Problems of memorial culture and historical memory in modern Lebanon

Kyrchanoff Maksym Waler'evich ORCID: 0000-0003-3819-3103 Doctor of History Associate Professor of the Department of Regional Studies and Economics of Foreign Countries, Faculty of International Relations; Associate Professor of the Department of History of Foreign Countries and Oriental Studies, Faculty of History; Voronezh State University; ResearcherID: B-8694-2017; Scopus Author ID: 57193934324 394077, Russia, Voronezh region, Voronezh, Pushkinskaya str., 16, room 236 maksym_kyrchanoff@hotmail.com Other publications by this author

Introduction. In modern history, the Middle East region is often associated with such a phenomenon as "conflict." In fact, there are several ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. A systemic feature of a regional conflict is its expansion by attracting new participants. At the same time, in modern scientific literature and political analysis, conflicts in the Middle East are often reduced to military-political or economic confrontations caused by scarcity and unequal access to resources. The literature highlights the political or economic component of these conflicts. In the modern historiographical tradition, conflicts in the region are mainly reduced to military, political and economic confrontations and contradictions, and the multiple origins of these conflicts should be taken into account, which have other causes related to various national and religious identities that not only coexist, but also exist. but they also compete with each other. Over the course of several decades, participants in conflicts have been able to build their own identity, characterized by different levels of consolidation and political institutionalization in the public and public spaces of individual countries.

Purpose and objectives. The author's focus in the presented article will be on the memorial perspective of modern conflicts in the Middle East. The purpose of the article is to analyze how the collective historical memory of Lebanon stimulates political and military conflicts in the region. The tasks of the author of the article include 1) studying the features of the wars of remembrance in Lebanon, 2) identifying and clarifying the composition of actors and institutions involved in memorial conflicts, 3) analyzing the prospects for the flow and transformation of conflicts from the "hot" phase towards a formally calmer and more moderate stage, which can be conditionally defined as "memorial confrontation"or the "memory wars."

Methodology. In terms of methodological principles of research organization, this article is positioned by the author as written in accordance with the main trends in the development of the interdisciplinary field of historical knowledge, which focuses on the study of collective historical memory and memorial culture. With regard to Lebanon's historical memory, it is assumed that "memory research in the 1990s was based on a special understanding of the transition that abruptly ended with the outbreak of the Arab uprisings. 2011 was a turning point. The uprisings have led scientists to question both the national memory structure, which was previously in a privileged position, and the fact that they stimulated interest in the memory of the protests" ^[1]. Modern historiography and the culture of historical research are characterized by the rejection of such a political science paradigm in understanding memory. In addition, historians are noticeably critical of the politics of memory ^[2], as the latter is becoming a threat to history as a science, contributing to its politicization and ideologization. Therefore, according to Russian historian N. Koposov, a "change in the forms of historical consciousness" is characteristic, which inevitably "affects semantic structures" ^{[3, p. 58]}, introducing memory and numerous derivatives from it, from historical memory and memory wars to memorial art and memorial cultures. The author believes that historical politics should be understood as those methods that the ruling political elites and related intellectual communities practice and use to form and subsequently maintain collective representations of the past in the contexts of various forms of identity – national, political and civil – corresponding to the political interests of the ruling groups or as closely related to them as possible. Therefore, if in previous decades "the hermeneutics of historical consciousness placed an event within a field formed between two metahistorical categories ... between the space of experience and the horizon of expectation" ^{[4, p.38]}, at the present stage, the eventfulness of history is actually formed within the framework of both historical politics and memorial culture.In this context, historical politics leads to the institutionalization of history's dependence on political and ideological conjuncture, reducing its academic significance and epistemological potential, since not the knowledge of the past, but the legitimization of current political conditions and ideologies becomes the main task of history used in the framework of memory politics.

The main text of the article. The historical memory of Lebanon, like other countries in the region, is burdened with situations of simultaneous and parallel co-functioning and co-development of various memories ^[5], which resulted not only from the multidimensional nature of statehood, but also from the incompleteness of the processes of imagination and invention ^[6], as well as the construction of a modern nation-state ^[7]. The lines of demarcation between these memorials and the memorial cultures associated with them are quite different. Ethnic groups have their own versions of memory, but taking into account that the main ethnic group of Lebanon are Arabs, there are processes of fragmentation of Arab memory, which is fragmented according to the principle of confessional and ethnic affiliation. In this situation, memory is subject not only to fragmentation, but also to regionalization, which leads to its transformation into a symbolic space of political and ideological confrontation, often canceling or minimizing the importance of the state as an institution, which allows some historians to categorically assert not only the crisis, but also the collapse of the Lebanese system of statehood as a whole ^[8]. Therefore, memory wars have become universal forms of functioning of the local national culture of historical memory.

