Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria / Edition 2

by Lisa Wedeen

Overview

Treating rhetoric and symbols as central rather than peripheral to politics, Lisa Wedeen's groundbreaking book offers a compelling counterargument to those who insist that politics is primarily about material interests and the groups advocating for them. During the thirty-year rule of President Hafiz al-Asad's regime, his image was everywhere. In newspapers, on television, and during orchestrated spectacles. Asad was praised as the "father," the "gallant knight," even the country's "premier pharmacist." Yet most Syrians, including those who create the official rhetoric, did not believe its claims. Why would a regime spend scarce resources on a personality cult whose content is patently spurious?

Wedeen shows how such flagrantly fictitious claims were able to produce a politics of public dissimulation in which citizens acted as if they revered the leader. By inundating daily life with tired symbolism, the regime exercised a subtle, yet effective form of power. The cult worked to enforce obedience, induce complicity, isolate Syrians from one another, and set guidelines for public speech and behavior. Wedeen's ethnographic research demonstrates how Syrians recognized the disciplinary aspects of the cult and sought to undermine them. In a new preface, Wedeen discusses the uprising against the Syrian regime that began in 2011 and questions the usefulness of the concept of legitimacy in trying to analyze and understand authoritarian regimes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226333373
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	09/09/2015
Edition description:	First Edition, Enlarged
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Lisa Wedeen is the Mary R. Morton Professor of Political Science and the College and codirector of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory at the University of Chicago.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration
1. Believing in Spectacles
2. Killing Politics: Official Rhetoric and Permissible Speech
3. Acting "As If": The Story of M
4. Signs of Transgression
5. Complicating Compliance
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Anne Norton

In this eagerly awainted book, Wedeen conveys with great force and intimacy the strategies, dilemmas, and paradoxes of authoritarianism in a very particular, very distinctive cultural context.
— Anne Norton is the author of Republic of Signs: Liberal Theory and American Popular Culture

Editorial Reviews

"Wedeen conveys with great force and intimacy the strategies, dilemmas, and paradoxes of authoritarianism in a very particular, very distinctive, cultural context."--Anne Norton, University of Pennsylvania

From the Publisher

Wedeen conveys with great force and intimacy the strategies, dilemmas, and paradoxes of authoritarianism in a very particular, very distinctive, cultural context.

Anne Norton