Memory of the civil war, state censorship and cultural productions -

Abstract

Due to the everydayness elements of the war, in Lebanon’s postwar era and in the presence of a state-sponsored amnesia, the question “did the civil war really end?” still crosses people’s minds, and this is at least apparent in the intellectual and cultural sphere. Politically speaking, there appears to be no intention to memorialize the civil war and construct a nation that rejects the resort to war. Instead, it is said that as reviving this memory is hurtful, it should be countered by a policy of oblivion. Conversely, intellectuals and artists have frequently shown their opposition to the policies adopted to “end” the civil war, and highlighted through their works the causes and implications of that war so that new generations learn from their country’s past. The official authorities have long been aborting these projects through censorship regulations. The objective of this thesis is to explore the extent to which cultural artifacts and more particularly films tackling the memory of the civil war play the role of a memorial in the absence of any official intention to memorialize the war. Through the censored documentary “Chou Sar?” (or “What Happened?” in English), tackling the memory of the civil war and opposing the amnesty granted to the war crimes, this thesis will study the extent to which this kind of films succeed in the task of warning and remembering in light of the presence of a higher authority embodied by the censorship directorate. This study claims that the reason for this unwillingness to revive the memory is because the factors that had previously led to a long civil war are still presently apparent, be it the confessional power-balancing framework of the Lebanese political system, or the regional and international intervention in the Lebanese political affairs.