Elie ANTOUN, EVCAU, France
Beirut has been more destroyed and disfigured in times of peace than in times of war. It was not Lebanon's civil war (1975-1990) that caused the most destruction, but rather its “reconstruction”. Indeed, "SOLIDERE", the urban reconstruction project of the city center initiated after the civil war, played an essential role in the tabula rasa of the city center, to then entrust to the private sector, without specifications guaranteeing any general interest, the reconfiguration of a space of nearly 150 hectares as symbolic as strategic, on purely financial bases. The loss of the heritage and the spirit of the place is thus experienced as an act of symbolic violence towards the past and future inhabitants of Beirut. "SOLIDERE" expropriated land from the inhabitants and depopulated the city center to build a new, unrecognizable Beirut, in which the traces of the conflict were removed and replaced by new buildings that corresponded to a global and cosmopolitan image, in order to hide the history of the war and to make Beirut "beautiful" again. She came to build a new city for a new population, replacing one memory with another in what Naccache called a “memorycide” (1998: 40).
Post-war consumerism spaces and commercial centers have become undeniably part of the aesthetic experience of the present time population in Beirut. If this aesthetic persists, which is tied to consumerism rather than an identity linked to a place and a sense of belonging to it, then the commodified might eventually replace the ‘public’ open space, and lead to a further segregation along economic divides, and lifestyle preferences and loss of a sense of belonging or even a common Lebanese identity.
Despite this bleak image of the city of Beirut, which is based on the domination of the consumer spaces and the neglect of municipal open spaces, there remains hope for the ‘resurrection’ of public spaces in the city, namely through the endeavors of activists and the youth.
Mots clés : Destruction|Reconstruction|Consumerism Spaces|Collective Memory|Identity
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