Publics, Politics and Participation

(Wang) #1

130 Between Private and Public


actions of individuals and societies. Symptomatically, Soha Beshara only
started dealing with her memories after she had moved to Paris. One day,
a former inmate in al-khiyam sent her some of her papers and clothes
from the prison in a package, which became her Proustian madeleine
cake and set free the memory that would otherwise “still be in chains.”^32


Testimonies and memoirs of former militiamen


After the war, Lebanese intellectuals and artists recurrently berated the
“chained memories” and “traumatic repression” of their compatriots. The
War writ large, they argued, had become a “taboo,” was “repressed” and
had produced “amnesia” in society, and it was high time the Lebanese
took a lumpy bite of the proverbial madeleine cake. There had to be “clo-
sure,” they believed, in order for Lebanon to “move on.”^33 Reading the
testimonies and memoirs of former militiamen, there is reason to believe
that these absolutist explanations, supported by buzzwords taken from
Western political lingo and put forth by people who often did not fight in
the war themselves, obfuscated a much more complex situation. Certain
aspects of the war, as for example the resistance against Israel and popular
coexistence in spite of the boundaries imposed by militias, were capable
of creating a positive memory and could therefore be shared in public
free of risk; whereas other aspects, like personal and collective pain, guilt,
shame and responsibility associated with the war, could be considered
truly contentious issues.^34
erpetrators and victims more than anyone embody the shadow P
which the war continued to cast over postwar Lebanon and the problem-
atic nature of the mantra of “no victor, no vanquished.” While most of the
Lebanese population can be considered victims in one way or another,
women often bore the brunt of the suffering, although, as we have just
seen, rarely as passive victims. One of the major achievements of women
was to hold together the collapsing structures of Lebanese society. Soha
Beshara in the role of assassin is the most radical example of a woman
entering the masculine realm, but far from the only example of the trans-
formative effects which the war had on gender relations in Lebanon.
The death or absence of so many males during the war forced Lebanese

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