Standing by the Ruins : : Elegiac Humanism in Wartime and Postwar Lebanon / / Ken Seigneurie.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Fordham University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
• VerfasserIn: Seigneurie, Ken,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Fordham University Press, , [2011]; ©2011
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (264 p.)

Since the mid-1970s, Lebanon has been at the center of the worldwide rise in sectarian extremism. Its cultural output has both mediated and resisted this rise. Standing by the Ruins reviews the role of culture in supporting sectarianism, yet argues for the emergence of a distinctive aesthetic of resistance to it. Focusing on contemporary Lebanese fiction, film, and popular culture, this book shows how artists reappropriated the twin legacies of commitment literature and the ancient topos of “standing by the ruins” to form a new “elegiac humanism” during the tumultuous period of 1975 to 2005. It redirects attention to the critical role of culture in conditioning attitudes throughout society and is therefore relevant to other societies facing sectarian extremism.Standing by the Ruins is also a strong intervention in the burgeoning field of World Literature. Elaborating on the great Arabist Hilary Kilpatrick’s crucial insight that ancient Arabic forms and topoi filter into modern literature, the author details how the “standing by the ruins” topos—and the structure of feeling it conditions—has migrated over time. Modern Arabic novels, feature films, and popular culture, far from being simply cultural imports, are hybrid forms deployed to respond to the challenges of contemporary Arab society. As such, they can take their place within a World Literature paradigm: they are cultural products that travel and intervene in the world.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures and Plates -- Acknowledgments -- Note on Transliterations -- Introduction: Shoring These Ruins against My Fragments -- 1. Absence at the Heart of Yearning: Civil War and Postwar Novels -- 2. “Speak, Ruins!”: The Work of Nostalgia in Feature Film -- 3. Elegiac Humanism and Popular Politics: The Independence Uprising of 2005 -- Conclusion: “We’re All Hezbollah Now” -- Appendix: A Selected Bibliography of Lebanese War Novels -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index