Mobilising Hope: Infrastructural Activism in Post-War Beirut

Lebanon has been described as "post-war," but not "post-conflict." A fragile peace has been held together since the early 1990s by a precarious network of elites in a power-sharing arrangement spread across the institutions of the state, the media, and the very surface of the earth, consolidating what architect Karl Sharro (2003) has called 'warspace' in peacetime. This atmosphere has made the work of rights-oriented urban activists very difficult; how does one advocate for territory-spanning policies and/or infrastructures when urban space appears so hopelessly fragmented and policed?

This paper, based on empirical research on the public transport sector, and taking ‘assemblage urbanism’ as a framework of analysis, will trace recent efforts to turn urban mobility in Beirut into a matter of concern. In turn, this investigation will highlight how a heterogeneous public is being formed around mass transit, ‘the public domain’ and their disjunctures.

The paper will argue that this creative public has enlivened the politics of urban development and infrastructure, and in so doing, provided a subterranean means for mobilising hope against a political arrangement built on the preservation of spatially-inscribed allegiances. However, by successfully lengthening some relations (e.g. embassies, media outlets, ‘creatives,’ etc) rather than others (e.g. trade unions, bus drivers, state employees, etc), this constellation of activists has yet to be successful in bridging the unequal 'warspaces' of Beirut, and hence pose a threat to ‘the regime.’ By telling this story, this paper aims to demonstrate how assemblage thinking, far from being merely descriptive, can be a form of critical political engagement or activism in itself.