The November 1970 coup that brought Hafiz al-Asad to power fundamentally transformed cultural production in Syria. A comprehensive intellectual, ideological, and political project—a Ba'thist cultural revolution—sought to align artistic endeavors with the ideological interests of the regime. The ensuing agonistic struggle pitted official aesthetics of power against alternative modes of creative expression that could evade or ignore the effects of the state. With this book, Max Weiss offers the first cultural and intellectual history of Ba'thist Syria, from the coming to power of Hafiz al-Asad, through the transitional period under Bashar al-Asad, and continuing up through the Syria War. Revolutions Aesthetic reconceptualizes contemporary Syrian politics, authoritarianism, and cultural life. Engaging rich original sources—novels, films, and cultural periodicals—Weiss highlights themes crucial to the making of contemporary Syria: heroism and leadership, gender and power, comedy and ideology, surveillance and the senses, witnessing and temporality, and death and the imagination. Revolutions Aesthetic places front and center the struggle around aesthetic ideology that has been key to the constitution of state, society, and culture in Syria over the course of the past fifty years.
Author(s): Max Weiss
Series: Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 452
City: Stanford
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Note on Transliteration and Translation
Introduction: Aesthetics and Politics in Contemporary Syria
1. Ba'thist Cultural Revolution
2. Men of Commitment
3. The Funny Thing About Dictatorship
4. Reading Writing Mukhabarat
5. The Slow Witness
6. Faces of Death
Conclusion: The Art of the Real
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
