

"The I should be banned from all writing", I had wanted to tell to the taxi driver when he asked me what I was staring into with so much attention. "The world, can't you see it?" would be an alternative answer. But I just nodded, as if agreeing with the fatal conclusion that it wasn't worth staring into anything. I had spent the entire night writing the letter, and without washing my face as not to give the impression I was risen from a graveyard, I was impatient to reach the post office. How I was dying to tell something important. In the traffic, staring, remebering Kafka: "Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we are driven out of Paradise; because of impatience we cannot return." There's no work of art worth publishing, I thought, everything is so partial and mediocre, except diaries and letters, things that are not even yours. Signing a letter is one fraction of death. You bring foreclosure on yourself. "Nothing more will come", you're saying. Renunciation, negation, silence... They seem the obvious follow-up.

I read from a book:

"Accompanying these exemplary renunciations of a vocation, each man has declared that he regards his previous achievements in poetry, philosophy, or art as trifling, of no importance. But the choice of permanent silence doesn't negate their work. On the contrary , it imparts retroactively an added power and authority to what was broken off -disavowal of the work becoming a new source of its validity, a certificate of its unchallengeable seriousness... So far as he is serious, the artist is continually tempted to sever the dialogue with an audience. Silence is the furthest extension of that reluctance to communicate, that ambivalence about making contact with the audience which is a leading motif of modern art, with its tireless commitment to the new and/or the esoteric. Silence is the artist's ultimate other-worldly gesture: by silence he frees himself from servile bondage to the world, which appears as patron, client, consumer, antagonist, arbiter and distorter of his work..."

I pause around to open the mailbox. "You're such a talented writer". "Don't ever stop". "You bring words to life". The contemporary equivalent of hate mail. "Should I respond with thank you and tamper my self-pity while I disagree?", but instead of formulating such arrogant question I simply disposed the letters, without even opening them. Sontag's journal always in mind: "Am I deteriorating these last two years -drying out, becoming stern, withdrawn? Seething with resentment. But I don't dare show it. When it mounts, I just absent myself. No image of the future. I wouldn't want to day-dream. What! And get my hopes up? My career is my life as something external to myself, so I report it to others. What is inside is my grief. If I expect as little as possible, I won't be hurt." Since I don't have a career to show for myself, I can only write letters to friends and spend, probably my whole life, wondering what they thought of them. I guess letter serve the function of secret treaties, conspiracies, pacts and peace agreements. Only in my head.

Amputated consciousness. There are only two forms of absolute consciousness with somebody else, either absolute language or absolute silence, but why always absolute language has only produced absolute silence? What is the point of thinking or of art if the absolute doesn't exist? This question however has no correlation in nature, and paradoxical as it might seem, the absolute has never existed in composition, symmetry, rhythm. Somehow the question itself would seem immature to philosophers. Who could bear the absolute? But the fear grows bigger, bigger than life itself and becomes its replacement. Every stare, every word, every evasion, every silence, a humongous knife entering your throat, cancelling all speech, rendering the soul inept. This is what eternity and the absolute mean - ineptitude, inability to move, fear and more fear, time crushing your chest against itself. Being scorched by the nearness. Cast into the fire. There's no love, or feelings at all, only fear, and the irresistible need to withdraw, to resist, to silence up and destroy. The urge...

But the nightmares return... And save you... And keep the language alive, even when he's not there...

"Wohl dem, der keine Heimat hat, er sieht sie noch im Traum" -Arendt
(Lucky him, who has no home, he still sees it in his dreams)

Graffiti in Beirut

First published on BIKYAMASR

“The history of art is a sequence of successful transgressions.” With this statement, Susan Sontag summed up in 1966 the mood that would define the next half century of art. She speaks about modern art’s chronic habit of displeasing, provoking and frustrating the audience, in a gesture characterized by obliterating the selfsame audience or making it either voyeuristic or silent. “Traditional art invites a look. Art that is silent engenders a stare”.

The ascent of photography and cinema to the category of art has significantly contributed to the culture of “staring”, and placed severe limitations on the contemplation that traditional art demanded. “Staring” however is more ambitious than it seems and less ostentatiously advances itself as more. The attention once required by art is replaced by a “total experience” as films and video-installations seem to confirm.

As these shifts occur, so does the geography of art shift into non-traditional places. Nikos Papastergiadis writes: “Thinking about the place of art is not just a debate over the line that is drawn between local, national and global contexts. It also involves an examination of the structures that confer authority and value to art. In the transition from cathedral, to gallery and then to the streets of everyday life, it is not only the place but also the authority of art that has undergone radical transformation.”

Graffiti – together with performance – is one of those artistic practices that belong in both transformations of the place of art, in terms of geography and authority. The practice born in Philadelphia in the 1960’s with the now canonical names of Cornbread and Cool Earl, spread quickly to the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. Already in 1971 graffiti writer TAKI 183 had made it to a New York Times article.

What follows from there is a long list of trends, writers, styles and a never-ending conquest of the public space by graffiti, first in the US, followed by the Netherlands and then the world over. Already in the 1980’s there was something of a decline in the graffiti culture in the West as it became fraught with violence together with the hip-hop and punk scenes and faced with legislation, but far from a terminal end, it would only begin a new larger chapter.

Since then graffiti has been an established as a “genre” of political, social and cultural communication. We’re not dealing here only with political activism and social messages, but also with street advertisements, music culture and lastly, stencils and Krylon have also become part of the repertory of techniques to be mastered in art schools the world over, but the place of graffiti in the canon of art remains very difficult to pin down.

The use of graffiti in art isn’t limited only to celebrity graffiti artists such as Bansky, but can be seen also in mainstream practicing artist, of which Andy Warhol of only one of many examples. In the age of mechanical reproduction of artworks, it would seem as if the criteria to judge artworks such as graffiti shouldn’t differ much from the one applied on drawing and painting, but the place graffiti occupies in the public space blurs the distinctions.

Beirut is known for being a graffiti artist’s dream city and interesting graffiti work is found most prominently in the central neighborhoods of Hamra and Gemmayzeh, as well as in the northeastern industrial quarter of Karantina. But the history of graffiti in Beirut – though it cannot be dated with exactitude – is a lot more complex: Political graffiti served the purpose of dividing the city into quarters during the Civil War.

