Laure Guirguis

This project is aimed at writing a history of Arab left-wing trends in the 1960-70s that allows re-reading the history of the Arab world in its light, while pursuing reflections on violence. Drawing on a wide range of unexplored archival and oral sources in Arabic, it focuses on three crucial sites of revolutionary circulations—Egypt, Lebanon and the Dhofar (Sultanate of Oman)—in the shifting interplay of local, regional and transnational frames of reference. This research combines a social history of left-wing militant trajectories, experiences, and narratives, and the historical hermeneutic of this nascent transnational universe of meanings, hopes, and passions. In so doing, it seeks to bridge the gap between social and cultural studies in order to properly address radical endeavors and the transformation of political subjectivities, as well as to envision how power and violence are exercised in the registers of both action and representation.