Geopolitically charged

At the city library the other day, I picked up the latest issue of Monocle, which featured a fascinating long-read on Beirut’s art scene and how it continues to flourish despite everything happening in the region. Thinking back on Ally’s and my trip in 2019, which ChatGPT described as one of my most “geopolitically charged”, the article echoed much of what I felt when visiting Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock Museum of Contemporary Art (which is still open as I write this) and other such places.

After an online seminar on conspiracy theories with my colleagues in Halmstad, I headed out into the rain and up to Delsjön for an ice-cold swim. Meanwhile, in Stockholm, the Swedish parliament has been debating the new law for financing nuclear construction, which is simply tragicomic, like some absurd play where the actors completely fail to see the bigger (global) picture and remain trapped in the same tired and incorrect assumptions (as if the four Korean APR-1400 reactors at Barakah had never been built etcetera). In the end, it all boils down to a basic choice: do we cling to the casino-style volatility of the current neoliberal electricity market, or do we step up and provide cheap, public baseload power for climate leadership and the wholesale electrification of society?

All politicians

One of the recurring chants of the Beirut demonstrations has been “all of them means all of them”, as in that all politicians should resign. Not only do the protesters want to eject the entire existing political class but they also seem to share the belief that “neutral” technocratic experts would be better suited to govern the country.

As a political scientist, it is not difficult to see where this is coming from given the endemic corruption and mismanagement associated with the current confessional system. Still, thinking of good old Max Weber, one may be forgiven for having doubts about the possibility of value-free politics. Once in place, it is also likely that those technocratic experts may soon find themselves engaged in exactly the same kind of dodgy deals and rent-seeking behaviour as the politicians before them.

The talk about “clean” experts somehow reminded me of Paul Romer’s idea of “charter cities” which has rightly been criticized for its neo-colonial overtones. Still, there is a genuine need for political reform and a window of opportunity here but, more than neutral experts, I see a need for political ideology and a long-term vision of social progress.

3x Beirut

Layers and hierarchies

While the past is always multi-layered and ambiguous, Lebanon, just like Israel, comes across as particularly steeped in conflicted history. From the French Mandate up to the present, I struggle to make sense of all the factions and confessional identities. At the Sursock museum yesterday, there was a room-sized installation called “the problems of metaphor” which sought to investigate the formation and breakdown of order, “be they bodily, linguistic, or political”.

In my newspaper, I read that there is talk about having a referendum on whether or not Lebanon should become a secular state. Harder to grasp are all those other legacies of domination; how both our passports are returned to me, how people speak past Ally as if she was not there, or, and this obviously bites deeper, how I take on the role of being the one who “knows” the way or “explains” things.

As we enter Romanian airspace, I am still somehow sorting all these impressions. When I close my eyes, I see the elderly women waving with Lebanese flags as they gather to protest, the smiling soldiers with their machine guns, and the Russian bodyguards waiting for their bosses to finish their Sunday family meals before being whisked away in black SUVs.

Tomorrow I will be in Linköping and talk about gallery walk seminars and after that I will take the night train back to Umeå. Once again, I find myself simply overwhelmed by how much one can actually experience over the course of a few short days. I am also grateful for the fact that Ally and I did not cancel our trip when the protests started but instead ventured into what, for us, was the unknown, but which now has become a place that I am already thinking of returning to.

Old Beirut Matters

After eating a late Lebanese dinner in a 18th century villa up in Achrafieh, our Sunday morning came off to a slow start but eventually we made it over to Geitawi which seems to be somewhat of an epicentre for the tensions between new and old in Beirut. Luxury condominiums with infinity pools coming up next to blown out concrete skeletons and the loveliest of citrus gardens. As much as everyone in the world talks about growing inequality, it is hard to find a more material manifestation of the contradictions of “development” than here in Eastern Beirut.

Later we got to see a Picasso exhibition at the Nicolas Ibrahim Sursock Museum of Contemporary Art and drink some more mint lemonade before it cooled off enough for me to run at least a portion of what would have been the marathon course. Everywhere along the planned course there were signs saying, “run for unity”, “run for diversity” or, the most equivocal, “run for modernity”.

Stadtbummel

From the breakfast bagel at Sip through 12.6 km of walking along the seafront and across Hamra, the sense of normalcy remains the defining impression of this our first day in Beirut. Here and there, one can see deep scars going back to the Lebanese Civil War but, everywhere else, there is construction and yet more construction, often of new upscale residential complexes. For those following the Monocle trail, the backyard garden of Kalei Coffee is definitely something to dream of on cold winter nights in Umeå.

On the ground

After a long circling approach, the wheels hit and held on runway 17/35 of Rafic Hariri International Airport and we were suddenly in Lebanon. The airport could not have been any calmer and immigration was over in minutes. I do not know what I had expected but within an hour we had checked in at our hotel on a backstreet in downtown Beirut. Though the hotel seemed completely empty (with the predictable exception of some other Swedes on the rooftop terrace) there was no mention by anyone of what is obviously a very difficult time.

This morning, as I woke up before Ally, I could not resist the temptation of my signature move and go for a city morning run. Until I know the city a little better though, I decided to stay fairly close to the hotel but, again, I must say that what really stands out is the normality of things.