9781800085046
9781800085053
Distributed for UCL Press
Waiting For The Revolution To End
Syrian Displacement, Time and Subjectivity
An exploration of the Syrian revolution through the experiences of citizens in exile.
Based on more than three years of embedded fieldwork with Syrians displaced in the border city of Gaziantep (southern Turkey), this book places the Syrian revolution and its tragic aftermath under ethnographic scrutiny. It charts the evolution from peaceful uprising (2011) to armed confrontation (2012), descent into fully fledged conflict (2013) and finally to proxy war (2015), to propose an understanding of revolution beyond success and failure.
While the Assad regime remains in place, the Syrian revolution (al-thawra) still holds a transformational power that can be located on intimate and world-making scales. Charlotte Al-Khalili traces the unintended consequences of revolution to reveal the reshaping of Syrian life-worlds and exiles’ evolving theorizations, experiences, and imaginations of al-thawra. She describes the in-between spatio-temporal realm inhabited by Syrians displaced to Turkey as they await the revolution’s outcomes and maps the revolution’s multidimensional and multi-scalar effects on their everyday life. By following the chronology of events inside Syria and Syrians’ geography of displacement, Waiting for the Revolution to End makes the relation between revolution and displacement its centerpiece, both as an ethnographic object and an analytical device.
Based on more than three years of embedded fieldwork with Syrians displaced in the border city of Gaziantep (southern Turkey), this book places the Syrian revolution and its tragic aftermath under ethnographic scrutiny. It charts the evolution from peaceful uprising (2011) to armed confrontation (2012), descent into fully fledged conflict (2013) and finally to proxy war (2015), to propose an understanding of revolution beyond success and failure.
While the Assad regime remains in place, the Syrian revolution (al-thawra) still holds a transformational power that can be located on intimate and world-making scales. Charlotte Al-Khalili traces the unintended consequences of revolution to reveal the reshaping of Syrian life-worlds and exiles’ evolving theorizations, experiences, and imaginations of al-thawra. She describes the in-between spatio-temporal realm inhabited by Syrians displaced to Turkey as they await the revolution’s outcomes and maps the revolution’s multidimensional and multi-scalar effects on their everyday life. By following the chronology of events inside Syria and Syrians’ geography of displacement, Waiting for the Revolution to End makes the relation between revolution and displacement its centerpiece, both as an ethnographic object and an analytical device.
Table of Contents
List of figuresPrefaceAcknowledgmentNote on transliterationGlossary
Introduction:
Living in the midst of defeat
Part 1 Revolution inside1 The
Syrian Revolution: a struggle for dignity2 Revolutionary
spaces and subjects: people of the ‘inside’ vs people of the ‘outside’
Part 2 End(ings) outside3 Of
hospitality and displacement: life in a spatio-legal limbo4 Temporality
of the defeat: waiting in a limboPart 3 Defeat’s afterlives
5 From the political to the social: the speed and depth of revolutionary
transformations
6 Making sense of the revolution’s
unexpected consequences: martyrdom,
predestination, tragedy
Conclusion: Rescaling
the revolution
References
Introduction:
Living in the midst of defeat
Part 1 Revolution inside1 The
Syrian Revolution: a struggle for dignity2 Revolutionary
spaces and subjects: people of the ‘inside’ vs people of the ‘outside’
Part 2 End(ings) outside3 Of
hospitality and displacement: life in a spatio-legal limbo4 Temporality
of the defeat: waiting in a limboPart 3 Defeat’s afterlives
5 From the political to the social: the speed and depth of revolutionary
transformations
6 Making sense of the revolution’s
unexpected consequences: martyrdom,
predestination, tragedy
Conclusion: Rescaling
the revolution
References