War Museums in Postwar Lebanon: Memory, Violence, and Performance

Abstract

This article examines three museums that address Lebanon’s history of conflict: the newly opened Beit Beirut on the capital’s former Green Line, the Hezbollah-run Mleeta Resistance Tourist Landmark in south Lebanon, and Umam Documentation and Research’s online archive “Memory at Work.” Each testing the parameters of what the term museum can mean in Lebanon today, these cases highlight the still-contested nature of war narratives. While many Lebanese youth express desire for a shared national history of the civil war, the affective complexities of recuperated memorial sites and the inconsistent involvement of the state suggest that the possibility of publicly staging such a history is far from secure.

Notes

Notes

1 Claire Launchbury, Nayla Tamraz, Roger Célestin, and Eliane DalMolin, “War, Memory, Amnesia: Postwar Lebanon,” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 18, no. 5 (2014): 457–61; John Nagle, “Ghosts, Memory, and the Right to the Divided City: Resisting Amnesia in Beirut City Centre,” Antipode 49, no.1 (2017): 149–68.

2 Sune Haugbolle, War and Memory in Lebanon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 8–9.

3 Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone, eds., Regimes of Memory (London: Routledge, 2003).

4 See http://www.beitbeirut.org; https://mleeta.com/mleeta/eng/; https://umam-dr.org/en/home; and http://www.memoryatwork.org/.

5 Craig Larkin, Memory and Conflict in Lebanon: Remembering and Forgetting the Past (London: Routledge, 2012); Ella Parry-Davies, “Ecologies of Remembrance: Performance, Place and the Past in Singapore and Beirut” (PhD dissertation, King’s College London and National University of Singapore, 2017).

6 See Peter Vergo, ed., The New Museology (London: Reaktion Books, 1989); Paul Williams, Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities (Oxford: Berg, 2007); Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture (London: Routledge, 2000).

7 Williams, Memorial Museums, 8.

8 Silke Arnold-de Simine, “Memory Museum and Museum Text: Intermediality in Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum and WG Sebald’s Austerlitz,” Theory, Culture and Society 29, no. 1 (2012): 18.

9 Dora Apel, Memory Effects: The Holocaust and the Art of Secondary Witnessing (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002).

10 Jens Andermann and Silke Arnold-de Simine, “Introduction: Memory, Community and the New Museum,” Theory, Culture and Society 29, no. 1 (2012): 9.

11 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Penguin, 2004), 103.

12 Leo Benedictus, “Are the 9/11 Museum’s Commemorative Toys and Hoodies a Step Too Far?” https://www.theguardian.com/culture/shortcuts/2014/may/19/911-museum-gift-shop-bad-taste-new-york (accessed 22 Aug. 2018).

13 Alys Cundy and Yvonne Pörzgen, “Emotional Strategies in Museum Exhibitions,” Museum and Society 14, no. 3 (2016): 359–62.

14 Patrizia Violi, “Trauma Site Museums and Politics of Memory: Tuol Sleng, Villa Grimaldi and the Bologna Ustica Museum,” Theory, Culture and Society 29, no. 1 (2012): 39.

15 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).

16 Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire, 20.

17 J. John Lennon and Malcolm Foley, Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster (London: Continuum, 2000).

18 Madeleine Leonard, “A Tale of Two Cities: ‘Authentic’ Tourism in Belfast,” Irish Journal of Sociology 19, no. 2 (2011): 111–26.

19 Craig Larkin, “Jerusalem’s Separation Wall and Global Message Board: Graffiti, Murals, and the Art of Sumud,” The Arab Studies Journal 22, no. 1 (2014): 134–69.

20 Socrat Ghadban and Manar Abou Zaki, “Dark Tourism in Lebanon: A Bright Opportunity to be Pursued,” International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Reviews 2, no. 1 (2015): 53–60.

21 Michael S. Bowman and Phaedra C. Pezzullo, “What’s So ‘Dark’ about ‘Dark Tourism’? Death, Tours, and Performance,” Tourist Studies 9, no. 3 (2009): 187–202; Lynn Meskell, “Negative Heritage and Past Mastering in Archaeology,” Anthropological Quarterly 75, no. 3 (2002): 557–74.

22 Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003).

23 Violi, “Trauma Site Museums and Politics of Memory,” 37.

24 Cillian McGrattan, “Policing Politics: Framing the Past in Post-conflict Divided Societies,” Democratization 21, no. 3 (2014): 391.

25 Laurie Beth Clark, “Ruined Landscapes and Residual Architecture,” Performance Research 20, no. 3 (2015): 84.

26 Mleeta Resistance Tourist Landmark, https://mleeta.com/mleeta/eng/ (accessed 22 Aug. 2018).

27 Mona Harb and Lara Deeb, “Culture as History and Landscape: Hezbollah’s Efforts to Shape an Islamic Milieu in Lebanon,” Arab Studies Journal 19, no. 1 (2011): 26.

