Citation
Wedeen, Lisa. Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria. University of Chicago Press, 2015. Google Books Link
Notes
Was really into it up to… Chapter 3 I think, when it suddenly pivots to like Freudian dream interpretation?
Excerpts
| Page | Quote | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 11 | Excerpt from Stuart_Hall, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (1988), which footnote says is “similar to” Raymond_Williams, Marxism and Literature (1977): “Hegemonic ideas acquire the ‘inertial authority of habit and instinct. It becomes the horizon of the taken-for-granted […] Ruling ideas may dominate other conceptions of the social world by setting the limit to what will appear as rational, reasonable, credible, indeed sayable or thinkable, within the given vocabularies of motive and action available to us.‘“ | |
| 12 | ”Asad is powerful because his regime can compel people to say the ridiculous and to avow the absurd.” | |
| 14 | ”Even Geertz […] fails to register any discrepancy between the representation the regime intends and the ways in which such representations are received, negotiated, and reinterpreted by those who consume them. In other words, these works tend to neglect the problem of ‘reception’.“ | |
| 29 | ”Similar to Frederick the Great, who is reported to have said that he did not care what his subjects thought so long as they did what he ordered.” | |
| 30 | ”Politics is not merely about material interests but also about contests over the symbolic world, over the management and appropriation of meanings.” |
Zotero Metadata
Abstract
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.
Metadata
FirstAuthor:: Wedeen, Lisa
Title:: Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria ShortTitle:: Ambiguities of Domination Year:: 2015
Citekey:: wedeen_ambiguities_2015
itemType:: book
Publisher:: University of Chicago Press
ISBN:: 978-0-226-34553-6