Standing by the Ruins: Elegiac Humanism in Wartime and Postwar Lebanon

Conclusion. “We’re All Hezbollah Now”

conclusion “We’re All Hezbollah Now” Throughout this book, I have made the case for the existence of a minority aesthetic in wartime and postwar Lebanon, calling it “elegiac humanism” and arguing that it provides a cultural framework for an alternative to the long-term sectarian revanchism that has plagued this tiny nation. At various points throughout, I have contrasted this aesthetic with the dominant aesthetic of mythic utopianism that, in its Lebanese form, is essentially sectarian. This is not to set up a reified binary relationship between good elegiac humanism and bad mythic utopianism.1 Nor is it to call for the replacement of one coercive dominant by another. The purpose has been to draw attention to the existence of a wider range of aesthetic practices than commonly thought exist in Lebanon in order to cast into relief the potential for the cultural realm to respond flexibly to changing social and political circumstances. Failing this, a dominant aesthetic practice such as sectarian utopianism is conceived of as a one-size-fits-all inevitability and a natural corollary to “endemic” sectarianism. The first two chapters centered on how the standing-by-theruins topos evolved in the novel and feature film according to Conclusion 178 changing historical conditions from the Lebanese civil war in the late 1970s to 2005. By way of showing how quickly the aesthetic response to changing conditions can occur, I explored in chapter 3 the rapid rise to prominence of elegiac humanism in early 2005 Lebanon and its equally precipitous decline when the conditions of spring parliamentary elections enjoined a return to sectarian affiliations. A year later, conditions had again changed. The country was embroiled in the 2006 “July War” between Hezbollah and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), and immediately the cultural sphere responded. Again songs and iconography responded to violence. Again ruins imagery figured prominently in scenes of bombed-out homes, bridges, ambulances. Yet the conditions surrounding this violence were different than those of the civil war and the post–civil war. The massive air, land, and sea attack on the country, coupled with the world’s support or acquiescence, evoked a response sharply at variance with the elegiac humanist aesthetic. Artists in all media and genres and from all points of the political compass, even among those with no sympathy for Hezbollah and who recognized the Party of God’s role in initiating a border skirmish, embraced the logic of redemptive self-sacrifice and its mythic utopian aesthetic. A song sung by Zayn al-ʿAmr is typical. The title, “Shumūkh,” translates as “pride” and is used in the sense of haughty disdain directed against the attackers and those who endorse their actions . Its evocation of ruins does not evoke self-examination as a novel published in the midst of the civil war might have, or a longing for human community beyond sectarian identities as a song published during the 2005 Independence Uprising might have. Indeed, the July War of 2006 exposed the incapacity of elegiac humanism to deal with barbarous destruction.2 An aesthetic directed at exploring the moral complexity of self-responsibility in civil war is inadequate to respond to massive attack from without . These, however, are perfect conditions for a revival of what had by then become an almost discredited mythic utopian aesthetic . Thus ruins in “Pride” set up a polarized self-other relationship and a will to self-sacrifice that appealed to a people who felt Conclusion 179 abandoned, and not for the first time, on the altar of geopolitical interests: Whenever they destroyed a house in my land, They built castles with my determination. They bargained for my land with my blood, So drink, my land, from my blood.3 The endorsement of a self-sacrificial ethos clearly departs from the elegiac humanist vision of a past that must be assumed in order to build a tolerable present. This song, one of many that proliferated during the July War, draws from the mythic well of blood and land in an effort to convert random war death into self-sacrifice for a cause. In addition to the new batch of songs produced for this war, others from past conflicts were dusted off and replayed for the familiar context of unequal war. Marcel Khalife’s “Muntas .ib al-Qama ʾImshī” (I Walk Upright) is perhaps the best known, dating back to the 1980s during the first Israeli invasion: I walk...