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ABSTRACT
This essay examines how Jorg Abou Mhaya’s Madinah Mujawirah lil Ard [City Neighbouring the Earth] depicts a series of crucial ruptures in traditional collective identities, which are connected directly to emerging global realities. Mhaya’s Madinah reflects on the political, economic, and social (dis)order in contemporary Lebanon and critiques the unsettling transformations of its capital, Beirut. Carefully tailored to be both universal and phantasmagoric, Mhaya’s Beirut embodies the extent to which the hegemonic restructuring forces of neo-liberalisation have moulded the planet into an unfathomable and illegible referent.
We argue here that the aesthetic strategies of Mhaya draw at once from hyper-realism and science fiction in order to evoke life as shaped by the aftermath of ‘disaster capitalism’: rational representations of lived realities seem elusive, and realist attempts to make sense of space, society, politics, and the present time appear destined to fail. In a country where changes are happening fast, reality tends to appear stranger than fiction, and comprehending it seems an impossible endeavour. The graphic novel thus mixes genres in order to make up for the aporia of discourse on life in the neo-liberal era.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. On the exploration of the memory of the Lebanese Civil War and its aftermath in Lebanese comics and graphic novels, it is worth citing the work of Zeina Abirached, Lamia Ziadé, Mazen Kerbaj, Barrack Rima or Lena Merhej among others. It is also possible to find European comics that explore some of those topics such as Ricard’s Clichés: Beyrouth 1990 and Warner’s The Man Who Built Beirut.
2. According to Naomi Klein who coined the term in The Shock Doctrine (Klein Citation2007), ‘disaster capitalism’ refers to the exploitation of a collective crisis resulting from a natural or a man-made catastrophe, in order to push through a series of laws and changes that would not be accepted otherwise. In Lebanon, the forced and rapid neo-liberalization that happened at the end of the civil war (1975–1990) resulted partly in the privatisation of the capital’s downtown that became the property of a single real estate company. See to this effect Citizen Hariri. Lebanon’s Neoliberal Reconstruction by Hannes Baumann.
3. The French version is very similar to the original but reduced in size to conform to the A4 French-Belgian album standard. All English translations are ours; paginations reflect the complete edition in French.
4. The illustrated epigraph of the graphic novel is quoted from the Book of Jeremiah in which the destruction of the earth is described: ‘I looked at the earth, and it was formless and empty; and at the heavens, and their light was gone. I looked at the mountains, and they were quaking; all the hills were swaying. I looked, and there were no people; every bird in the sky had flown away. I looked, and the fruitful land was a desert; all its towns lay in ruins … ’ (23–26). Mhaya does not include the ending of the 26th verse: ‘before the Lord, before his fierce anger,’ which suggests that the destruction was not wrought by a divine wrath, but rather by a different entity.
5. See, for example, Dima Karam’s ‘Beirut illustrated in A City Neighboring the Earth.’
6. In the context of Lebanon, this frame could be read differently: the two fly-like humanoids would represent then the Lebanese people who have little grasp on their life conditions. Those conditions are decided from afar, by the United States (hence the map), and their continual deterioration could indicate that ultimately they will live ‘in a milieu where death turns off all (forms) of life. Up to a desert for example’ (Mhaya 19).
7. In such a case, Emile’s words are to be taken literally: ‘He is entangled in a life that he did not choose’ (Mhaya 41).
8. Note, for example, Tawil and Ani’s disproportionately elongated necks, or the caricature-like rendering of the passengers of the bus (Mhaya 2, panels 5, 6; or 3, panel 3).
9. The last pages of the graphic novel suggest indeed that Tawil is neither convinced that his adventure was imagined, nor does he believe that it was hallucinated. Several clues remind him of what he lived and suggest that it truly happened: the carcase of what seems to be a dead dog, Ani’s passing in front of the bus he is riding, the statue of the mayor, etc.
10. Baudrillard paraphrases the story told by Borges as follows: ‘[…] the cartographers of the Empire draw up a map so detailed that it ends up covering the territory exactly (the decline of the Empire witnesses the fraying of this map, little by little, and its fall into ruins, though some shreds are still discernable in the deserts […])’ (1).
11. In the graphic novel, the pursuit and dismemberment of a dog (or in some cases of a human being) is not perceived as a horrible act of cruelty but rather considered as an entertainment for those citizens watching it live in bars, or as a means, for competitors, to gain employment: 70% of the population is unemployed and job contracts of 1–3 months are offered to the winners. However, the true purpose of the pursuit is mercantile, namely to sell addictive drinks and later, the remedies to this addiction. The mayor manufactures both drinks and remedies.
12. When he strikes Batman in Emile’s apartment, the unnamed man who saves Tawil shouts ‘Allahoou Akbaaar!!!’ suggesting that he might be a radical Islamist terrorist. His subsequent singing of a Lebanese song immediately contradicts such a hypothesis since, in radical Islam, singing and dancing are forbidden. A few moments later, while celebrating again what he believes to be the death of Batman, the man sings the opening lines of The International. Those moments imply that, while both demonised, terrorism and communism are nothing but oppositional reactions to an oppressive capitalist order. Mhaya confirms this reading in an interview with Nicolas Vidal, when, upon being asked about the incarnation of Evil in his work, he comments: ‘ Batman is a fundamentalist, like many leaders of the Lebanese militia who continue to play a predominant role in the country’s government […] his rival, the activist, has the same agenda, but albeit from the opposite position.’
