ABSTRACT
The elusive pursuit of the ‘real facts’ of Lebanese history continues to fuel countless polemics and scholarly debates over the nature and outworking of sectarianism in Lebanon, and the very viability of the Lebanese state. Civil war memories are not only shaped by conflicting Lebanese historiographies but are implicated in the ongoing negotiation of national identity and political powersharing arrangements. Postmemory narratives are employed both to support and critique Lebanese pluralism, to bolster and undermine national sovereignty and independence, and to question whether the war actually ended in 1991 or whether violence merely took shifting forms. This chapter explores the recurring tensions and unresolved academic debates surrounding Lebanese history and historiography, communal co-existence (al-ʿ aysh al-mushtarak) and power-sharing and the emergence of a new post-war national identity. In so doing it seeks to problematise static sectarian frames, instead presenting the historically contingent and socially dynamic contexts, which have contributed to multiple cultures and histories of sectarianisation in Lebanon (Weiss 2009: 151).