Memory traumatization has become a systemic feature of the memory wars in Lebanon. Taking into account the general specifics of the Arab East in the second half of the 20th century, violence can be recognized as a universal form of political communication between various participants in political processes. In this regard, the Lebanese experience is not an anomaly that sets the country apart from the pan-Arab context. At the same time, the civil conflict in Lebanon, the Israeli intervention and the interference of external players in Lebanese affairs have led to a significant internationalization of the memorial conflict on the territory of this Arab country. Therefore, the intervention of various countries led not only to a military confrontation with them, but also to new waves of traumatization of collective historical memory, which was subjected to violence not only within the framework of the Lebanese civil conflict proper, but also to external military intervention.

Analyzing the situation of multiple memorials and the parallel co-development of memorial cultures in Lebanon, it should be recognized that there are no strict, real or conditional boundaries between them. The latter were the result of a political, social, cultural, and intellectual divide. According to S. Tannouri-Karam, in Lebanese society, as a result of military and political confrontations, "there was a gap in time and memory, which perpetuated existence in a post-war society based on erasure and refusal to recognize any continuity with the past" ^[9]. Therefore, the space between different versions of Lebanese memory can be described in terms of frontier ^[10].

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, in the context of both civil conflict and internal political confrontation, there were cases and attempts at temporary rapprochements and alliances not just on confessional grounds, but solely on political and ideological grounds. In such a situation, Muslims could unite with Christians, while Christians could group with Arabs. In this situation, the division of political parties into right and left was a secondary factor. At the same time, such political and actually ideological alliances led to the fact that collective memory was integrated into the arsenal of means and methods of the elites. Therefore, the trends towards instrumentalization have led to the fact that ideas about the past have become an effective resource for political mobilization of the masses as memory carriers, on the one hand, and elites as formers of such memory, on the other.

The processes of traumatization of Lebanese historical memory were often stimulated from the outside, and Israel, more precisely, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, became the main source of such collective historical memorial trauma ^[11]. It is known that political refugee camps existed on the territory of Lebanon, and Israel periodically intervened in the internal affairs of Lebanon, which led to the military intervention of the Jewish state on the territory of this Arab country. In such a situation, both the Israeli and the Palestinian presence were perceived as external interference, as attempts to question not just the existence of Lebanese statehood, but the Lebanese state as a political body and as a single body of the nation ^[12]. In this situation, both the Israeli and the Palestinian presence were perceived as organically and historically alien, which contributed to the radicalization of collective memory and ideas about the past. In this case, history was used as a resource for mobilization, including in ethnic cleansing directed against Palestinian refugees, who were perceived as alien in the context of Lebanese memorial culture.

Commenting on the role of historical politics, David Riff believes that "collective historical memory does not respect the past ... when states, political parties and social groups appeal to collective historical memory, their motives are far from trivial" ^[13], which contributes to its transformation into a political resource actively used in conflict societies. The specifics of the development of Lebanon's collective memory therefore consist in the unresolved conflict and the inability and impossibility of the elites to take real steps to resolve the conflict relations between the various communities that historically formed the Lebanese statehood ^[14], whose political culture turned out to be burdened with ethnic, political and confessional contradictions, which had a significant impact on the development of identity ^[15], more precisely – the inability of the latter to fully overcome ethnic and religious boundaries, turning into the identity of a civil nation.

The situation of multiple memories and their parallel co-development actualizes the functions of selectivity in the functioning of memorial culture, since in multicomponent societies memory becomes "a kind of filtering mechanism in the temporal dimension... at the time of completion of the formation of the memory matrix, it is temporarily in a static state – the memory matrix is passive. However, changes in society lead to the activation of memory – its demand by certain social groups in a specific historical context necessitates the adaptation of collective memory to specific conditions. Any social shifts (national self-determination, gaining state independence, changing the political regime) inevitably lead to a renewal of the collective vision of the past" ^{[16, p. 83]}. These shifts become most noticeable in post-conflict societies or societies that are in a state of conflict, which actualizes not only political and ideological heterogeneity, but also plurality memories.

In this situation, throughout the first quarter of the 21st century, Lebanese historical memory continued to remain fragmented and unconsolidated, without taking advantage of the experience of Eastern and Central Europe and without adopting special memorial laws. In addition, the country did not take advantage of the experience of Southern Europe, which overcame the legacy of authoritarianism by adopting relevant laws condemning the violence of undemocratic regimes ^[17]. In this situation, the space for the development of collective historical memory continued to function spontaneously, virtually without anyone's control. In this regard, the historical policy in Lebanon is radically different from the European one, since in the case of the "classical" countries of historical politics, that is, the states of Central and Eastern Europe, and North Africa, memory policy practically does not include "purposeful actions by the state aimed at ensuring that the community remembers some things more intensively than others, in the simplest sense. The processes of forgetting are also absolutely normal for any memory, because collective memory always encompasses both memory and oblivion" ^[18].