13. The drawings are reminiscent of Mary Steel Stevenson’s Footprints in the sand. In an interview with Thierry Groensteen, Mhaya confirms that it is indeed Jesus ‘who is supposed to appear to Tawil’ (See http://neuviemeart.citebd.org/spip.php?article1084).
14. Before he dies, Batman kills the opponent who had dealt him the fatal blow.
15. Davies’ analysis on ‘Post-War Reconstruction in the Neoliberal Era’ focuses mainly on Warner’s The Man who Built Beirut at the expense of Hariri’s contested legacies, and at time dismisses Hariri’s power as the product of ‘a local “fascination”’ (220). But during his time as the country’s Prime Minister, Hariri’s personal wealth increased manifold as he pushed ‘disaster capitalism’ onto a country traumatised by 15 years of war. He is considered by his supporters as the man who wanted to put Lebanon back on the regional and international map and restore its pre-war lustre. See Baumann’s Citizen Hariri.
16. For more on the topic, read, for example, Khalaf and Khoury’s Recovering Beirut: Urban Design and Post-War Reconstruction; Samir Khalaf’s Heart of Beirut, Kassir’s Histoire de Beyrouth; Makdisi’s ‘Laying Claim to Beirut’; and Sawalha’s Reconstructing Beirut. On the reconstruction project and Francophone cultural production, read Carla Calargé’s Liban: mémoires fragmentées d’une guerre obsédante.
17. The area privatised by Solidere constitutes roughly 10% of that of the capital city.
18. Originally coined by Henri Lefebvre, the ‘right to the city’ is a concept increasingly claimed by civil societies in their attempts to resist neoliberal policies. According to David Harvey, ‘The period in which the neoliberal state has become hegemonic has also been the period in which the concept of civil society – often cast as an entity in opposition to state power – has become central to the formulation of oppositional politics’ (78). On civil society and cultural production in Lebanon, see Calargé’s Liban. Mémoires fragmentées d’une guerre obsédante. On civil society and graphic novels see Calargé and Gueydan-Turek’s ‘De la fabrique du réel (apocalyptique) … ’.
19. ‘The New Generation: Arab Comics Today’ is the product of a collaboration between the CIBD, the Mu’taz & Rada Sawwaf Arabic Comics Initiative at the American University of Beirut, ToshFesh.com, and the French Institute in Paris, in connection with French Institutes across the Arab world. Inaugurated as part of the 45th edition of the Angoulême International Comics Festival (Jan. 25 to 4 November 2018), this mobile exhibit is touring worldwide.
20. The goals and objectives set for this exhibition were multifold, often varying from one stakeholder to the next: Lina Ghaibeh, co-curator of the exhibit, Lebanese artist and comics scholar at the American University of Beirut, hoped to raise the profile of contemporary Arab graphic artists, to celebrate their innovative creations, and ‘to promote the making, scholarship and documentation of [Arab] comics’; Jean-Pierre Mercier, co-curator of the exhibition and scientific advisor to the CIBD, wanted to introduce a ‘European reader’ to Arab comics, through its long and rich history; in its collaboration with the most famous European comics festival, the recent Mu’taz & Rada Sawwaf Arabic Comics Initiative at the American University of Beirut aimed to gain visibility and recognition on the international graphic scene (New Generation 10–11).
21. The toppling of contested historical statues has become, in some circles, synonymous with the embrace of freedom and a claim over space in a sociopolitical context. One can think of the Western media’s depictions of the toppling of a Christopher Columbus’ statue in Venezuela in 2004, the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Firdos Square in Baghdad during the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the removal of Communist monuments after the fall of the USSR.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Carla Calargé
Carla Calargé is Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Florida Atlantic University. She works on the French-speaking Arab cultural production and has published extensively on the literature and cinema of North Africa and the Near East. She co-edited a special issue of the Cincinnati Romance Review on Assia Djebar and a collection of essays entitled Haiti and the Americas. Her book, Liban. Mémoires fragmentées d’une guerre obsédante (Brill 2017), examines the cultural memorialization of the Lebanese civil war as it is expressed by Lebanese writers, artists, and filmmakers between 2000 and 2015. Most recently, Calargé co-edited with Alexandra Gueydan-Turek a special issue of Nouvelles Etudes Francophones devoted to the Francophone graphic novel (2019). Calargé has been serving as secretary-treasurer of the Congrès International d’Études Francophones since 2012.
Alexandra Gueydan-Turek
Alexandra Gueydan-Turek is Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Swarthmore College (USA). Her recent work examines locally produced comics from the MENA region against the backdrop of a growing comics scene. She pays particular attention to the ways in which these graphic works – from nonfictional comics to underground comix and dz-manga – negotiate the need to visualize hardship, at a time when the space for political and engaged speech constricts, while resisting unidimensional political readings. Most recently, she co-edited with Carla Calargé a special issue of Nouvelles Etudes Francophones (34.1) on Francophone comics, in which she contributed an article on contemporary graphic collective endeavours across the Maghreb, and how growing exchanges between graphic artists promote a renewed relational ethics.