28 Ibid., 25.

29 Ibid., 27.

30 Elinor Fuchs and Una Chaudhuri, eds., Land/Scape/Theater (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 12.

31 This inscription is part of Nasrallah’s “Day of Victory and Liberation” speech, 25 May 2000.

32 Harb and Deeb, “Culture as History and Landscape,” 27.

33 “Ten Years Later: AFAC Celebrates its 10th Anniversary with more than 40 Artists from 15 Arab Countries,” https://arabculturefund.org/bulletin/article.php?genre=2&id=917 (accessed 22 Aug. 2018).

34 “Shifting Lights Exhibition,” http://twigcollaborative.com/article/66 (accessed 22 Aug. 2018).

35 See Sarah Rogers, “Out of History: Postwar Art in Beirut,” Art Journal 66, no. 2 (2007): 8–20.

36 The Photo Mario Project, Beit Beirut, wall panel.

37 Ibid.

38 Zena el Khalil, interview with the author, 11 Feb. 2018.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid.

41 Online survey conducted among 40 Lebanese youth through snowballing contacts, during Jan. 2018.

42 Hussein Dakroub, “Bassil Video Puts Lebanon on Edge,” Daily Star (Lebanon), 30 Jan. 2018.

43 “About Us: Mission Statement,” https://www.umam-dr.org/en/home/about-umam/1/advance-contents/3/mission-statement (accessed 22 Aug. 2018).

44 The Digital archive was funded after the 2006 war as part of the restoration of The Hangar and digitization program by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development.

45 “Memory at Work,” http://www.memoryatwork.org/index.php/2 (accessed 22 Aug. 2018).

46 The English translation and archive materials are not as extensively developed as the initial Arabic component of the website.

47 Monika Borgmann, quoted in Isabelle Mayault, “Looking for the Lost Bus,” Mashallah News, https://www.mashallahnews.com/looking-for-the-lost-bus/ (accessed 22 Aug. 2018).

48 Lara Deeb, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).

49 See memoir and interview material from Umam D&R “Collecting Dahiyeh” exhibition, 2007.

50 Katherine Maddox, “Archiving the Present in Beirut’s Southern Suburb: Memory, History, and Power at Umam Documentation and Research” (PhD dissertation, University of Texas, 2016): 23.

51 Lokman Slim, interview with the author, 14 Feb. 2018.

52 Jim Quilty, “Putting Flesh and Bones on the Specter of Dahiyeh,” The Daily Star, 8 June 2007.

53 Maddox, “Archiving the Present in Beirut’s Southern Suburb,” 68.

54 Monika Borgmann, interview with the author, 14 Feb. 2018.

55 “A Bus and Its Replicas,” https://www.umam-dr.org/en/home/projects/14/advance-contents/115/a-bus-and-its-replicas (accessed 22 Aug. 2018).

56 Houssam Boukeili, quoted in Isabelle Mayault, “Looking for the Lost Bus,” Mashallah News, https://www.mashallahnews.com/looking-for-the-lost-bus/ (accessed 22 Aug. 2018).

57 Jamil Mouawad and Hannes Baumann, “Wayn al-Dawla? Locating the Lebanese State in Social Theory,” Arab Studies Journal 25, no. 1 (2017): 66–91.

58 During separate visits to Mleeta in 2018 the Hezbollah flag and the Lebanese flag were flown alternately from the hilltop. As a Mleeta guide commented: “At times we swap them round. This month it is the Lebanese flag as we recognize the Army’s support for Hezbollah’s victories in Arsal.” Interview with the author, 8 Sept. 2018.

59 Hatim el-Hibri, “Disagreement without Dissensus: The Contradictions of Hezbollah’s Mediatized Populism,” International Journal of Communication 11 (2017): 42–45.

60 See Hassan Nasrallah, “Why Hezbollah Is Fighting in Syria,” speech on 16 Feb. 2014, https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6fud9x (accessed 22 Aug. 2018).

61 “The Collection,” http://www.umam-dr.org/en/home/categories/13/our-collection (accessed 22 Aug. 2018).

62 “Projects and Events,” https://www.umam-dr.org/en/home/categories/2/our-work (accessed 22 Aug. 2018).

63 “Fewer Refugees—More Refugeeism,” https://www.umam-dr.org/en/home/projects/14/advance-contents/188/fewer-refugees-more-refugeeism (accessed 22 Aug. 2018).

64 Hanan Toukan, “On Being the Other in Post-Civil War Lebanon: Aid and the Politics of Art in Processes of Contemporary Cultural Production,” The Arab Studies Journal 18, no. 1 (2010): 144.

65 Rema Hammami, “Palestinian NGOs since Oslo: From NGO Politics to Social Movements?” Middle East Report 214 (2000): 19.

66 Zena el Khalil, interview with the author, 11 Feb. 2018.

67 Ibid.

68 Slim, interview, 2018.

69 el Khalil, interview, 2018.

70 Ibid.

71 Sami Hermez, War Is Coming: Between Past and Future Violence in Lebanon (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 192.

72 Rustom Bharucha, Terror and Performance (London: Routledge, 2014), 104.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Craig Larkin

Craig Larkin is senior lecturer in comparative politics of the Middle East, Department of War Studies, King’s College London. His research interests include memory and transitional justice, urban geopolitics, and Islamist movements, religion, and identity politics.

Ella Parry-Davies

Ella Parry-Davies is a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, where her research focusses on relationships among performance, urban space, and memory making in contexts of migration.