Passionnant entretien avec Ziad Abu Rish sur l’histoire du Liban post-indépendance
▻http://www.lcps-lebanon.org/agendaArticle.php?id=49
Juste un extrait, mais son regard d’historien permet de relativiser bcp de discours sur la "nature" de l’Etat libanais, que nous ne cessons de juger d’après la situation post-guerre civile.
What about sectarianism? How does sectarianism play a role in the early independence period?
The early independence period has important insights regarding these dynamics. Particularly important, as mentioned above, is to recognize that the meaning of sectarianism in this period is really different than what we think of today. While there certainly was the memory of sectarian violence from the nineteenth century, very few people seem to have had in mind an idea of sectarianism parallel to what manifested during the 1975-1990 civil war or thereafter. This is important for several reasons. First of all, we should note that the principle of confessional representation was openly discussed by politicians, lawyers, and several other interest groups as a temporary (rather than permanent) measure. However one views the honesty of such claims, it is important to realize that, at least in so far as the level of formal speech is concerned, sectarian allotment was not necessarily viewed as the raison d’etre of the state. More so, there were frequent calls for ending sectarian practices, either at the level of the state bureaucracy or that of personal status courts. Newspaper coverage from the period highlights important strikes and protest campaigns seeking to directly challenge sect-based hiring practices and sectarian differences in the management of personal status issues such as marriage, divorce, inheritance, and so forth.
Also important is the fact that sectarian-based political parties were not necessarily as dominant during this time, to say nothing of being sectarian in the same way. For example, it was the Constitutional Bloc and the National Party that represented the dominant elite-based political groupings, into which we saw the entrance of several reformist coalitions and parties that periodically disrupted this binarization of politics. Even the Kataib Party, which was out of power prior to 1958, was both more populist in its demands and frequently sought temporary strategic alliances with Sunni-identified groups such as al-Najada and al-Nida’ al-Watani. This is of course to say nothing of the Communist Party or the Progressive Socialist Party, before the defection from the latter group to the ranks of the Ba‘th Party and others.
My purpose in highlighting these dynamics is not to create a utopic vision of the past. Rather, it is to point to historical developments that do not fit the received wisdom about the early independence period and thus are not even subject to inquiry. The early independence period was very much one in which primary political mobilizations featured cross-sectarian coalitions that fundamentally challenge our assumptions of how Lebanese citizens identified themselves, their interests, and their allies and adversaries—irrespective of whether these experiments ultimately failed, were derailed, or carried through to their alleged logical conclusions. This is not to say that sectarianism was non-existent. It is simply to argue that its manifestations were different. In fact, I believe that one of the more lacking areas of inquiries in the history of Lebanon is the workings of sectarianism during the early independence period. Similar to the question relating to the nature and functioning of state institutions, much of what we allegedly know about this period vis-à-vis sectarianism is either assumed or projected backward from the post 1958 or 1975 periods
Pour mémoire, il avait écrit un très intéressant papier sur l’histoire de l’électricité au Liban :
Abu-Rish, Ziad. 2014. « On Power Cuts, Protests, and Institutions : A Brief History of Electricity in Beirut (Part One) ». Jadaliyya. avril 22. ▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/17416/on-power-cuts-protests-and-institutions_a-brief-hi
#Liban #Etat #histoire #indépendance