Reimagining an alternative Lebanon - Executive Magazine
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https://www.executive-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Beyond_Sectarianism-e1573219750731.jpg Une analyse de Bassel Salloukh
It is a revolution that has already achieved so much in so little time. It has allowed for a reimagining of the Lebanese nation beyond top-down imposed narrow sectarian affiliations. With this comes a shift in how people define themselves as agents: not as sectarian subjects in a political order cut along sectarian and religious lines, but rather as anti- and trans-sectarian citizens operating in a polyphonic and democratic civic space, one where alternative class, gender, and environmental interests drive political action. Moreover, the October 17 revolution marks the definitive end of the civil war, and a genuine bottom-up reconciliation between one-time warring communities. This reconciliation is the beginning of elusive postwar peace and collective healing, the real bulwark against future attempts to instrumentalize sectarianism by the political economic elite for local or geopolitical purposes. What we are witnessing, then, is the birth of a new “imagined community,” to borrow Irish political scientist Benedict Anderson’s term, one that travels across regions, classes, genders, and sects. That is the greatest and undeniable achievement of this moment, one that no matter the short-term outcome, can never be reversed.
This does not mean that those sectarian communities laboriously assembled by the ideological, material, and institutional practices of the sectarian system will wither away anytime soon—despite the drying up of the clientelist swamps. They are numbed by the ideological hegemony of the sectarian system and nourished on the demonizing discourse of sectarian entrepreneurs. They are also scared lest they lose whatever material interests remain vested in the sectarian system. But they are undeniably running against the long play of history.