Haugbolle 145understanding. And all of them, in one way or another, pointed the finger
at sectarianism.
ince the Syrian retreat in April 2005, a new and potentially con-S
structive interpretation of the war has been gaining ground, stressing
at once Israeli, American, Iranian, Palestinian and Syrian interference
in Lebanese affairs as the main reasons for Lebanon’s fratricide. As for
sectarianism, it continues to structure the public sphere. Doubletalk and
kalām fād.ῑ [empty talk], but also guardedness and vulnerability shape
public interaction amongst the Lebanese no less than before. More cru-
cially, the political system from the national to the local level still operates
according to a sectarian distribution of power. The postideological realm
constructed in the name of national reconciliation and “truth telling” is
therefore largely imagined and depends on a public consensus of civic
nationalism or “intellectual patriotism.”^58 The fall guy, in other words, was
neither dead nor gone, but continued to be present “between the lines” in
postwar Lebanon. He was a product of a public sphere unusually rife with
coded signals, masks and voices in play. In such a public sphere, the truth
is invariably slippery, and therefore invariably highly prized.