In the aftermath of the June 1967 defeat of the Arab armies by Israel, the Palestinian resistance began launching guerrilla operations from southern Lebanese towns. This was a moment of hope for the Lebanese Left, which sought to build on the mass mobilization around Palestinian armed struggle to foment revolutionary struggle. Drawing on the theorisation of the Marxist group Socialist Lebanon, Fadi Bardawil looks at how Lebanon's simultaneous economic integration into the Arab area through its services-based mode of production, and its isolation from Arab political causes, was affected by the advent of the Palestinian Resistance on the national political scene. In revisiting this moment, Bardawil pays particular attention to how the Left theorised the Lebanese State, class-formation, as well as the role of Palestinian Resistance as an external force that would transform the rules of the Lebanese sectarian political game by rallying the masses around the national question.
This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.
Event Details
Speaker: Dr Fadi Bardawil, University of North Carolina
Chair: Dr John Chalcraft, LSE
Discussant: Fuad Musallam, LSE
Date: Wednesday 21 January 2015
Time: 16.30-18.30
Location: Room 9.05, Tower 2, Clement's Inn, LSE
Attendance: This event is free and open to all on a first come first served basis. Our events are very well attended, please make sure to arrive early. We cannot guarantee entry.
Speaker
Dr Fadi Bardawil is Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of North Carolina. Prior to this, he spent three years as a Harper Fellow at the University of Chicago’s Society of Fellows. Fadi's work looks into the lives and works of contemporary modernist Arab thinkers in the context of the international circulation of social theory. Currently, he is working on a book manuscript provisionally titled In Marxism’s Wake: Disenchanted Levantine Intellectuals and Metropolitan Traveling Theories.