Jawlān

Abstract

In this article, we focus on the keyword Jawlān to highlight one of the most critical, if overlooked, dimensions of autocracy in modern Syria. Occupied by Israel in 1967, the Jawlān is a borderland where words have made political relationships possible, sustaining forms of national and kin attachments for decades. We show how, within post-1967 Syria, the Jawlān came to function as a discursive vessel for the state to address its citizenry outside the boundaries of the Golan Heights. When the 2011 moment began, ways of communicating with the state were enacted to both buttress the autocracy and solidify the resistance movement opposing it. We offer an analysis demonstrating how these various ways of hailing had grown out of autocracy but came to frame communications among citizens and structure civic relations beyond the workings of the regime and the geographical scope of its sovereignty. Drawing on the dynamics in play at this moment, we contribute to current discussions on neoliberal autocracy and borderland ontologies, approaching ideological interpellation as a mode of enfolding diasporic Syria spaces and communities outside regime-controlled areas into its political order.