Ghosts, Memory, and the Right to the Divided City: Resisting Amnesia in Beirut City Centre

Nagle, John

doi:10.1111/anti.12263

Cited by 20 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…We believe that it is important to address this double movement because it can facilitate and embolden those actors who rely on collective silence and amnesia in the face of economic and political violence, both past and present, while at the same time delimiting the spatial and temporal horizon of urban struggle ( cf . Herf, ; Deák et al ., ; Pred, ; Goldberg, ; Nagle, ).…”

Section: Introduction: Hamburg's Gatewaymentioning

confidence: 99%

Hamburg's Spaces of Danger: Race, Violence and Memory in a Contemporary Global City

MacFarlane¹,

Mitchell²

2019

Int J Urban Regional Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Germany today is experiencing the strongest upsurge of right‐wing populism since the second world war, most notably with the rise of Pegida and Alternative für Deutschland. Yet wealthy global cities like Hamburg continue to present themselves as the gatekeepers of liberal progress and cosmopolitan openness. This article argues that Hamburg's urban boosterism relies on, while simultaneously obscuring, the same structures of racial violence that embolden reactionary movements. Drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin and Allan Pred, we present an archaeology of Hamburg's landscape, uncovering some of its ‘spaces of danger’—sites layered with histories of violence, many of which lie buried and forgotten. We find that these spaces, when they become visible, threaten to undermine Hamburg's cosmopolitan narrative. They must, as a result, be continually erased or downplayed in order to secure the city as an attractive site for capital investment. To illustrate this argument, we give three historical examples: Hamburg's role in the Hanseatic League during the medieval and early modern period; the city under the Nazi regime; and the recent treatment of Black African refugees. The article's main contribution is to better situate issues of historical landscape, collective memory and racialized violence within the political economy of today's global city.

show abstract

Section: Introduction: Hamburg's Gatewaymentioning

confidence: 99%

Hamburg's Spaces of Danger: Race, Violence and Memory in a Contemporary Global City

MacFarlane¹,

Mitchell²

2019

Int J Urban Regional Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The process of neoliberal urban regeneration in the postwar city illuminates these issues of plural governance. Postwar reconstruction often intersects with the ideals of the 'capitalist peace', an attempt to discipline cities into pacification through incentivising foreign direct investment, gentrification and privatisation strategies (Nagle, 2017(Nagle, , 2018. This privatisation of peace permits elites and warlords to capture economic, social and political institutions for the purpose of corruption and clientelism (Leenders, 2012).…”

Section: Beirut: the Postwar Citymentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Where the state freaks out’: Gentrification, Queerspaces and activism in postwar Beirut

Nagle¹

2021

Urban Studies

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this article I illuminate the production and erasure of Queerspaces in Beirut as part of postwar gentrification. A dual Beirut has emerged within assemblages of sectarian power, sexual citizenship and political economy. Commercial Queerspaces tacitly incorporated into the neoliberal and sectarian state exist while the ‘Queer unwanted’– spaces and people deemed transgressive to the moral order – are violently erased by state and non-state actors. These dual spaces expose the limits on life for Queer communities. To analyse these dynamics, I turn to the testimonies of LGBTQ activists in Beirut in relation to the possibilities offered by Queerspace. While activists note the exclusions – class, gender and sexuality – of commercial Queerspace that restrain political agency, they have powerfully asserted radical intersectional politics into recent revolutionary anti-sectarian waves of protest. This politics is marked by articulating Queerness as a project of connecting marginality for all excluded groups in Lebanon’s postwar order and by a queering of sectarian/neoliberal space that has hitherto cleansed undesirable LGBTQ bodies. This article draws on extensive fieldwork in Beirut (2011 to 2020), thus permitting longitudinal research of LGBTQ activism.

show abstract

“…31 26 I use the term 'state' to refer to the Lebanese ruling class, authorities, government institutions, and security forces. 27 For more on collective amnesia: see Launchbury et al (2014); Nagle (2017); Haugbolle (2010). 28 Makdisi (1997: 661-7).…”

Section: The Object As Symbolmentioning

confidence: 99%

Objects of transgenerational memory: challenging hegemonic historical narratives of war in Lebanon

Hodeib¹

2021

JBA

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article examines how objects embedded in the domestic life of the generation of the Lebanese civil war and the subsequent generations evoke stories that disrupt the state�s hegemonic production of history. The article explores stories surrounding two objects that survived the war, and took on residues of memory later heard and retold by the subsequent generation. These objects illuminate ways in which the legacy of intergenerational memory is produced and transmitted�and how these alternative spaces and stories emerge in present struggles, including the October 2019 revolution. In the first section, the article examines how material objects operate as intergenerational symbols of the experiences of war and as media for the process of narrativisation. In the second section, the argument explores the role of the material as a witness to what resists language and as a locus to memory�s temporality. In the third section, the article looks into the affective dimension of the material object as it provokes an opening to narration and challenges linear understandings of history. This search through material and domestic objects seeks stories that resist closure, and is essential to understanding today�s struggle against the Lebanese political class.

show abstract

Ghosts, Memory, and the Right to the Divided City: Resisting Amnesia in Beirut City Centre

Cited by 20 publications

References 27 publications

Hamburg's Spaces of Danger: Race, Violence and Memory in a Contemporary Global City

Hamburg's Spaces of Danger: Race, Violence and Memory in a Contemporary Global City

‘Where the state freaks out’: Gentrification, Queerspaces and activism in postwar Beirut

Objects of transgenerational memory: challenging hegemonic historical narratives of war in Lebanon

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About