Walid Sadek rethinks the survivor figure in Lebanon's civil war context

Walid Sadek's 2015 article challenges conventional views of survivors in postwar Lebanon. Official discourses often frame survivors as posthumous figures, hindering societal reconstruction. However, Lebanon's ongoing civil war conditions demand a new temporal understanding. The survivor becomes a non-posthumous witness, burdened with unwelcome knowledge from within the conflict. This knowledge resists official attempts to close the past. Sadek questions how history writing can be reconceptualized through this figure. The article explores what images this survivor safeguards. Published on June 5, 2015, it is available via MIT Press under subscription access.