Abstracts
< back to list
Beirut
Tentative Title: Oral Histories of Ras Beirut: Nostalgia, Memory and the Construction of History.
Presenters: Alia Al Zougbi and Susanne Abou Ghaida
Abstract:
One of the major research concerns of the Mediterranean Voices/Beirut subproject was
to investigate the urban history of Ras Beirut as it is and was lived out by its residents,
natives and those who, for whatever reason, frequented the area. During the course of
interviewing subjects about the events and changes that the neighbourhood had undergone
over the course of the last century, it came to our attention that nostalgic undertones
flavoured much of the interviewees' narratives. Accounts were suffused with expressions
of longing and yearning for a golden past of places, people and times that many interviewees
felt had been irretrievably lost.
In taking a critical look at nostalgia, we were operating from several basic assumptions
that are also at the very heart of the Mediterranean Voices project. To start with,
multiple versions of history exist although these are layered in terms of visibility:
the existing power structure of society determines which stories surface to become the
familiar history of the area and which are silenced through a process of exclusion from
common means of distribution. The purpose of the project thus becomes to cast a light
on these multiple discourses, particularly those which had previously been marginalized.
Another task is to account for this multiplicity. Remembering and history telling are
neither an objective retelling of a fixed installation encapsulated in an absolute time-line
nor a purely emotional activity 'seated predominantly in the heart' *). We argue that
nostalgia and historical narratives are politically constructed and are related to the
social trajectory, present situation and future aspirations of its tellers.
Our paper thus explores individual constructions of nostalgic bookmarks of Ras Beirut's history.
On the one hand, there is the nostalgia for the rural Ras Beirut of the first half of the
twentieth century, characterized by its religious mix of residents and harmonious social
relations. This is sometimes shared, sometimes favored, and sometimes dwarfed by nostalgia
for Ras Beirut during what has been dubbed as the 'Golden Age': a time when it was the
centre of the cultural productivity, economic prosperity and political activism of the pre-war
heyday. Finally, some accounts express nostalgia for the days of the civil war which were
marked by heightened social cohesiveness, whether it resulted from a sense of solidarity
that grew within pockets of shared political vision, or because security and mutual worry
became a common concern for many of the residents. The paper will delve into nostalgic
discourse and examine it symptomatically. Finally, we will examine the modes and means
of the operationalization of nostalgia in different social contexts.
While we will be drawing on a number of interviews and accounts collected for the
Mediterranean Voices Project, the paper will consist largely of an in-depth discussion of four case-studies.
*) Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie.
< back to list
|
