Anima de Wajdi Mouawad: El trauma y la violencia de la guerra en la construcción identitaria del exiliado

The main objective of this article is the critical study of the novel Anima by the Lebanese born and naturalised Canadian writer Wajdi Mouawad (1968-). This self-fictional work, characterized by a polyphony of animal storytellers, seduces and discomforts the reader as he or she witnesses atrocious and savage acts: rape, murder, torture and war. Each chapter brings us closer to the consequences of a linguistic, ideological, cultural and geographical exile derived from the Lebanese civil war that the author himself suffered during his childhood. Mouawad, considered a committed writer, reflects on the identity of the exile: an individual who has been a victim of loss, loneliness, violence and trauma. The main objective of this article is the critical study of the novel Anima by the Lebanese born and naturalised Canadian writer Wajdi Mouawad (1968-). This self-fictional work, characterized by a polyphony of animal storytellers, seduces and discomforts the reader as he or she witnesses atrocious and savage acts: rape, murder, torture and war. Each chapter brings us closer to the consequences of a linguistic, ideological, cultural and geographical exile derived from the Lebanese civil war that the author himself suffered during his childhood. Mouawad, considered a committed writer, reflects on the identity of the exile: an individual who has been a victim of loss, loneliness, violence and trauma. L’objectif principal de cet article est l’étude critique du roman Anima par l’écrivain né au Liban et naturalisé canadien Wajdi Mouawad (1968-). Cet ouvrage d’autofiction, caractérisé par une polyphonie de narrateurs animaliers, séduit et incommode le lecteur qui devient témoin d’actes atroces et sauvages : viols, meurtres, tortures et guerre. Chaque chapitre nous rapproche des conséquences d’un exil linguistique, idéologique, culturel et géographique dérivé de la guerre civile libanaise que l’auteur lui-même a subi pendant son enfance. Mouawad, considéré comme un écrivain engagé, réfléchit à l’identité de l’exilé : un individu qui a été victime de la perte, de la solitude, de la violence et du traumatisme.

The Lebanese Civil War 1975–90

This article argues that the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90) was in essence a terror of state directed by mercantile economic and political elites (the comprador class) controlling the Lebanese state and society against the middle and poorer classes (the working class). The aim of this terror or organized violence was to subdue the subordinate classes, which in the late 1960s and early 1970s rebelled against the confessional system that operated for the benefit of the comprador class. The rebellion was expressed by members of the working-class joining cross-confessional nationalist and leftist parties. Hence, violence was aimed at reestablishing the confessional order as a means to restore a hegemonic system that served the interests of the comprador class at a time when this class was rehabilitating its economic role by resurrecting the financial system, which had received a severe blow in the late 1960s. It effected this rehabilitation through the Taif Agreement signed between Lebanese parliamentarians in 1989, under the auspices of Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, to favor the new mercantile elite led by Rafiq Hariri.

Working short and working long: can primary healthcare be protected as a public good in Lebanon today?

In this commentary we propose four questions to be addressed while building a meaningful public primary healthcare response in Lebanon today. These questions emerge from two imperatives: the necessity to consider both short- and longer-term struggles in a context of protracted conflict and the need to protect public health as a public good whilst the public Primary Healthcare Network (PHCN) is facing the Covid19 pandemic. In order to identify how these questions are related to the need to be working short and long, we look at the imprints left by past and present shocks. Profound shocks of the past include the Lebanese civil war and the Syrian refugee crisis. We analyse how these shocks have resulted in the PHCN developing resilience mechanisms in order to ensure a space for healthcare provision that stands public in Lebanon today. Then, we consider how two present shocks -- the economic breakdown and the blast of ammonium nitrate in Beirut port -- are affecting and threatening the progress made by the PHCN to ensure that primary healthcare remains a public good, a fragile space acquired with difficulty in the past half century. We identify what questions emerge from the combined consequences of such traumas, when the immediate constraints of the present meet the impediments of the past. We consider what such questions mean more broadly, for the people living in Lebanon today, and for the PHCN ability to respond to the Covid 19 pandemic in a relevant way. Our hypothesis is that in a protracted conflict, such as the one defining the circumstances of Lebanon now, public access to primary healthcare might persist for the people as one safeguard, in which social and moral continuity can be anchored to protect a sense of public good.

Identity Crisis in Arab Diasporic Novel: A Case Study of Lebanese American Novel

Very little has been written on cultural identity and national identity in contemporary Lebanese novel in the diaspora. This study explores how border identity is presented in Rabih Alameddine's Koolaids (1998), I, the Divine (2001), and The Angel of History (2016), three novels about the failure of the Lebanese immigrants to establish their cultural identity in the diaspora. It also gives a bird's-eye view of the myriad problems encountered by the immigrants while trying to build their cultural identity. Rabih Alameddine, a Lebanese American writer whose early literary pursuits focus on melting in the new homeland, represents the impossibility of redefinition and introduces the immigrants' remarkable preoccupation with the quest for national identity and nationhood. He mixes melancholic and ridiculous moments to represent the quest for cultural identity in order to subvert the neo-orientalist discourse which is based on the East/West dichotomy. Moreover, the use of multiple settings and narrators in each novel is also a common theme that explains the physical and psychological effects of the Lebanese civil war and the Lebanese ethnic categories in the diaspora.