TYPE OF DATA PROJECT: Active Citation Compilation
TITLE: “Ideology and Humor in Dark Times: Notes from Syria,†Critical Inquiry 39 (Summer 2013): 841-873.
AUTHOR: Lisa Wedeen, University of Chicago (lwedeen@uchicago.edu)
KEYWORDS: autocracy, humor, ideological interpellation, neoliberal autocracy, Syria
PROJECT SUMMARY:
This project is part of a broader inquiry into neoliberal autocracy and its unmaking. Originally conceived as an account of aging autocracy and generational change, it takes as its case study the Syrian regime under Bashar al-Asad. The author registers the transformations in authoritarian mechanisms of social control accompanying market-oriented reforms in the 2000s. She also considers the role of so-called NGOs and their messages of citizen “empowermentâ€; the ideological importance of television drama and advertising; modes of uncertainty and stories of conspiracy, as well as new forms of cultural creativity, made possible through the creation of digital publics (such as those of satellite television, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter); the renewed experiences of politics during the uprisings of 2011; and ongoing violence. The book analyzes the unevenly saturating conditions, contradictions, and incoherencies that help explain some citizens’ political ambivalence and others’ willingness to take extraordinary risks in an attempt to transform political life.
The piece shared here asks why, during the first year and a half of the Syrian uprising, the populations of the two major cities (Aleppo and Damascus) failed to mobilize in significant numbers, even as Syrians in many other areas were taking to the streets. And why did this reluctance to participate actively in the uprising seem to be changing in the spring of 2012—prior to events country-wide taking an overwhelmingly violent turn, making large-scale peaceful demonstrations unlikely anywhere? These questions may seem remote from the current horror, but they suggest important ways of understanding aspects of what has become an ongoing tragedy. The author argues that what might best be described, following Lauren Berlant, as an ideology of the “good lifeâ€â€”in this case, combining economic liberalization with fears of sectarian disorder and “non-sovereigntyâ€â€”operated to organize desire and quell dissent. This “good life†entailed not only the usual aspirations to economic wellbeing but also fantasies of multicultural accommodation, domestic security, and a sovereign national identity, generating conditions conducive to sustaining neoliberal autocracy. Neoliberal autocracy implies two contradictory logics of rule, cultivating an aspirational consciousness for freedom, upward mobility, and consumer pleasure, on the one hand, while continuing to tether possibilities for advancement to citizen obedience and coercive control, on the other.
Analyzing both the tenacity and incompleteness of ideological reproduction, the author then takes as emblematic the work of Allayth Hajju, one of Syria’s best-known television directors, for it registers both the grim realities of the decade just past and the evident seduction of the neoliberal turn. At times uncannily prescient, at times poignantly bleak, Hajju’s comedy opens up alternatives to its own most conservative impulses, thereby demonstrating the potency and unevenness of ideological saturation. Put differently, his comedy illustrates and helps perpetuate the ideology of neoliberal autocracy; at the same time, it provides some openings for, while attempting to manage, an oppositional consciousness.
DATA ABSTRACT: The data were collected on fieldtrips to Syria in 2010 and 2011, and multiple subsequent ones to Lebanon (including a summer stay in Beirut in 2012) after the beginning of the Syrian conflict. Additionally, the author spent the winter of 2012 in Paris, where she conversed repeatedly and at length with displaced Syrians.
FILES DESCRIPTION: Data are in the form of selected video-clips from the comedy series, with subtitles in English.
LOGIC OF ACTIVATION AND ANNOTATION:
AVAILABILITY AND ACCESS OF FILES: Standard access for all files; the videos are subject to intellectual property laws, but the author is securing copyright permissions for re-broadcast on QDR.