Dix ans après, comment ne pas réconcilier une société divisée ?

Note de lecture

“…In a context that was not very conducive to the opening of a public debate on the meaning of the war (in addition to the adoption of the amnesty law in 1991, the law on audiovisuals voted in 1994 reinforced the tendency of many actors to self-censorship), the discussions that accompanied the start of the huge reconstruction project in downtown Beirut, addressed in Chapter 3, gradually grew to form a much more encompassing debate on the memory of the civil war. The "intellectual party" (as Samir Kassir [ 2000] dubbed it -iterating Péguy) played a central role in objecting to a building project that oscillated between two geographic visualizations: Beirut as a forward-looking 'Hong Kong' of the Middle East, or as a middle-eastern Paris trading in nostalgia for a fantasized pre-war era. This theme of nostalgia dealt with in Chapter 3 and especially Chapter 4, gives rise to a wide-ranging discussion of its versatility, stoked up by an examination of its various expressions and uses within different generational groups and social classes.…”

Vol 59 Nr. 2 (2001)

“…Den politiske diskursen i Libanon har vaert begrenset til å prise «det broderlige forholdet til Syria» og nødvendigheten av det syriske militaere naervaeret for landets sikkerhet. Når nå det syriske naervaeret åpent tas opp og kritiseres, bunner dette i en dyp frustrasjon, følt først og fremst i den maronittiske befolkningen, over det som oppfattes som ti års politisk og økonomisk stagnasjon i landet (Kassir 2000).…”