The end of the world is nothing new for many inhabitants of the Global South, and South Lebanon has just lived through another end of the world. This talk insistently speaks from the spacetime of devastation, after the end of the world, and describes resistant ecologies that have taken root through generations of military destruction in this landscape of war. In this apocalyptic moment, and with the Lebanese military resistance in momentary abeyance, the inhabitants of Lebanese frontline villages continue to resist occupation and annihilation through ordinary acts of living. When life is the intentional target of the settler-colonial war machine, life in all of its forms becomes resistance.
Munira Khayyat is an anthropologist whose research revolves around life in war, intimate genealogies of empire, and theory from the South. Her first book, A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon (University of California Press, 2022), examines resistant ecologies in a world of perennial warfare. She is currently working on a second book, Heart of Black Gold, that fleshes out the complex heart of empire in Saudi Arabia. Her research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Arab Council for the Social Sciences, and the Rachel Carson Center. Her writing has appeared in American Ethnologist, Public Culture, JMEWS, Cultural Anthropology, Anthropology News, HAU, and a number of edited volumes. She was a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2018-19). Before joining NYUAD, she taught at the American University in Cairo (2013-23) and the American University of Beirut (2011-13). She holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University (2013), an MPhil in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University (1998) and a BA in history (1997) from the American University of Beirut.
Diana Abbani is a cultural historian of the Modern Middle East, currently working as the science communication coordinator of the Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM) at the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin. She holds a PhD in Arabic Studies from Sorbonne University and has been awarded postdoctoral fellowships from the Forum Transregionale Studien and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. Her research focuses on the intersections of popular culture, social and political transformations, and the emergence of music and entertainment industries in the region. She has published extensively on Beirut’s cultural history and is currently working on a book that explores alternative narratives in Bilad al-Sham’s musical history, highlighting the experiences of marginalized communities during periods of sonic transformation.
