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Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 41, No.3, Spring 2018 Contending With Hope and Heartbreak: Narrative, Knowledge, and Strategy in the Syrian Revolution1 Ghaleb Attrache* Among the participants and analysts alike, one of the prevailing assessments of the Arab revolutions—and the recent global wave of revolt more broadly—is that they have been “spontaneous,” “leaderless,” “uncoordinated ” events.2 As evidence of this, observers point to the revolutions’ lack of an identifiable leadership, a solid organizational structure, and a clear (politico-ideological) vision or agenda. This article revisits these (largely structurally-focused) assessments in the Syria context by recasting them in narrative and affective analytic frameworks. In doing so, it asks: 42 *Ghaleb Attrache is a PhD student in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to his work on the microfoundations of the Syrian revolution, his research has also explored intrastate conflict in the post-2013 Egyptian regime. He currently studies the role of spiritual and religious practices in humanitarian aid organizations' mental health services. 1 This research was supported by a grant from the Sultan Program in Arab Studies at UC Berkeley. I would like to thank Samer Abboud for encouraging me to write this paper, and Cihan Tuğal for his comments on an earlier draft as well as his continued mentorship. My ultimate gratitude and respect is to the Syrians that shared with me the details of some of their most profound, emotional, inspiring experiences in life and revolution. Please direct all correspondence to Ghaleb Attrache, ghaleb@berkeley.edu. 2 Samer Abboud, Syria (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2016); John R. Bradley, After the Arab Spring: How Islamists Hijacked the Middle East Revolts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2012); John L. Esposito, Tamara Sonn, and John Obert Voll, Islam and Democracy After the Arab Spring, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Ibrahim Fraihat, Unfinished Revolutions: Yemen, Libya, and Tunisia After the Arab Spring (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016); Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami, Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War (London: Pluto Press, 2016). 43 what can we learn about the revolutions by treating spontaneity (and its correlates) as both a mobilizing narrative3 and a mode of knowledge production4 ? What does this approach reveal about the Syrian revolution’s strengths and limitations? I explore this question through Syrian grassroots organizers’ reflections on their mobilization efforts. The literature on the Arab uprisings has been dominated by the cases of Tunisia and Egypt.5 Does Syria offer us any pertinent lessons? According to one scholar, Syria “seems too dark to have any affinity with the image of spring promised by the Tunisian revolution.”6 As a result, the Syrian revolution is often sidelined from today’s broader discussions of the Arab uprisings, unless those discussions are about geopolitics and/or authoritarian resilience.7 But in fact the (trajectory of the) Syrian revolution, to-date the bloodiest and most destructive of the regional revolts (along with the Yemen war), presents an opportunity to trace how narratives about agency, intent, and outcome (e.g., failure, heartbreak) evolve with the turbulent political climate, as well as how such narratives shape the lessons people draw about revolutionary struggle. To examine these questions, the paper is organized into two main sections following a brief methodology discussion. The first section takes up Syrians’ reflections on the early phase of the revolution. The empirical matter here consists mostly of positive (and affective) evaluations of the revolution (the “hope” story); it discusses the early mobilization’s professed spontaneity, and, by juxtaposing the latter with leadership/coordination claims, analytically locates both within the process of constructing a revolu3 Francesca Polletta, ““It Was Like a Fever…” Narrative and Identity in Social Protest,” Social Problems 45, no. 2 (May 1998): 137-59; Francesca Polletta, “Contending Stories: Narrative in Social Movements,” Qualitative Sociology 21, no. 4 (Dec 1998): 419-446; Francesca Polletta, It was like a fever: Storytelling in protest and politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 4 Mohammed A. Bamyeh, “The global culture of protest,” Contexts 11, no. 2 (2012): 16-18; Mohammed...

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