Imagining Futures is proud to have been able to support the Lebanese Yawmiyat (Diaries): Archiving Unfinished Stories of Spatial Violence project, led by Hanadi Samhan, Nanor Der Boghossian, Luna Akil, Hoda Mekkaoui, Dina Mneimneh, and Camillo Boano, and we are delighted to announce the project has published a new article in the Society + Space online journal detailing its work and findings.
Published in June 2022, the article captures some aspects of urban violence in Lebanon and constructs their spatialities. Stories of struggle and creative coping strategies amidst the multiple crises in Lebanon constitute ‘living archives’. They expand the meaning and imaginaries of everyday life, link between a shared past and present reality, and transform the urban space.
“This essay is part of the research project ‘Imagining Futures through Un/Archived Pasts’ led by the University of Exeter, UK and focused on ungrounding multiple forms of violence and their imbrications in the urban space of Beirut in Lebanon. Specifically, examining the aftermath of the port’s explosion in 2020 and the ongoing political and socio-economic crises, we chased individual narratives and spatial trajectories of everyday life struggles. We aimed to foreground an alternative representation of living archives, where an assemblage of stories, memories, perceptions, everyday practices, and their relations continuously shape the urban space.”
Society + Space is an interdisciplinary journal and free digital magazine covering social, political, economic and environmental issues. The journal publishes contributions that investigate and challenge the ways that systems of power, difference and oppression shape lives, and how they are resisted, subverted and reworked.
For further information on the Lebanese Yawmiyat project, please visit the website at: http://yawmiyetarchives.com/ or contact us at imaginingfutures@exeter.ac.uk.