Whoever has watched Ziad Doueiri’s celebrated “West Beirut” (1998) would not fail to recognize the writing on the wall throughout the city – political statements, religious icons, martyrs. After the end of the war, the checkpoints and roadblocks disappeared – although they make spectacular comebacks from time to time – but the sectarian geography of the city remains more of less intact with invisible checkpoints: posters, graffiti or specific buildings.

Graffiti in Beirut, though common, is still illegal – as in most parts of the world – but the authorities, operating on a policy of laissez-faire, tend to turn a blind-eye and with a city in constant destruction, construction and reconstruction there’s plenty of temporary and permanent space for this kind of work. It wasn’t the end of the Civil War itself however, what really propelled the birth of a graffiti art scene.

First there was the return of the music scene to Lebanon in which hip-hop and indie/post-rock styles coming mainly from France but also from elsewhere, that arrived in Lebanon with its own urban culture, and then in 2006 during the Israel-Hezbollah War, with the life in the country paralyzed, people took to the streets in order to reclaim the public space as their own, having nothing else to do, and with messages such as “Beirut will never die”.

Though there is plenty of graffiti to be seen in Beirut, there are only a handful of graffiti artists who can work on large scale stencils but the scene is constantly growing. International interest in Lebanese graffiti is also partly the consequence of Pascal Zoghbi’s book “Arabic Graffiti” that next to Montreal, Berlin, Gaza, Paris and other cities, references extensively street art in Beirut.

The role of graffiti art in Beirut is now the reverse side of the political separation: Messages of unity and criticism of the government are common, and in the words of Phat2, one of the most prominent players in this scene: “As a free Lebanese citizen, I refuse to accept the fact that Lebanese areas are partitioned according to their residing majorities.” There are plenty of examples of how the Lebanese have reclaimed the public space.

Phat2 told Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star in 2011: “They all have their stencils, Hezbollah, Amal, the Lebanese Forces. Everyone brands their own part of town for themselves, as if they own it. But what they don’t realize is that Lebanon is supposed to be a free country. It’s for everyone. It’s my country, and I’m not Phat2. Phat2 is not a person. It’s just a representation of every free citizen in Lebanon trying to take back what is theirs. This sectarianism must end.”

While not all the graffiti scene is committed to the public space – and there are a handful of commercial graffiti writers, working in advertising and decorating private spaces such as gardens and children’s bedrooms – it cannot be said that the laissez-faire policy of the authorities operates at all times, as there are several taboos on what can be discussed or represented in public and censorship remains clumsy but firm.

In April, graffiti artist Semaan Khawam was charged with “disturbing the peace” because of having spray-painted graffiti of soldiers such as those that took part in the civil war. His series “Do not forget” included soldiers armed with machine guns but without sectarian identification, in order to convey the message of shared responsibility in the war, what remains for the most part unacknowledged by political leaders that rose out of the selfsame sectarian landscape of the civil war.

Further divisions emerged in Beirut through graffiti over support for the Syrian revolution, which is a particularly sensitive issue in Lebanon, with activists and graffiti artists being arrested and questioned. Freedom of expression in Lebanon, though praised much in the Arab world, is something of a myth and the Lebanese are constantly fighting bitter battles against the establishment to have their rights and freedoms respected.

But the graffiti culture keeps thriving in Lebanon. In 2011 Phat2 released the film “Bombing Beirut: The Movie” (making reference to the “bombing” developed by graffiti artists in the 1960’s and 1970’s trying to cover as many spots in as little time as possible, rather than once again bombing Beirut) chronicling the birth and rise of the Lebanese graffiti scene and showing the underground bombings, featuring a large number of graffiti writers.

In June, Lebanese animator and filmmaker Alain Nasnas, whose first short film “Et Si” was featured on BikyaMasr.com in March, released a very short documentary about graffiti artist Yazan, one of the youngest writers in Beirut, and who has developed a particular style called “calligraffiti” based on traditional Arabic calligraphy combined with urban styles; Yazan is also known for working on very large stencils.

Yazan’s style is particularly unique in Lebanese graffiti and somehow resembles the interesting work done by Greek artists Greg Papagrigoriou and Simek in Athens, working with traditional calligraphies but less colorful and certainly a lot more formal than Yazan’s. The walls of Beirut keep speaking and telling the untold stories that do not find their way into the textbooks, the mediocre censored media and the political demagogy of reconciliation and reconstruction.

The question of whether graffiti is street art or vandalism isn’t one of easy resolution: In 2008 in London, at the same time that graffiti artist Bansky had some of his work exhibited at the Louvre and Tate Britain, a group of south London graffiti artists were sentenced to jail time for defacing public property at the same that their work was being championed by a New York gallery.

The status of graffiti, performance and other newer arts has posed a challenge on traditional art and criticism that is unlikely to subside anytime soon. French sociologist Henri Lefebvre put it succinctly in the 1960’s: “This is not a political rebellion, a substitute for social revolution, nor is it a revolt of thought, a revolt of the individual, or a revolt for freedom: It is an elemental and worldwide revolt which does not seek a theoretical foundation, but rather seeks by theoretical means to rediscover –and recognize – its own foundations.”

Controversy over Beirut’s Phoenician port

First published on BIKYAMASR

The news of the destruction of an archaeological site presumed to be an ancient Phoenician port in downtown Beirut, estimated to be as old as the 5th century BC, took many Lebanese by surprise and in particular the Association for the Protection of the Lebanese Heritage, one of very few organizations in Lebanon struggling to protect historical heritage, and waging bitter legal battles against both private companies and the state.

The site in question was bulldozed to the ground on Tuesday June 26th by the construction firm Venus apparently without any license or authorization, after culture minister Gaby Layoun gave a green light for the project to go ahead and build luxury towers on the site, overriding decrees promulgated by former administrations and that forbade any construction to take place at the contested site.

The demolition was reported on Bikyamasr.com Wednesday June 27th in spite of protests at the site and although a judge in Beirut ordered to halt all construction works and a fine, it was too late for the site, already destroyed hours before. On Thursday June 28th dozens of protesters marched to the Ministry of Culture demanding the resignation of minister Layoun and the APLH held a sit-in.

Nevertheless, minister Layoun defended his decision claiming that there is no such a thing as a Phoenician port in Minet al-Hosn, plot 1398, located in an exclusive district, inside the limits of the controversial reconstruction of Beirut Central District and close to the Mediterranean Sea. The minister argued that the site was of no historical value and that former minister Salim Wardy had received erroneous information regarding the site.

