Dissonant Aftermath: Suspended Time and Elusive History among Exiled Syrians in Lebanon

Lecture by Veronica Ferreri (Ca’ Foscari University Venice)

“The land is bare.” This is how Syrian returnees describe al-Qusayr and its surrounding countryside upon setting foot in the region after the collapse of the al-Assad regime. The bare land captures not only the physical devastation of the landscape but also serves as a metaphor for Qusayris’ affective state—beneath joy—as they confront the voids that now define home. What are these voids that constitute a return once perceived as unimaginable and unforeseeable, and that, nevertheless, constituted the aftermath, making it a suspended time between war and postwar? Rewinding to a decade ago, to that aftermath of war, revolution, and expulsion that Qusayris inhabited, this talk examines “the voids of war”—a concept describing temporal-spatial collapses produced by political violence, interlocking with a defeated revolution and Lebanon’s management of the Syrian presence. One effect of these voids on Qusayris’ exile was the disruption of linear time, which contributed not only to the voids’ own reproduction—manifested in Qusayris’ emotional flashbacks and in children’s drawings—but also to transforming the aftermath into a perennial, liminal condition. Moving beyond it—while the war in Syria continued and the so-called refugee crisis persisted in Lebanon—required Qusayris to reengineer time through history. This engagement was, however, an elusive and dissonant endeavor as the adult generation had to confront the temporal proximity of the revolution to the war, a fractured past that even questioned the fragile social coexistence in al-Qusayr before 2011. By dissecting the power of voids, this talk ultimately explores the significance of history and repair for communities enduring times of radical, violent ruptures. 

 

Veronica Ferreri is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Global Fellow in the Department of Humanities at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and serves as a co-convenor of the European Association of Social Anthropologists’ (EASA) Network for an Anthropology of History and Heritage. Her work has appeared in History and Anthropology, Citizenship Studies, Society and Conflict and AllegraLab.

 

Disclaimer: Project 101064513 — ARCHIVWAR. Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.