The Reformulation of Sectarianism in Independent Lebanon and Sudan
[Thesis]
Roussel-Hemery, Morgane
Medani, Khalid
McGill University (Canada)
2019
119
M.A.
McGill University (Canada)
2019
The aim of this paper is to investigate why, despite experiencing the longest civil conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, Lebanon and Sudan continue to exemplify durable traditional clientelistic regimes based on sectarianism. This research, based on literature on domination theory in a post-colonial framework, examines the creation and reformulation of nationalist discourse in the years prior to independence found in two primary indigenous publications: La Révue Phénicienne in Lebanon and The Sudan Notes and Records in Sudan. These publications show the political elite's agency, with the colonial authorities' endorsement, to write the national history along the lines of sectarian-based identities in Lebanon and Sudan. In the contemporary period, these political elites promoted more particularistic sectarian-based ideologies, deftly reformulated when challenged by wide-scale civil wars, in order to sustain situating their own sectarian group at a higher level in the country's political and discursive hierarchy. This thesis concludes that in both Lebanon and Sudan sectarianism is the by-product of the deliberate hegemonic strategies employed by the political elite, originally empowered during the colonial era, to perpetuate and legitimise their position at the top of the power hierarchy in their respective countries.