This paper asks how the future is imagined in a state sci-fi magazine in times of revolution and massacre. It examines the ways in which fiction published in Al-Khayal al-‘Ilmi, the sci-fi magazine issued by the Ministry of Culture in Syria in the first years of the 2011 revolution, conjures a time parallel to the revolutionary present. On the page of the journal, the state projects itself into the future and promises salvation. As it examines competing visions of the future, this paper ultimately reveals the ways in which the state deploys science-fiction not only to reaffirm its hegemony over the national space, but also to articulate its fantasy about a uniform and sterile future.
EUME Berliner Seminar
Mi 17 Jun 2020 | 17:00–18:30
Mi 17 Jun 2020 | 17:00–18:30
State Sci-Fiction and Revolutionary Futures in Syria
Zeina G. Halabi (EUME Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation 2018-21), Chair: Lamia Moghnieh (EUME Fellow of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation 2019-21)
Zeina G. Halabi is Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the American University of Beirut. As a EUME fellow at TRAFO (2012-2013), she began working on her first book titled The Unmaking of the Arab Intellectual: Prophecy, Exile, and the Nation (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), in which she examines the depiction of Arab intellectuals in post-1990s fiction and film. As a EUME/CNMES fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2018-2021), she is working on a second book project about the changing notion of the future in the long 20th century.
In accordance with the measures against the spread of the coronavirus, this seminar session will be held virtually. Depending on approval by the speakers, the Berliner Seminar will be recorded. All audio recordings of the Berliner Seminar are available via the account of the Forum Transregionale Studien on Soundcloud.
