Complaints from Below: A Tired Everyday Take on the Anthropological Realities of a Global Divide
By Diana El Richani (University of Toronto)
How do you engage with peers in this globalized front, join discussions and conversations, theorize the work from your field, and contribute to the “decolonization” of the discipline when your laptop battery dies because the power is out? Constantly out in Lebanon. I am here to complain about the state-sponsored blackout, the crumbling infrastructure, the collapsing currency, the tidal waves of young and old escaping the country, and, in an ethnographic nutshell, my place in the discipline as the everyday contorts itself to embrace these anomalies. I am here to complain that I, alongside many like me, do not want to be resilient anymore. To always be on the edge of breaking but never completely getting there is frustrating, to say the least. So you leave—or rather, you get pushed out. To become an anthropologist from the “Global South” (Lebanon, in my case), you are trained to pursue degrees from the “Global North”—Canada, the United States, or Europe—which gives you an advantage when applying to the same “Global South” academic institutions that you once graduated from. That is, unless a “Global Northerner” with a “Global North” degree stands next to you in the job application queue. You are pushed out again. But anthropology is a siren that reels you into constantly wanting to embrace the awe that life has to offer through research and self-reflexivity. So you apply and get accepted to attend and present at international conferences. However, where is your visa? Ah, but with the deteriorating status of your passport, rumors spread that it may take up to several months for the visa to get processed, with no guarantee of success. All of which remains better than the situation our stateless colleagues find themselves in. But why must we feel that we are infiltrating the fortress to connect with our fellow anthropologists of the world? Perhaps we can shift the spatial concentration and welcome you all, even in the midst of a blackout. I am just here to complain about the big things, the institutions and the structures that surround yet maintain us and the discipline in a contradictory manner.
In one of the busiest streets in Beirut, Lebanon, a sign reads “Beirut Municipality: Road Closed,” an ironic gesture to the countless infrastructural failures that the city and the country as a whole face. The recent financial crisis resulted in severe fuel shortages, unmanageable power cuts, and an unviable everyday life. For some, the sign works as a bleak reminder of the future ahead.
BIO
Diana El Richani is a PhD student in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Toronto. Her research is focused on thinking through hope amid crisis and world-ending violence, the political imaginary capable of envisioning alternative futures in the “Middle East,” and the everyday practices that carry with them implications for such a future.