Haugbolle 123involve and engage the gaze of the public eye and hence relate to the “typi-
cal” or the common sense in the way Gramsci thought of as “fragmentary,
incoherent and inconsequential” conceptions of the world shared by “the
mass of people” in a political community.^14 This examination of biograph-
ical accounts of civil war therefore pays attention to the effect that the
situation of the writer, consciously or unconsciously, wields on him or her.
How do commonly held notions about the war shape the public formu-
lation of personal experiences? How do memory fragments conform to
national discourses of the past?
Early war memoirs
War memoirs have existed in Lebanon since the very beginning of the
civil war, but never as a very widely read genre.^15 Some of the first bio-
graphies to appear were written by (or edited interviews with) some of
the leaders from the early war. Nawaf Salam has examined three of these
books, by the Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt, the Palestinian leader Abu
Iyad and the Maronite leader Camille Chamoun.^16 All three writers pres-
ent themselves and their people as victims of the circumstances and their
actions as purely defensive, rational and of course completely “necessary.”
More than anything, these early autobiographies are telling documents of
the sectarian-ideological vigor driving the war in its early stages. They are
skewed mirrors of the “realities” of the war, seen from the perspective of
some of the men who directed it.
istorical personalities like Jumblatt and Chamoun do not have to H
justify why they are writing and why we should read about their lives.
They incarnate common sense—not of the Lebanese, but of their own
communities. Accordingly, their memories and general understanding of
the war defend their respective political ideology. As an example, consider
the following coarse summary of “Lebanese” history in Chamoun’s book:
(my emphasis) “The Lebanese has often been prosecuted through his his-
tory, because he is of the Christian religion and represents a civilisation
which makes him closer to the West.”^17 So much for the approximately
two million Muslim and Druze Lebanese!