The politics of scorn in Syria and the agency of narrated involvement

Abstract

Recent uprisings across the Arab world raise the question of how populations living under dictatorial regimes moved from apparent quiescence to active revolt. The question is particularly acute for Syria, where the Asad regime has ruled not simply through coercion, but also by enforcing a culture of everyday cynicism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Aleppo in 2008‐9, I argue that everyday Syrian narratives that lament or scorn the self are a way of radically identifying oneself with a contemptible situation, and inviting that fact to be witnessed and empathized with. I term the radical identification enacted in these narratives ‘involvement’. In order to understand why these narratives do not merely reproduce a cynical political culture in the same way that private mockery of the regime does, I propose a model of agency that develops the theme of authentic voice. I argue that the self‐scorning voice sounds authentically through the combined agency of the involved subject and the empathetic witness. By enacting involvement, narratives that scorn and lament the self defy the culture of political cynicism and prepare the ground for revolt.

Volatile Conviviality: Joking relations in Moscow's marginal marketplace

“…One is that Aziza's self-mockery has a family resemblance to forms of non-individualist agency that expresses itself through displays of complicity and self-ridicule, something recently discussed by Anderson and Ibanez-Tirado in relation to the Syrian and Tajik contexts. 41 The other is that we might see Aziza enacting a cosmopolitical figure that seems to be largely overlooked in the literature on migrant sociality-the figure of the 'idiot'. Drawing on Dostoevsky's character Prince Myshkin, Stengers conceptualizes an 'idiot' as an ethical figure of cosmopolitical ethics as well as an (everyday) diplomat.…”

Everyday disasters, stagnation and the normalcy of non-development: Roghun Dam, a flood, and campaigns of forced taxation in southern Tajikistan

“…Moreover, joking and cunning/cheating also constituted means through which Kulob residents sought to acknowledge their involvement in shaping the conditions of their daily lives. In order to understand the importance of such collective self-reflection, I borrow the term 'involvement' from Anderson's (2013) discussion of everyday narratives that lament or scorn the self among entrepreneurs in Aleppo, Syria. Involvement occurs when the narrator directs ridicule not simply at others but also at the self in order to both criticize adverse circumstances and acknowledge his or her own involvement in such scenarios.…”

For an anthropology of the demoralized: state pay, mock‐labour, and unfreedom in a Serbian firm

“…This simultaneous commitment to, and structural frailty to achieve, an integral moral self is precisely what various emerging ethnographies of the demoralized portray. For example, while working among Syrian traders, Anderson () found that in the overwhelming complicity in politico‐economic schemes and the lack of any ‘pure’ position for social critique, his interlocutors developed ‘narratives of involvement’: self‐scorning practices that drew attention to the complicit, embroiling, and morally diminishing nature of their participation in the Syrian state. If they put forward any notion of agency, it was by underlining their ‘inability to say “I” without shame’ (: 477).…”

“…For example, while working among Syrian traders, Anderson () found that in the overwhelming complicity in politico‐economic schemes and the lack of any ‘pure’ position for social critique, his interlocutors developed ‘narratives of involvement’: self‐scorning practices that drew attention to the complicit, embroiling, and morally diminishing nature of their participation in the Syrian state. If they put forward any notion of agency, it was by underlining their ‘inability to say “I” without shame’ (: 477). From Serbian sentiments of abnormality (Greenberg ), through to Moscow homeless acutely aware that in their lack of stable living arrangements, their moral claims are also inconsistent at best (Höjdestrand ), to the weakness of the will which Macedonian Roma dervishes connect with their marginality (Oustinova‐Stjepanović ), what emerges is a world of people who claim to fail not because their ethical traditions are inherently unattainable, but because they see their own abilities to follow them as structurally and irreparably undermined.…”