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Lecture Description: The contemporary moment can appear, in Lebanon and elsewhere, as a series of crises. These crises can also seem to escape explanation due to their intractable and overlapping complexity, or conversely, to be (too) easily explained in terms of overdetermined geopolitical causalities. This talk examines the present conjuncture in South Lebanon in terms of its more recent past. It unpacks the aesthetic contradictions that appear at the Hizbullah Mleeta Museum of the Resistance and its memorialization of past armed liberation struggle. By revisiting this site from the untimely vantage point of the present, shaped by the 2019 collapse of the Lebanese financial system and the intensified military conflict with Israel since 2023, it sheds light on the nature of contemporary sectarianism and its global implications.
Bio: Hatim El-Hibri is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at George Mason University, where he is also affiliated with the program in Middle East and Islamic Studies. He earned his Ph.D. in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University, and previously was a faculty member at the Media Studies Program at the American University of Beirut. His research has appeared in journals such as Platforms and Society; International Journal of Communication; Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East; Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication; and the edited volumes Gaza on Screen and The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East. His first book is Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure, published by Duke University Press. He is currently working on a book project titled Streaming the Crisis.