In actual fact, the region’s feminist movements were born and developed in the context of nationalist and Communist movements and as part of the struggles for national liberation. Feminism was not a foreign ideology “imposed” by colonialism, but was instead indigenous to local societies. Women have long been struggling against colonial powers for equality and social justice, as well as against sectarian personal status laws and the entire patriarchal social structure than enforces them.Feminism(s) in Lebanon have always been under harsh scrutiny, taking a backseat to “priorities” set by other movements. While women have actively taken part in nationalist and anti-capitalist struggles, from national independence to resisting Israeli occupation, and have played integral roles in class struggles as part of workers’ and students’ movements, their male comrades have tended to appropriate their struggles, alienating and pushing against their feminist agendas under the pretext that “women’s issues” are not revolutionary priorities. Where to, Marie? seeks to showcase why and from where these feminist movements in Lebanon emerged and how they have grown over the course of the century. Certainly, a truly complete and comprehensive history of these movements is beyond the scope of one book. This is why the authors opted to tell the story of over a century of feminist activism through four fictional personal narratives. These are all based on extensive research carried out between 2010 and 2015, which included semi-guided interviews with feminist actors of different generations. Other sources, such as archival photographs, films, books, and articles regarding feminism(s) and social movements in Lebanon also informed the art and text, as did the experiences lived and witnessed by the authors of this book. Completed during a tumultuous period that included massive protests, an unprecedented—and continuing—economic collapse, a blast that shattered nearly half of Beirut, and a pandemic, the creation of Where to, Marie? was not without its many interruptions and challenges. Nevertheless, the writers and artists involved hope that this colourful and sometimes dark work will spark curiosity and passion about a movement that is intrinsically tied to the wider and ongoing struggles in Lebanon, the region, and the world.

    Like all imperial gambits before it the US-led plan has been to subjugate the entire region - whether through the direct application of force, or through coalitions or proxies - to secure privileged access to its tremendous resources and then dictate terms of access to all other players. Insofar as the key to a definitive defeat of Washington's ambitions lies in regional integration of the resistance forces-an integration led by Iran, the undisputed leader of an 'Axis of Resistance' to foreign domination and Zionist expansion--Iran has emerged as an ever more central target for regime change. This book, Axis of Resistance: towards an independent Middle East, follows the author's 2016 book The Dirty War on Syria. It examines the end of the war on Syria and the wider elements of the regional conflict, in particular the prospects for a democratic Palestine, the character of the Resistance and the role of Iran. It draws attention to these broad leitmotifs underpinning each particular history that are key to understanding both the parts and the whole: A single, essentially colonial impetus drives each particular US aggression from Libya to Afghanistan. These hybrid wars utilize propaganda offensives, economic siege warfare, terrorist proxies, direct invasions and military occupations followed by repression via client states. The aim is to keep resistance forces fragmented. Just as each aggression forms part of a broader Washington strategy, similarly the integration of the resistance in particular remains critical to its success. The Resistance has a common character but no idealized personality or ideology. However the common features are a demand for popular self-determination and for accountable social structures that serve broad social interests. Axis addresses myths about the wars and the resistance, while attempting a partial and provisional history of the conflicts. A focus on resistance can help us understand the defeat of great powers, something not possible for any analysis which begins and ends with power.

    It closed its doors in 1982, a victim of Lebanon's brutal fifteen-year civil war. In this book, Joelle Abi-Rached uses the rise and fall of ʿAṣfūriyyeh as a lens through which to examine the development of modern psychiatric theory and practice in the region as well as the sociopolitical history of modern Lebanon.Abi-Rached shows how ʿAṣfūriyyeh's role shifted from a missionary enterprise to a national institution with wide regional influence. She offers a gripping chronicle of patients' and staff members' experiences during the Lebanese Civil War and analyzes the hospital's distinctive nonsectarian philosophy. When ʿAṣfūriyyeh closed down, health in general and mental health in particular became more visibly "sectarianized"--monopolized by various religious and political actors. Once hailed for its progressive approach to mental illness and its cosmopolitanism, ʿAṣfūriyyeh became a stigmatizing term, a byword for madness and deviance, ultimately epitomizing a failed project of modernity. Reflecting on the afterlife of this and other medical institutions, especially those affected by war, Abi-Rached calls for a new "ethics of memory," more attuned to our global yet increasingly fragmented, unstable, and violent present.

    In Revolution and Disenchantment Fadi A. Bardawil redescribes for our present how an earlier generation of revolutionaries, the 1960s Arab New Left, addressed this question. Bardawil excavates the long-lost archive of the Marxist organization Socialist Lebanon and its main theorist, Waddah Charara, who articulated answers in their political practice to fundamental issues confronting revolutionaries worldwide: intellectuals as vectors of revolutionary theory; political organizations as mediators of theory and praxis; and nonemancipatory attachments as impediments to revolutionary practice. Drawing on historical and ethnographic methods and moving beyond familiar reception narratives of Marxist thought in the postcolony, Bardawil engages in "fieldwork in theory" that analyzes how theory seduces intellectuals, cultivates sensibilities, and authorizes political practice. Throughout, Bardawil underscores the resonances and tensions between Arab intellectual traditions and Western critical theory and postcolonial theory, deftly placing intellectuals from those traditions into a much-needed conversation.