It was reported already in January that the site was threatened with imminent demolition and in spite of the initial findings and opinions of the Directorate General of Antiquities, the ministry insisted on their assessment; accordingly, as it was the case with nearby hippodrome by Solidere, no further inspection of the site was permitted by Venus. An archaeological assessment obtained by Lebanese newspaper Daily Star seems to confirm the claims.

The report was commissioned by Venus to Prof. Dr. Ralph K. Pedersen, an expert in maritime archaeology at Marburg University. In his report he concludes that there are no features in the site that can relate it to a port and other archaeologists have also endorsed this view. Nevertheless, as APLH co-founder Joseph Haddad has noted, the debate is not whether this was port or not, but that it still was an archaeological site that needed to be further examined.

Sources at the ministry told Daily Star that Layoun overturned the previous decree based on the opinion of Pedersen’s report and other sources cite the opinion of Mr. Albert Naccache, from the ministry’s scientific committee, who is not an archaeologist. A number of expert opinions on the other hand, made public by Francophone website Libnanews.com, offer a substantially different account from that of Pedersen’s report:

In December 2011 three official statements were made: Prof. David Blackman, senior research fellow at the University of Oxford and former director of the British School of Archaeology in Athens wrote in a letter: “This is a discovery of great importance, both for the study of this type of site, which seems to appear in the Eastern Mediterranean in the late 6th century BC; and for the history of Beirut. I have been studying this type of site since the late 1960’s: I am therefore excited by this discovery, and I am concerned that the site must be preserved. There is no doubt about its identification as slipways and not simply quarries. I have not seen the site, but the reports are clear and convincing.”

Prof. Dr. Jean-Yves Empereur, director of the Center for Alexandrian Studies (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) wrote: “I admire the beautiful discovery of a port in downtown Beirut. This new archaeological site dating back to 5th century BC is particularly important: It shows the quality of the great Phoenician civilization. While we count with fingers the remnants of such installations in the Greek world, this is a unique discovery which should be preserved and assessed, so that generations to come will be able to admire the achievements of their ancestors, the pioneers of maritime trade in the Mediterranean.”

Dr. Kalliopi Baika, a maritime archaeologist for the Greek ministry of culture and tourism added: “The excavation site is even more important as the slipways and maritime installations unearthed were found in a well-dated context, which is rare for harbor works of this kind. In case it is decided to destroy the site and move the slipways, all this rich archaeological context will disappear.”

Another report by “Save Beirut Heritage” insists that Minet al-Hosn completes the history of Phoenician cities in the Levant, and that fourteen local and international archaeologists have confirmed the importance of the port. “The discoveries of Minet al-Hosn are those that resemble most those of Tell Dor: The holds of these two regions have been dated to the 5th and 4th centuries BC while the others have been dated to the 4th and 3rd century. Maritime archaeologist Martine Francis Allouche, affirms the importance of this archaeological site as being the first in Lebanon and the second in the Levant after Tell Dor.”

In a last straw of the controversy, overseer of the excavation works at the port, Hisham Sayegh, and a researcher on ancient Mediterranean ports, submitted his letter of resignation to the ministry on June 27th during the demonstration demanding the resignation of minister Layoun, move that was celebrated by activists and concerned citizens. The letter, originally in Arabic, has been made available online and is also translated into French.

In his letter, Sayegh states the obvious:

“Never has archaeology in Lebanon since the last centuries and during wars of ancient times, or during the Israeli invasion and bombardment of Beirut, experienced such destruction as it has witnessed since you took office at the Ministry of Culture.”

He adds:

“Based on the principles of my belief in God, in Lebanon, in the state and the law, I refused together with previous culture ministers, the bribes generously offered by Venus, so that we agree to falsify and twist the truth about the origin and significance of the discovery in downtown Beirut. But what I witnessed yesterday and that was witnessed by the Lebanese, through the media, was a planned destruction of the Phoenician site, with your agreement, and such razing within minutes of monuments and remnants that go back thousands of years, it didn’t only hurt me but pierced me like a bullet.”

Near the end he concludes:

“Minister Layoun, I am sorry but I can no longer remain as a silent witness, of the Directorate General of Antiquities, in the destruction of the vestiges and falsification of the identity of my country, rather than acting as a guardian; protecting, preserving and transmitting it to the future generations.”

While everything hangs in uncertainty, what is certain is that on the basis of expert opinions and the letter of Mr. Sayegh, it can be safely assumed that what we are dealing with here is another case of expropriating on the part of private interests and endorsed by the state, of property that belongs to no one but the history and identity of the Lebanese.

Since the end of the Civil War, one of the main complaints of civil society organizations is that the Lebanese are prevented from learning and being confronted with their own history, and in the school curriculum history ends in 1975, at the onset of the war. It might now hold true as well that Lebanese history doesn’t end in 1975 but in the 5th century BC. In the meantime, civil society is still awaiting the resignation letter of Minister Layoun.

Mamnou3: The Metaphor of Censorship

Published on THE MANTLE
Also available on SKeyes

 

In the 1966 preface to the third part of “The Origins of Totalitarianism”, Hannah Arendt makes the following observation in regard to the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union: “The clearest sign that the Soviet Union can no longer be called totalitarian in the strict sense of the term is, of course, the amazingly swift recovery of the arts during the last decade”.  In her book “The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt”, Seyla Benhabib explains: “What Arendt was calling attention to with this observation was the development of shared spaces – alternative or subaltern publics – in the interstices of these societies as evidence of the loosening of totalitarian rule and the reassertion of the self-organizing power of civil society”.

The most significant manner in which “totalitarian” tendencies appear is when the public space is threatened, and by the public space isn’t necessarily meant buildings and places, but the interaction that occurs spontaneously between fellowmen. French sociologist Henri Lefebvre tells us that social space is a social product that acts as a mediator between mental and social activities; in his view, the social production or manipulation of space by political power can only served by violence, in the service of economic and political interests. The arduous task of the postwar reconstruction of Lebanon is already a textbook case of manipulation of the social or public space.

