A break in the future: feeling like an activist after the Arab uprisings

This seminar reflects on the endurance of political possibility in Beirut, Lebanon, between the Arab uprisings of 2010-11 and the Lebanese uprising of October 2019. Despite a regional collapse of political hope and a local inability to effect change in the context of political stasis, postponed elections, and the degradation of civil infrastructure, between every protest cycle a sizeable number of people remained engaged and built towards future political opportunities.

Guided by a desire to better understand how to keep political possibility alive, I ask how we can grasp different phases of political (dis)engagement together. Through an exploration of activist strategies, I suggest that, when political change seems most unlikely, a moment of rupture – or a ‘break in the future’– was central to Lebanese activists’ belief that their actions can and will transform their world. I ultimately argue that the experience of moments of rupture radically transforms what seems possible, and that the cultivation of these experiences keeps movements going even when things appear to fall apart.

Speaker biography

Fuad focuses on activism, labour, the imagination, and how people come together to form community. He has done most of his research in Lebanon's capital city, Beirut, where he works with Lebanese political activists challenging the political system and with migrant workers building solidarity in the face of racialised inequality.

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