A break in the future
Feeling like an activist after the Arab uprisings
This project investigates 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 toward future political opportunities.
To make sense of how possibility endures, the project looks at the ebb and flow of political engagement together, that is, not only at the peaks of recent mobilisations but also at the times in between when, at first glance, little seems to be happening on the ground. Activists cultivated and maintained their political subjectivity - the active and engaged sense of self that motivates political action - across the decade’s high and low points.
When political change seems most unlikely, a moment of rupture - or a “break in the future” - becomes central to Lebanese activists’ belief that their actions can and will transform their world. A Break in the Future ultimately argues 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.