Censorship of media, cultural production and publications in Lebanon has played a pivotal role in maintaining the same nationalist enclaves that existed throughout the Civil War. Far from being a monolithic code of rules applied uniformly, it is simply a helpless and ever changing bureaucratic apparatus charged with precisely dovetailing the Lebanese public space in order to accommodate the different actors – political parties, religious communities and private interests – in whose interest it is to maintain Lebanon divided, and hence preventing the appearance of such alternative or subaltern publics or spaces in which reconciliation - and a shared memory - can take place.   

A comprehensive study on the practice of censorship in law and the impact on the public space, “Censorship in Lebanon: Law and Practice” is available from the Heinrich Boell Foundation, and the 2011 report on press and cultural freedom by theSKeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom also warns about the increasing rate of censorship, including banned films and attempts to regulate internet content in a country that after all, is famous for being an ocean of freedom in the Middle East.

The infamous censorship bureau, part of the Directorate General of General Security has come this week under scrutiny with the web-series Mamnou3! (Forbidden) created by Nadim Lahoud with the help of SKeyes’ director Ayman Mehanna, scriptwriter Camille Salame and sponsored by the Samir Kassir Foundation. The series began airing Sunday July 1st on YouTube taking a humorous look at the inner workings of the censorship bureau and relying on real life examples that are all too well known to every Lebanese familiar with the state bureaucracy.

Borges said that censorship is the mother of metaphor, and this doesn’t cease to apply in present day Lebanon where in spite of increasing censorship, the Lebanese have developed a very sophisticated set of cultural codes, meta-languages and symbols to carry their message onto unexpected public and spaces. In Mamnou3we can see not only that censorship is the mother of metaphor, but that even censorship can become a metaphor.

What Susan Sontag said in 2003 about literature, might well apply here not only to literature but also to films, to art and to media in general: “To have access to literature, world literature, was to escape the prison of national vanity, of philistinism, of compulsory provincialism, of inane schooling, of imperfect destinies and bad luck. Literature was the passport to enter a larger life; that is, the zone of freedom.”

There has been hardly a challenge bigger to the hegemony over the public space in Lebanon exercised by the censorship authorities than Mamnou3, and in this sense, it has proven that even the censors of metaphors – and all culture is but metaphors – can fall prey to metaphors themselves.

Humor is always the most radical form of cultural criticism and self-criticism, and here, it forces people to face the question of why it is important to be free to choose what they hear and see, how they write their history and ultimately, their own standards of truth. The answer to the question is at stake in how the Lebanese public will react to this innovative project, but a partial answer is provided by Hannah Arendt in an interview with Roger Errera in 1973:

 “The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather than nobody believes in anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history.

On the receiving end you get not only a lie – a lie which you could go on with for the rest of your days – but yet a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such people you can then do what you please.”

Mamnou3: Lebanon’s censorship on trial

First published on BIKYAMASR 
Available also on SKeyes & ArtsFreedom

BEIRUT: From all the contradictions that Lebanon is fraught with – the land of Hezbollah, Nadine Labaki and Amin Maalouf, at the same time – there is one that always stands unchallenged in the mind of the Arab world: That of Lebanon as an oasis of freedom in the Middle East, with a climate of relative openness and some degree of cultural and political freedoms, guaranteed by law. While there is some truth to that statement, the reality on the ground is that the Lebanese have fought bitter battles for these freedoms and still are.

At first sight it does seem that Lebanon has enjoyed wider freedoms than the rest of the Arab world since the end of the Civil War and the limited cultural renaissance that followed afterwards. What follows from here is a very complex network of policies, influences and political maneuvering that translate into a hapless censorship bureaucracy; one that has failed to grasp not only the wide array of changes experienced by Lebanese society but also the transformation of media and cultural production in the age of the Internet.

Censorship in the times of Arab Spring has proven an increasingly difficult task for every country in the region, from Morocco to Bahrain, and Lebanon – culturally at the forefront but politically so far behind these changes – has not been exempt. The annual report for 2011, “Press and Cultural Freedom: In Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine” by the Samir Kassir Foundation has shown the trends at work here: Physical assaults on journalists by non-actors, increasing censorship in the film industry and attempts to regulate Internet content.

Two important factors must be taken into account here: First, unlike it is the case of other countries in the region, the Lebanese are very aware about censorship practices in the country and accordingly, have attempted to tackle them or demonstrate against them when necessary. Second, the structure of the censorship bureaucracy deserves further consideration, as we are not dealing here with an organized body with a fixed set of policies and principles.

Nevertheless, as the Samir Kassir Foundation has noted: “The year 2011 was undoubtedly one of the worst for press and cultural freedom in the region.” In regard to Lebanon they also added: “In Lebanon, it is time to take bold and effective measures to combat censorship by non-state actors to impose their cultural standards on all Lebanese people.” A comprehensive study, “Censorship in Lebanon: Law and Practice” available from the Heinrich Boell Foundation and edited by Doreen Khoury, provides acute insights into the censorship bureaucracy.

In this study, the authors have gone very far in showing how censorship – of films, film screening, theater plays, publications and to some degree also TV – imposed by the Directorate General of General Security in order to prevent the distribution of material that would endanger security, upset national sentiment, damage public morals or incite sectarian tensions, is carried out without much legal precedent and on the basis of arbitrary – and rather fluctuating – arguments that lack general guiding principles.

Though the argument goes that censorship is necessary for the protection for national security, it is often not the relevant authorities but rather religious institutions, political parties and even private companies who are to have a say on what is supposed to be censored or not. For an example, one needs only to recall that Marc Abi Rached’s 2009 film was banned last minute and short of its release, even though it had received all the permits – another near impossible task in Lebanon – and the industry rumors said that it had to do not so much with the content as with the role of actress Joana Andraos, who happens to be the daughter of a prominent Lebanese politician.

Similar incidents took place in 2011 when Danielle Arbid’s film “Beirut Hotel” was banned apparently because it mentions Hariri’s assassination, and a few scenes – in this case, regarding homosexuality and religion – were cut off from Samer Daboul’s film “Out Loud” that was eventually completed, but it has not been screened much in Lebanon although it debuted on the international scene in various festivals. In the meantime, the commonplace scenario of violence and incitement daily on TV seems to be of no interest to the authorities.

It is this Lebanon precisely that is welcoming today the appearance and first chapter of “Mamnou3!” (Forbidden); a new Lebanese web-series, which caused uproar among bloggers and social media in Lebanon when its trailer was released on June 25th. The idea behind the series, of which there are already several filmed episodes, to air on YouTube every week since July 1st, is to tackle the thorny issue of censorship of cultural productions inside the most infamous bureau, with a slant of comedy and parody.

