The Cultural Memory of the Lebanese Civil War-Revisited

This volume, edited by Leyla Dakhli and Klaus Wieland, is an overview of the cultural memory of the Lebanese Civil War, as it has emerged and evolved over the last 30 years. These narratives represent a counter-memory to the non-existent national memory, undesired by Lebanon's political class.

In 1991, the Amnesty Law G84/91 was enacted, granting state power impunity for all war crimes, including crimes against humanity. The general amnesty entailed partial amnesia; the war was to be "officially" forgotten. And yet, since the 1990s, nongovernmental organizations, archives, activists, publicists, visual artists, filmmakers, and writers have produced an impressive alternative culture of remembrance of the Lebanese Civil War, which is revisited and analyzed in this book. Contributors represent a multi-disciplinary mix, with perspectives from area studies, history, social science, literary studies, trauma and memory, and peace and conflict studies.

Leyla Dakhli, Ph.D. (2003), is a senior-researcher at the CNRS, Centre d'Histoire sociale des mondes contemporains and associated with the Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin. Her work deals with the study of Arab intellectuals and social history of the Mediterranean region. She is the Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded program DREAM (Drafting and Enacting the revolutions in the Arab Mediterranean).

Klaus Wieland, Ph.D. (1995) and Habilitation (2020) in German studies, is maître de conférences at the Université de Strasbourg and DAAD lecturer at the American University of Beirut. His research interests include gender studies, memory and literature, modern poetry, and intercultural literature.