The Lebanese Left and Ideology Production (Sune Haugbølle)
What does it mean to be a ‘leftist’ in the contemporary Middle East, and what role does secularism play for ideological positioning? What is ideology and how is it produced? This project aims to throw light these questions through a focused study of the Lebanese Left. To be identified culturally as a yasari involves a set of cultural values and positions that centre on different interpretations and traditions of secularism. I ask how leftists are re-reading their modern history today, and in doing so are creating new formulations of Arab and Lebanese leftism. I adopt a theoretical approach garnered from memory studies, ideology studies and cultural studies that highlights how people use the past in order to make sense of present re-orientations in the ideological field. In doing so, I will pay particular attention to how Lebanese leftists relate to (and disagree on) the unfolding events in Syria. Recent literature on affect will be used to analyse how emotional memories of leftist engagement, civil war and revolutionary practice in the 1970s and 1980s are re-appropriated in light of the crisis in Syria.
In the sparse literature written in English on secularism and leftism in Lebanon, four themes can be identified, which the project will examine. The first is the longstanding debate about the (im)possibility of a secular state and de-confessionalisation of state and society; the second is whether or not Levantine Christians have a special role in promoting secularism; the third is secularism as a vehicle for social critique of feudalism, patrimonialism, and clientilism; and the fourth is secularism as guarantee for individual freedom in Lebanon. These themes are discussed in much more detail in Arabic material, which will be analysed in the project. All four themes formulate secularism as an ideal for social reorganisation in a state founded on the principle of sectarian representation.
Secular Ideology, Sunni Muslims and the State in the Syrian Uprising (Thomas Vladimir Brønd)
Refugees, intellectuals, militants and activists of the Sunni Muslim majority population are forming the Syrian revolution and debating the future of Syria in unprecedented ways. In my thesis, I explore how Syrian Sunni Muslims negotiate issues of secularism in the ongoing uprising. What kind of state will be the future for Syria? In order to understand why Syria is facing its most profound crisis in recent history, I argue that significant intersections between the secular Ba’thist state and Sunni Muslim religion are in need of clarification. This entails studying the social effects of the Syrian regime’s campaign against Sunni Muslim institutions, individuals and symbols in the years just before the uprising. The responses formulated by Sunni Muslim groups to the regime’s attempt to “own secularism” in today’s uprising must be studied in this light. Through a multi-sited ethnographic approach and informed by readings of recent Syrian history, the basic question analyzed is: how do religious and secular dynamics intersect in contestations over the Syrian state? Following secularism among activists in different, but connected geographical settings will shed light on the lived circulation and production of secular ideology and affects from a Muslim perspective. This will provide insights into the way narratives and ideas are produced, connected and re-formulated in the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria.
From ‘alim to ‘almani. Biographical intellectual trajectories between Lebanon and Iraq in the course of the 20th century (Miriam Younes)
Looking at the biographies of many intellectuals in the Arab world today it is striking that many of them went through different processes of ideological transformation often ranging from a former religious background to a rising affiliation with secular/leftist ideologies and movements and – since the 1960s – a further re-linking with religiously based political ideas. The project deals with these processes of transformation by researching the autobiographies and personal memories of different intellectuals who in the course of their life underwent diverse processes of ideological turn-abouts.
On a broader level the project traces the question how ideologies emerge, how they are produced and how their ongoing negotiation processes and re-orientations are performed on different individual levels that effect ideological developments as a whole. Moreover the project deals with the question of how transfers and entanglements between the religious and the secular spheres are taking place. Based on preliminary work the project assumes eclectic negotiation processes in which the secular and the religious more or less interact in an emerging intellectual and activist public sphere.
Secularism among Syrian Christians (Andreas Bandak)
Andreas Bandak explores the role and value ascribed to secularism among Syrian Christians. Christians in Syria have traditionally taken different positions on secularism. Famously, one of the founding fathers of the Ba’ath Party’s secular ideology was the Christian Syrian Michel Aflaq. Likewise a variety of Christians and intellectuals have positively endorsed secularism and organized politically in parties such as the Communist Party or the Ba’ath Party. Churches of various Orthodox and Catholic confessions have if not endorsed secularism actively then found it a viable way to gain a position in and through the secular framework guaranteed by the Syrian State. In a rapidly changing regional context, many Christians feel that state secularism, and by implication their own position, is under threat. In this complex situation both secular ideology and Christian tradition appear to be reconfigured. This is the problem that Bandak explores in this project: how secular traditions in the Levant are put to use and changed during the current uprising. The project concomitantly explores the broader landscape of the state, secular ideology and the Christian minority. The overall contention is that lived secularism(s) not only rests on deliberate ideological thought, but are engrained in the affective life of the nation with an particular importance as perceived by its minorities. In this sense secularism at the moment seems to grow increasingly more important for Levantine Christians, even if they disagree on the goals and implication of a process of secularization.