Open AccessRemembering the Lebanese Wars in Abbas El Zein’s Leave to Remain (2009)
Author(s) -
Lahcen Ait Idir
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
international journal of language and literary studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2704-7156
pISSN - 2704-5528
DOI - 10.36892/ijlls.v2i4.467
Subject(s) - memoir , diaspora , spanish civil war , ideology , narrative , state (computer science) , history , sociology , gender studies , literature , political science , law , art , art history , politics , archaeology , algorithm , computer science
Soon after the Civil War’s end in 1990, the state in Lebanon has engaged in a discourse of amnesia, in a bid to proscribe any heed to the question of the war. The purpose is to conceal this dark chapter of the Lebanese history through the repression of memory. Through different practices of remembering, diaspora writers have tried, however, to offer alternative narratives of the Lebanese history. In so doing, they engage in resisting the official dominant ideologies through producing what Micheal Foucault would label as “insurrection of subjugated knowledges” (Foucault, 81). In studying Abbas El Zein’s memoir Leave to Remain, the article sets out to explore how and in what ways post-war Lebanese Diaspora literature can be categorized as a form of history writing about war. This article focuses the Civil War (1975-1990) and the July War in 2006.