Broadcasting series on YouTube isn’t exactly a novelty in the Middle East, with now more or less celebrated products such as the famous “Mal3obl3na” documentary series that earned producer and blogger Feras Bagna and others time in jail when they aired a chapter about poverty in Saudi Arabia, and the series “Takki” of Saudi filmmaker Mohammed Makki, dealing with topics of social life and relationships and that reached 700,000 hits within one month, mostly from people in the theaterless kingdom.

Creative ways to bypass censorship not only exist but are increasingly mastered and improved upon by bloggers, artists and activists in the Arab world, and slowly, eroding the traditional function of the censorship bureau.

In 2011, philosopher Agnes Heller reacted to the tight media laws in her native Hungary saying what could be perfectly applied to Lebanon and the Middle East: “Nowadays you can have a server in another country and you cannot censor Internet production if the server is in another country. Some people organize a so-called ‘samizdat’ television station on the Internet and asked me to participate. So the technology is above it. In the classical style of the Soviet Union, technology allowed that everything could be supervised. Now not everything can be supervised.”

An original idea of Democratic Renewal’s (Tajaddod) Nadim Lahoud and sponsored by the Samir Kassir Foundation, the series aims – in the words of Ayman Mehanna, director of SKeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom – not to denounce the censorship bureau as much as to invite to abandon principles that are not longer relevant and he adds that the project of course, is another tool to combat censorship. The storyline, written by Camille Salame, relies on real examples in order to allow the public to judge the absurdities inherent in censorship.

Ziyad Makhoul writes yesterday for Francophone daily L’Orient Le Jour: “Or like dynamite on vitriol, on that which Lebanon has sadly mastered better than any banana republic in the world: Censorship. Based on a brilliant idea of Nadim Lahoud, helped by the eagle eye of Ayman Mehanna, the storyline scalpel of Camille Salame and the sensational Paul Matar as the bigger than life Jamil el-Sayyed, Mamnou3 is infinitely stronger than the abduction of any Israeli soldier, than all the threats of Zelzal missiles to Tel Aviv in the world, than one hundred and one hypocrites and the rancid promises of change and reform.”

While eyes are on Lebanon, with the sit-in of Sheikh Ahmad el-Assir in Sidon – the infamous epicenter from where the Civil War spread back in 1970’s – that resembles more one of the famous summer parties along Lebanon’s beaches, the regional stagnation in Syria and the renewed political instability in the country that has nothing political about it, some people are still at work in giving Lebanon the tools to truly resist and defend itself, tools that no weapons and no missiles can destroy. Mamnou3 and the team behind it is one example of resistance, not by resisting reality, but by trying to give people the tools to transform it.

At the Square (draft)

For G.M.

"We are so far into the field that the darkness has closed behind us, blotting out the road and the house. All we can see is alfalfa. Crickets make their racket and mosquitoes swarm around our heads, unable to believe their luck. We stand there in a starry, buzzing darkness complete as the end of the world." -Michael Cunningham, "A Home at the End of the World"

"I was so afraid to leave". It was like a nightmare, a nightmare in the middle of daydreaming. How far was it from Avenue de Paris to Waygand? I couldn't remember exactly, but it might have seemed as if it took hours from Corniche to the square. I might have come out of the sea and for the first time into Manara, clad in nothing but noise, but air. I wasn't walking, because I still heard the sirens, and smelled the glass entering my mouth; it wasn't a wound, but more like a safety belt, preventing me from screaming, preventing me from becoming; hence I crawled. The asphalt under my arms was made of silk, and though it seemed to me I had never seen the city, I knew exactly what I was going. Joyce writes in the Ulysses: "—Hello, Bloom. Where are you off to? —Hello, M’Coy. Nowhere in particular." How many times had I been here? I asked myself. The longer I had lived in the city, the less I could remember... It was all done on purpose. I didn't want to remember anything. Everyday I woke up to the same excitement, the same sense of possibility.

I dragged myself through the same streets, re-enacting the same day again. I made pictures of the same places, sat at the same place, jotted down notes, and greetings from far away on the back of postcards that I would later send to the same address where I had been living, on a steep hill near the ocean. I wrote down the names of the streets on a napkin and compared with a map already worn out after so many days of travelling. And I was travelling, I said, that is why I could not send my address to friends in other countries. I travelled back and forth through the same five avenues in Beirut, from Ras Beirut to Saray, everyday, since the early morning. Why did I never unpack my suitcase, or buy a flower pot? I kept asking. I only came to visit the city for a day, I said to myself day after day, for two years. I didn't know exactly which city it was, so I kept asking people the names of the streets, in case I would get lost one day. I wanted to get lost, but eventually gave up on the possibility; in order to get lost you have to know where you're getting lost from.

"Mafi 7ada 2a7la menak, mafi 7ada 2a7la menak..." I exclaimed when I crawled all the way, on the last day of my journey, to Mazzacurati's statue, riddled with bullet holes. The sky was orange and the streets were empty, adorned only with the noise. Suddenly I was dancing instead of crawling or moving, it was the 21st of February, 2005, it was like an ocean, splintering into streets and taking on the form of a man - the heartbeats, the limbs, the eyes... It was a fleeting moment, something I had rememebered, the day Samir Kassir died. But it was not 2005, it was not now. I still read his book, every morning, before going on my morning journey through the same streets, until the letters on the page were so worn out that they disappeared one day, and I was no longer able to read. Once, when I was in the grammar school I had learnt that Schliemann, the German archaeologist, had found the ruins of Troy in 1870, using Homer's Illiad as his travelbook. So I had felt about Samir, until he died, and the book refused to speak to me anymore.

"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page" was the commentary of Saint Augustine, even though he didn't love the world but God. Why would he want to travel in this book? Why would he love God instead of the world? I assume that the disappointment with the world always comes from a place of fear, and not from a place of love if we go by the quintessentially Christian assumption that the world will not last, that it's not durable and that is ought to pass, unlike the love of God, eternal. The rejection of the world contains in itself the promise that love can transcend the world, and that as long as the fear of loss remains, this love will be constantly unhappy: "Love itself is our death to the world, and our life with God. For if it is death when the soul leaves the body, how is it not death when our love goes forth from the world? Therefore, love is as strong as death." I was so afraid that I would never see the square again... Though so little remains of this heartland, only a music store and a wounded statue. 