In Lebanon, all these trends are taking place, but the state turns out to be detached from them, since public activists play the main role in the policy of memory. This situation resulted from the fact that Lebanon was unable to fully actualize its qualities as a nation-State or nation-State. These principles were not developed in the implementation of the Lebanese statehood project, which had a significant impact on the development of collective historical memory and the memorial culture formed within its framework.

Therefore, the memorial processes were not even subjected to minimal regulation. As a result, ethnic contradictions were increasingly combined with political ones. In addition, the continued interference in Lebanon's internal affairs by both Israel and Palestinian political activists has effectively turned Lebanon's collective historical memory into a hostage. The contradictions between the ideas of Palestinian nationalism, which opposed Israeli Zionism, and Israel's attempts to defend its right to exist throughout 2023 led to a sharp escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which led to de facto Israeli interference in the internal affairs of Lebanon, which turned into a field of real, but not memorial, political confrontation between Israel and Palestinian formations. In such a situation, Lebanon's collective memory is further traumatized and fragmented. Therefore, Lebanon was actually unable to develop a model for the functioning of a multi-component society, individual segments of which not only had their own ethnic and religious identities, but also had their own collective historical memories. Therefore, Lebanon should probably be defined as a failed State. The reasons for this crisis partly lie in the underdevelopment of memorial culture in this country.

In addition, the development of memorial culture in Lebanon is characterized by a tendency to transform the current situation of wars of memory towards post-memory ^[19]. Lebanese post-memory is a traumatized collective historical memory, as it actually turns out to consist of various national and confessional historical memories, which are mutually burdened by the experience of negative representations of each other, the formation and development of images of the Other. In such a situation, the collective memory in Lebanon is unable to be renewed and effectively adapted to new conditions. Therefore, memorial wars turn out to be almost the only and universally accessible form of memorial culture development, since Lebanese society has virtually no other experience of memorial dialogue other than conflict.

In such a situation, the Lebanese experience of developing alternative forms of memory proved to be extremely valuable. The genesis, history, and further promotion of such counter-memories or countercultures of collective historical memory could differ in diversity ^[20]. If earlier collective memory was formed by the efforts of intellectuals associated with various ethnic and religious communities and was largely influenced by the ideological and political preferences of its bearers, then in modern conditions memory is subject to spontaneous rethinking. This process was stimulated from below and was incomplete, being virtually and practically unrelated to political elites who prefer to solve other tasks in a meaningful way. In such a situation, multiple alternative carriers of grassroots memory appear, inclined to write not just national history as a set of large narratives, but to construct the history of memory as a history constructed from below. This model of collective historical memory is, as a rule, traumatic in nature, because it inevitably actualizes the legacy of war and violence, appealing to the image of the Other that had developed in previous years in Lebanese memorial culture. Despite the burden of collective historical memory from collective traumas, attempts by both elites and agents of historical politics are aimed at "constructing narratives about traumatic events that allow us to consciously recognize and place such events in the field of memories that might otherwise remain repressed, allowing communities to restore a sense of identity" ^[21].

Throughout the 1990s and 2010s, historical memory in Lebanon developed beyond formalized borders supported by the State or individual ethnic groups. Therefore, selectivity is largely characteristic of memorial culture, since "memory dispenses with the history and practices of representing the past characteristic of this discipline. She prefers to use any form of memories and testimonies that appeal to feelings and emotions" ^[22]. In a similar situation, institutions of collective historical memory were not developed in Lebanon, and besides, there were no specialized memorial institutions, as well as special laws on historical memory and responsibility for interpreting the past, which would not coincide with the interests of political elites or the conjuncture and current political situation. Therefore, the historical collective memory in Lebanon was subject to consistent fragmentation, as along with the formally active early actors represented by the state and political elites, new actors appeared, represented this time by the emerging Lebanese civil society. The latter turned out to be very weak and unable to compete with the Lebanese model of statehood, which was actually built along the lines of confessional and religious division. Given the significant level of corruption and informal connections, alternative versions of historical memory in Lebanon could not actually be developed and further promoted.

