By Abir A. Chaaban
This study addresses is the problem of the legitimacy of sovereignty within the international institutional legal system being a problem associated with the conceptual structure of sovereignty in the system. Working with Foucault, I conduct a micro analysis of relations of force around institutional transformations as effects of power. I scrutinize the function of discourse as a mechanism of popular recruitment and mobilization into conflict. The aim of this historical comparative analysis is to pinpoint tension by the antagonism employed in discourses of resistance taking the case of Lebanon and the historical cases of the English and the French Revolutions. I ask the question how the power of resistance consequently leads to a radical change in the normative institutional rules of recognition of the legitimacy sovereignty. This study was the primary research for a documentary video on the Lebanese civil conflict. The documentary is titled: Her Journey in the Cave: My Memory of the Past Part I." The documentary was previewed at the Lebanese American University, January 2014 as part of an event with the aim of creating awareness about peace education to Lebanese educators.
By Abir A. Chaaban
This study addresses is the problem of the legitimacy of sovereignty within the international institutional legal system being a problem associated with the conceptual structure of sovereignty in the system. Working with Foucault, I conduct a micro analysis of relations of force around institutional transformations as effects of power. I scrutinize the function of discourse as a mechanism of popular recruitment and mobilization into conflict. The aim of this historical comparative analysis is to pinpoint tension by the antagonism employed in discourses of resistance taking the case of Lebanon and the historical cases of the English and the French Revolutions. I ask the question how the power of resistance consequently leads to a radical change in the normative institutional rules of recognition of the legitimacy sovereignty. This study was the primary research for a documentary video on the Lebanese civil conflict. The documentary is titled: Her Journey in the Cave: My Memory of the Past Part I." The documentary was previewed at the Lebanese American University, January 2014 as part of an event with the aim of creating awareness about peace education to Lebanese educators.
Thinking about discourses around encounters of power as they communicate statements of opposition. I decided to use this space to document my observation of discourses of change in the Orange Room dialogue on political change and revolution. This discussion emerged out of an online debate with Assaad Thebian Activist with +You Stink
"Unfortunately a complete collapse of the system will not result in a secular republic. Secularism needs an intellectual backbone. The collapse you are talking about will be lead by the antithesis of secularism -- the Islamists. Because they are the only ones powerful enough to impose their own will unto others."
@Mighty Goat
Marcus Rediker in Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail, tells us some thing of interest about communication relations around the American Revolution.
The Motley Crew is a multi-ethnic model of resistance. It had the capacity to transmit the message of resistance through the oral narrations of the sailors spreading the message of violent resistance, consequently leading to the American Revolution.
In this example there is no separation between the Motley Crew and the Intellectuals, and while the force of mobilization base is the Motley Crew, what mobilized the media relations and the communication legitimating the the use of violence were the intellectuals. It was the intellectuals, and journalists then traveling through the ships, talking to sailors and passing such knowledge to Europe that played a fundamental role in the consequent European national revolutions.
In this example there is no generalized type of equilibrium between the finalized activity of the American Revolution, the relations between the Motley Crew and the capitalist, and transmission of the message of resistance from sailors to intellectuals and journalists.
The Motley Crew-Intellectuals model established itself in relation to the material operations and conditions surrounding the circulation of power around the revolutionary model being formed. Impressment was the rule contested violently by the Motley Crew.
In the case of Lebanon a revolutionary model is establishing its own dynamics. In my opinion such a model cannot be engineered from above. The model is being formed from below by the forces of resistance that would mobilize it to redirect power against the force of oppression caused by the National Pact. This model is forming while there is something called the Syrian conflict or probably because of the Syrian conflict.
As to whether one may predict how would this model mobilize and what outcome may come out of it, I doubt that this is as simple as Islamists would take over Lebanon just like that.