"We are displaced people after all..." is what he said, when I told him that perhaps there was no home to be had if it had been lost once. I guess that being at home, in the world, implies that we have constituted it as such, and that we're readily aware that it will not last, other than as the promise of the selfsame constitution. If we're unable to keep our promises or receive them from others, then the world has vanished, there is just every you, every me, scattered limbs, tilting heads, up in the air. And why are these promises usually tied to places, since by logical necessity it is obvious that the earth will last and that we will not? February 21st, 2005, said a young woman: "La révolution a été prise en otage. Ils ont même pas eu de respect pour nos martyrs Samir Kassir, Gibran Tueni et d'autres resterons à jamais dans nos mémoires. Idem pour‪ Nassib Lahoud‬, mais pas les autres. Moi je les ai déjà oublié. La Révolution du Cèdre a été l'œuvre de vrais héros, mais l'œuvre a, hélas été récupérée par des zéros!" It seems as if promises and remembering and home are part of the same process. 

How tirelessly I had searched for Beirut,  under the illusion that such place actually existed, and how many years I had spent looking for it. And even though I had never found it, I was haunted by the fear - and here fear means nothing but the fear of loss of love - that should I leave, I were never to see it again. Once I read a Hebrew poem of Yehuda Amichai, "Suicide Attempts of Jerusalem":

"Tears, here, don't soften

The eyes. They only polish

The hardness of faces, like rock.

Suicide attempts of Jerusalem:

She tried again on the ninth of Av.

She tried in red and in fire

By wind and white dust.

She'll never succeed

But she'll try again and again."

When will Beirut try next time? That was the question on the basis of which I could never unpack my suitcase. And so vehemently I had wanted to go home, without God, I didn't want a part in the kingdom, or a slice of eternity or identity. Why should I have such loyalties and accept such dictates? And so tired I was, from reading only page from the same book, having lost directions, so haunted by the fear of loss. How could I dread losing a place I never had? How could even places be had? It seems to me as if time is a much stronger index of human life than space, since human bonds happen in time, and restricted by time, under the assumption that life isn't a durable good and that the end of lifetime is the end of life in general. 

Perhaps every time I reacted the same: Accentuating the fear of loss as a constant drive by means of pushing people away from me at the slightest breach of language, at the slightest silence, at the most insignificant pitiful nod. I didn't want to find just a city, I wanted the whole world and more. But there was another map of the city, one I had never seen. When I remember he had told me about his nightmare, and I occasionally learnt to forget how many times I had felt the same, how often I felt they would leave... This ambiguity about oneself, of trying to find a language with somebody, a very private language, more difficult than the entire world. Without the need for consolation, without the need for comfort, without the punitive function of palliative care. His nightmare was the map, and though horrible, it was my entire daydreaming. Then finally I awoke, he was there, and the discovery was magical:

Beirut was everywhere. Every place where promises could be kept. Mafi 7ada 2a7la menak...

This is the world.

The whole world.

Beirut’s Phoenician port bulldozed

First published on BIKYAMASR

Cultural destruction and Lebanon have become synonymous. Since the end of the Civil War, in spite of the constant calls for reconciliation and the projects of reconstruction – albeit limited mostly to one district in Beirut – the destruction of the Lebanese heritage has continued unmolested and in fact, clearing out the area of Beirut’s central district in the course of the so-called “Beirut reborn” reconstruction plan, razed more buildings than had been destroyed in the entire civil war, after expropriating the residents with minimal compensation.

The constant of destruction has shifted not in terms of its magnitude but only of its actors: The militias, armed groups and air attacks by Israel, have now been replaced by developers and politicians that carry the exact same task with the cooperation of an incompetent state whose priorities are usually centered around bringing tourism, paradoxically, to a country without the basic standards of infrastructure, security and heritage conservation; none of which receive attention in the endless political diatribes taking place daily.

UNESCO world heritage sites list includes only five sites – Anjar, Baalbek, Byblos, Tyre and the Qadisha Valley – none of which are considered endangered, even though for a country with a history dating back 7000 years, the selection seems at best precarious. In 1996, nine other sites were submitted to UNESCO’s tentative list, including the historical centers of Sidon, Tripoli and Batroun, some of which by now are already faced with destruction and nowhere does Beirut – a city with a history of 5000 years – appear in the list.

Reconstruction and destruction in Beirut are part of one and the same process that has been at work not only since the end of the civil war but rather has been on-going since the end of the 19th century during both war and peace times. The remaking of Beirut’s “Centre Ville” and its transformation into an exclusive compound for the wealthy in a remarkable and ironic display of false hope for the rebuilding of a largely impoverished country, constantly beset by turmoil, has not stopped at simply razing buildings that survived the war.

The integration of large sections of the central district into development projects fueled by greed and a policy of generalized amnesia solely intended to distract the Lebanese from the pursuance of shared memory and reconciliation, has also taken on the form of wiping out the building blocks of Beirut’s history and transform them into amusement parks, to which the average Lebanese have no access, keeping the conflicts alive and trapped inside the invisible ghettoes of the city and making sure that no space is left for negotiation and culture.

The Association for the Protection of the Lebanese Heritage has been at the forefront of a civic battle to halt the impeding destruction of so many Lebanese sites targeted: The traditional houses of Beirut in streets like Furn El Hayeck, where a historical building was demolished in May; the old city of Tripoli with its remarkable French and Ottoman architecture dating back to the 18th century, the Ingea theater and a large number of traditional houses, all of which have been already destroyed or are scheduled to.

Two very important historical sites were discovered in Beirut in modern times: the Roman Hippodrome and the Phoenician port in Minet El Hosn, both of which date back thousands of years – and not just centuries as in the case of the traditional houses – and that since their discovery, instead of being protected, studied and integrated into the city as a testimony to Lebanon’s status as the home for 2500 years of the Phoenician civilization, are simply being shortlisted for how quickly they can be destroyed by developers.

The hippodrome is considered one of the best kept in the world and scholars have pointed out to the number of times it appears mentioned in ancient books and even though it had been protected by previous administrations, current minister of culture Gabriel Layoun, has bypassed the previous decrees and authorized construction on the site to begin.