Analyzing the weakness of Lebanese civil society, the unrest of October 2012 became not only inevitable, but also showed that the memorial confrontation and the wars of remembrance were moving to a new stage of development. In the context of the civil and political crisis in Lebanon, social activists tried to question the previously existing religious and political memories of communities and, as a result, the ideological contradictions between them, which contributed to the greater fragmentation of Lebanese statehood based on the functioning of ethnic and religious communities-communities as integral components of the Lebanese state model. Therefore, the 2012 riots were held under general democratic slogans.Among the appeals of the protesters were those who appealed to the need to bring to justice representatives of the political and military elites who were guilty of committing war crimes against the civilian population. In this context, the unrest of 2012 demonstrated to a certain extent the activation of Lebanese civil society, the growing consciousness of people and their rejection of the model of statehood based on the principles of political, religious and ethnic sectarianism, that is, the division of statehood based on the principles of not just regionalization, but communal fragmentation.

These contradictions stimulated the political fanaticism and dogmatism of the participants in historical politics in their perception of the past, which actualized the conflict as a universal component of memorial culture. Therefore, historiography emphasizes that "historical memory is always in conflict. It is emotionally and mythologically heightened. She can dress up in the clothes of political and historical nihilism. But this nihilism is a kind of provocative thesis that encourages the denial of historical memory – it is an attempt to destroy the established discourse in order to build a new normative discourse" ^{[23, p. 96]}, the assertion of which leads not only to the emergence of new modes of describing the past, but also actualizes the conflict potential between its various visions. At the same time, such a policy did not develop, as the inertia inherited from an earlier period turned out to be more significant and effective than democratic initiatives, which in the future could lead not to another civil conflict, but to the abandonment of the use of memory wars as a universal strategy of political communication between various groups and communities in Lebanon.

Analyzing the Lebanese experience of historical collective memory, the peculiarities of its fragmentation should be taken into account. Memorial culture is not just fragmented by political and ideological principles. Different interpretations of the events of the past are not the reason for the contradictions of memorial conflicts between different cultures of collective historical memory. It is well known that the national historical memory of the Lebanese as a civil nation and Lebanon as a nation-State remains very weak, unstable and fragile. At the same time, the communal memories of various groups, represented by Christians and Muslims, appear to be stronger and more effective. In this situation, competition inevitably arose between weak national memory and its ethnic and religious alternatives, which not only sought to displace each other, but in this memorial confrontation, the collective memories of individual ethnic religious communities claimed not only to win over the alternative memories of their opponents, but also to occupy the position of the memorial culture that would form and It would determine the main vectors and trajectories of the development of Lebanon's memory as a nation and state, marginalizing competing memories.

The political and ideological contexts within which historical memory develops in Lebanon turn it into a unique case of unfinished national construction and the construction of a memorial collective experience. Lebanon has indeed become a unique case in the Arab world, where the interrelation and mutual influence between organized and centralized forms of memory and local memory, the memory of communities with the national memory of Lebanon as a nation-state and Lebanon as a political nation has turned out to be excessively weak and undeveloped. In this situation, the nationalistic imagination of the Lebanese political elites, who tried to construct the image of Lebanon as a multi-component society, turned out to be an extremely ineffective political model for creating a complex state model. As a result, there was a gap between national memory and memory, which arose and developed at the initiatives of civil society activists who did not agree with those authoritarian models of political memory imposed from above by the ruling elites, not only because of the authoritarian nature of such historical policies, but mainly because of its inefficiency.

Conclusions. Concluding the article, it is necessary to consider a number of factors related to the memory wars in the Middle East region. At this stage, conflicts in the region are in a state of tension, as Lebanon is engulfed in hostilities involving a wide range of internal and external players. Moreover, these military-political contradictions fuel different versions, visions, and readings of the collective and shared past. History and collective representations of the past in different states of the region will turn into a symbolic battlefield and confrontation between various actors involved in political and military conflicts in the region. History is actively manipulated and instrumentalized, which creates the conditions for its transformation into a relatively effective mobilization resource that the ruling political elite uses both to legitimize its stay in power and to justify active actions against opponents, including in the context of modern military-political conflicts. History boils down to justifying political violence using the symbolic resource of the past. Formally, the common past is actually actively used to nationalize history, turning into a source of information warfare to justify military actions. History is actively used in political conflicts between the States of the region, since in the Middle East the national state is not fully formed and therefore there are no civil and political institutions that could resolve the conflict. The elites were forced to turn to the symbolic resources of history as the conflict deepened. Hypothetically, it can be assumed that the military-political conflicts will be resolved sooner or later, but the likelihood of conflict will persist. A military-political conflict can transform into another form, represented by memorial wars or memorial wars, which are also conflicts that differ from current conflict situations in the absence of actual military action. At the same time, it is possible that if the conflict mutates towards "memory wars", other views on the past and the tendency of elites to instrumentalize the past through the nationalization of history may manifest themselves. Such a political strategy will not trigger a new escalation that will lead to new conflicts that will be legitimized by referring to historical experience, and memory will be at the center of an interpretive model of explaining the military-political confrontation in the Middle East region.