In theory, the planning approach to Beirut requires the integration of historical sites into modern landscaping without causing any change or damage to the structures in question unless the circumstances are exceptional, but as it happens to be the case in Lebanon, business interests and political means are identical with each other and the circumstances are, alas, always exceptional: Private companies forbid authorities to carry inspections of sites that should be under the supervision of the state and that belong to the Lebanese people.

While the hippodrome has not been destroyed and the Council of the State suspended the decision of minister Layoun to begin construction, following an appeal by the APLH, and the future of the ancient site remains uncertain, what is certain is that the Phoenician port has been effectively destroyed and bulldozed inch by inch this week in spite of protests and appeals on the part of APLH, and while it was well known for months that the site was targeted for destruction, the minister and competent authorities remained silent.

The developers of the Venus Towers project – another luxury compound to rise in downtown Beirut – destroyed the site in front of the concerned citizens without any permits, licenses or authorizations and counting only on the benefit of political maneuvering that has been a trademark of the Layoun administration. The opinion of the minister – overriding all previous decrees – is that the site itself was of no actual historical value, although we were dealing here with a unique Phoenician landmark without parallels anywhere else in the world.

APLH has vowed not to keep quiet under such circumstances in which cynicism and greed meet deliberate ineptitude. People are expected to mobilize tomorrow Thursday against minister Layoun and a judge in Beirut has ordered to stop all the works in the site and a fine of 100 million Lebanese pounds on the developers. The fact remains that regardless of the actions taken against the constructors and the minister, the Phoenician port has been already destroyed and no fine or legal action will restore a history going back millennia.

Apparently it was a team of archaeologists on the payroll of the ministry who inspected the site and considered it of no value, even though the assessments of experts and archaeologists elsewhere differed significantly from such unlearned and obviously politically compromised opinions, for which no one bears the slightest degree of professional accountability. The same archaeologists have refused to shortlist a large number of other sites to UNESCO world heritage list, and constantly bend to the interests of development partners.

It is very likely that unless the citizenry of Lebanon will demand from the government to take absolute control over the jurisdiction of every historical and archaeological landmark in the country, developers will stop at nothing and will be happy to turn the entire heritage of the country into a parking lot for the wealthy resident of luxury towers, in a country without a common history, without a public space to share, without a shared memory and more than anything without legitimate and autonomous governing bodies.

When the reconstruction of Beirut began and a master plan was laid out, the idea of Beirut as an “ancient city of the future” was introduced and even though this vision came under fire because its weak grasp of the somber present, being entirely focused on the past and the future, some also recognized the immense value inherent in rescuing the ancient heritage of the city and making it part of its landscape, heritage which had been effectively disregarded since the beginning of the war.

This of course has been proven time and again to be nothing more than another political fallacy. In his book “Urbicide: The Politics of Urban Destruction”, Martin Coward writes: “Projects do not seek to reconstitute fundamentally shared/public locales, but merely to provide the equipment which the separate ethnic nationalist enclaves can continue to live as they are. “ His words albeit not specifically meant for Beirut, express the degree to which the reconstruction projects in Beirut are aimed at everything but reconstruction of society.

When the chips are down, the Lebanese will not be able to blame Israel or America or Iran or the powers that be for the obliteration of their past and with it, of the possibility of finding a common ground that is not confessional, sectarian and violent. While the Lebanese are so fond of bragging about their culture, clearly there’s everything but culture in such unprecedented act of destruction in which the administration is an accomplice. This Beirut is clearly not re-born, only re-torn.

Beirut's Elyssar Project: Spatiality and Hegemony

Published on HANNAH ARENDT CENTER

Architecture is at the center of politics. We can see the truth of this statement amdist the controversy about post-war reconstruction of Beirut and the establishment of Solidere—the company created to redevelop the city. Reconstruction in Beirut does not mean simply the physical re-making and structuring of certain “sites of memory” scattered throughout the city. Rather, reconstruction is a political process parallel to the constant making and re-making of internal contestations of power and identity inside Lebanon since at least 1860.

The most important and widely studied case of reconstruction in Beirut is the famous Centre Ville or Beirut Central District undertaken by Solidere (discussed at length in “Beirut: Reinventing or Destroying the Public Space?”. Höckel points as well to the case of the southern suburbs and the Elyssar project and the role played by Hezbollah in different states of reconstruction, namely, 1983, 1996 and 2006. In this post, I look at the Elyssar project to develop Beirut's eastern coast and southern suburbs. The project has been mired in delays for decades and exemplifies the blurry line between political projects, architecture, and private interests in postwar Lebanon.

The designation “southern suburb” has a negative connotation in Beirut, and is often used interchangeably with Shi’a Muslims, anarchy, squatters, illegality and poverty.  The “suburbs”—formed by a permanent flow of rural migrants and later by both urban and rural refugees from the war—are homogenous and impoverished quarters of Beirut, consisting mostly of members of the Shi’a community and comprises one third of the population of the greater Beirut area. At first the project was to be undertaken by Solidere but after political contestation on the part of the residents and the Amal/Hezbollah party, it was implemented by a public agency created after much negotiation as per Decree No 9043 of August 1996.

The project was criticized on the basis of being based solely on economic considerations and too ambitious (the area is five times bigger than the central district) even though similar plans had already been tested and failed in the Arab world.  Yet, it remained largely unmodified. Other issues arose, such as difficulties in land expropriation due to the illegality of building and dwelling in the area, and speculation over land value, in which all parties – Solidere, the Prime Minister’s Office and the local Amal/Hezbollah – withheld and manipulated information, which led to a political stalemate that permanently halted the project.

The project area extends over 586 hectares from the Summerland Resort and Sports City to the boundary of Beirut International Airport in the South. From East to West it extends from the Airport road to the Mediterranean Sea and includes a large portion of coastline – another contentious point for development and speculation.

Elyssar’s plan included the execution of all primary and secondary roads, necessary infrastructure and public services; the construction of over 10,000 units of affordable housing over a 14-year period, manufacturing parks, warehouses and workshop centers. At the heart of plan was also the same scenario of urban violence and displacement in which residents from illegal settlements were to be transferred elsewhere.

The question of illegality and ownership in the area (and everywhere else in Lebanon to a certain degree) is complex and nowhere near resolution. In a 2007 case study by Nadine Khayat, she writes:

The Lebanese state has mostly continued to adopt a non-interventionist strategy toward these areas in Beirut; in fact, many describe the southern suburbs of Beirut as a state within the state, having its own conservative jurisdictions that may arguably be excluding factions and other communal groups present in Lebanon.

The state faced the question of illegal settlements in an area almost entirely controlled politically by Amal/Hezbollah, with the exception of a Maronite minority at the fringes.  The hostilities between the state and the militias go back to tensions between 1983 and 1984, when President Gemayel ordered the demolition of illegal neighborhoods in the suburb.

Facing resistance from the residents, with the support of Amal, and what is considered a reminder of the state’s bad will toward the area, it turn led to yet another extension of the war.

The suburbs fall under the definition of ‘slums’ and ‘illegal settlements’.  They have been a recurrent nightmare in Beirut’s reconstruction plans because of the absence of planning bodies, uncontrolled migration and growth, and lastly, the lack of appropriate mapping of the slums in purview of the political control of para-state bodies in the area.

Mona Fawaz and Isabelle Peillen’s 2003, “The Case of Beirut, Lebanon”, part of “Understanding Slums: Case Studies for the Global Report on Human Settlements”, lays out the problem: “Given its complex history, the limited legalities in property rights, and the widespread violation in building and construction codes, it is difficult to adopt legality as a criterion for slum identification in Beirut.”

They further add: “To date, Lebanese public policies have never concretely addressed slums and their dwellers, despite a reasonable number of studies dedicated to the issue. Laissez-faire has been the rule, although punctuated by violent incidents of eviction.” The sole exception to this had been, of course, the Elyssar project (Public Agency for the Planning and Development of the South Western suburbs of Beirut). However,  that failed time and again not only because of inappropriate funding but also because of the status quo of postwar reconstruction in which confessional fractions battle each other for power.

All the information relevant to the negotiations and contestations in the early phase of the Elyssar project are found in detail in Mona Harb’s “Urban Governance in Post-War Beirut: Resources, Negotiations and Contestations in the Elyssar Project.”

Here it is important to highlight the role that Hezbollah/Amal have played in the contestations and negotiations between the Lebanese state and the suburbs.  While they have significantly added to the political stalemate of the project, they have transformed the public space of the suburbs through an intricate network of surveillance, social services, political participation and cultural activities in a way that the Lebanese state has been incapable of offering, particularly in this disadvantaged area.

The characterization of Hezbollah in the Lebanese context is very difficult and while it is not the topic of this essay, the work of Mona Harb and Reinoud Leenders, (Know thy enemy: Hezbollah, terrorism and the politics of perception) provides a framework to understand the role of the group inside the urban configuration of the suburbs as a distinct territory of identity. It is important to note that understanding the group  as merely a terrorist group or as a part of the Lebanese institutions are both flawed perspectives, which blur the heterogeneous nature of para-state actors in Lebanon.

The animosity between investors and government institutions on the one hand, and Hezbollah on the other hand, confirms Harb’s observation:

While urban politics present themselves as a means for development they are actually strategies for territorial domination” (see Harb’s “La Dahiye de Beyrouth: Parcours d’une stigmatisation urbaine, consolidation d’un territoire politique”.)

The conquest of the public space and eventual colonization and closure of its history, and of what it is supposed to be found and remembered in it, is in Lebanon, the equivalent of political hegemony.

"Dystopia" by Eman Magdi

Architectural interventions and urban planning play a pivotal role in the configuration of the public space as the stage where politics appears, and here comes to mind Daniel Libeskin’s observation that “the public and political realm… is synonymous with architecture.”

The general lines for a discussion of the role of politics in architecture and architecture in politics have not been drawn with the exception of economic considerations and the problem of technology – as a counterpart of history – in weakening effective participation in democracy through excessive technification and functionalism of labor. Nevertheless, the necessity for an architectural configuration of the public space in which the world emerges between people, calls for a review of what Hannah Arendt conceived as the “space of appearances”, in terms radically architectural. 

Ronald Beiner writes in “Our Relationship to Architecture as a Mode of Shared Citizenship: Some Arendtian Thoughts”:

The fundamental categories of Arendt’s political philosophy, such as worldliness and public space or “space of appearances”, are architectural ones (one can see this in how certain architectural theorists and even practitioners respond to her work). Hence, precisely where one encounters limits in trying to apply her political philosophy to politics, one can perhaps redeem her political philosophy by applying it to architecture.

For Hannah Arendt, the world – the space of politics – is the only place where we can appear to others in order to act, and it is this action that constitutes the basic units of power – which is always political – and that redeems the world from both the biological – and mortal – cycle of life.

Beiner makes an interesting argument in this regard: the now popular notion of public reason from Rawls and Habermas operates on considerations of constitutional structure and political order which are relevant only to political elites. Whereas, public space is relevant to all citizens; accordingly, public reason is less important than public space.

Arendt was increasingly concerned with the durability of the world as a stable artifice, where human action gains some sort of immortality.  As Beiner noted, “That this sort of immortalizing function is implicit in architecture as the creation of a lasting habitat and a more durable context for human activities is not a surprise.”

World-oriented experiences were at the core of Arendt’s thinking about the nature and possibilities of the political. Here we encounter an obvious tension between hegemony and worldliness, in that spatiality or space is not the determining factor in the existence of a public world, but the guarantee that it can appear. Beiner shifts the emphasis from the public space as a setting for episodic freedom, to a public good,  in which civic experience can take place. This, based upon one notion of citizenship being that "public things matter."

The notion of cynicism that is so widely discussed in politics can also be found in architecture. Beirut is a first-hand example of what Andrew Benjamin calls, “architecture as annihilation” in the context of museumfication rather than reconstruction for the sake of reconciliation.

Photo by Jorge Silva for REUTERS

For as long as the public space in Lebanon will continue being the battleground of hegemony in jeopardy of power, urban architecture and planning will reflect that.  Beiner explains, “If the effect of an ensemble of architectural creation is not the constitution of some kind of polis, at least ideally, then the idea of architecture as a source of citizenship is a hollow one.”

Cynicism is here embodied in the notion that in reconstruction it is only economic growth and prosperity what will bring peace to a country devastated by war.  However, Hannah Arendt warns, “Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good, and under no conditions it can either lead into freedom or constitute a proof of its existence.”