Beyond Arabism: music videos and Lebanese revolution.

• Author: Freund, Charles Paul

Throughout Lebanon's recent assertion of political independence, a striking video hovered near the top of the region's music and video charts: Issa Ghandour's "Min Safer" ("We Depart"). Ghandour's song is a moody evocation of the meaning of place and the spiritual costs of forced exile from that place. According to the lyrics, the singer, in losing his now-unattainable home, has been exiled as well from his soul.

Neither Ghandour's lyrics nor the video's images refer specifically to Lebanon, but few who have seen the video are likely to miss the obvious connection, and not only because Ghandour sings in an unmistakable Lebanese accent. The video, directed by Leila Kanaan, evokes in miniature Lebanon's violent recent history, and it surrounds Ghandour (who is making a futile attempt at return) with the wariness of those who stayed behind and with the taunting ghosts of his unlived, might-have-been life. Ghandour's personal tragedy of exile, the video suggests, is also Lebanon's national tragedy of loss.

In the sense that Lebanon's demonstrators want their country not only to resume its full independence but also to resume its interrupted history, the Ghandour video draws on the same cultural sources as the political opposition. They are both manifestations of a national exceptionalism that may be called "Lebanonism."

Lebanonism is a term used by different people to mean quite different things. To such thinkers as Benjamin Barber, it describes an ongoing state of tribal friction. To some economists, it describes the policies that allowed Lebanon to achieve impressive prosperity in a limited time. To some pan-Arabists, it is an offensive code word for Christian domination. But to others, it is the embrace of social pluralism and of difference--libertine and synchretic--from Lebanon's neighboring cultures.

Thus, when opposition demonstrations broke out in the wake of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri's assassination, some observers claimed the phenomenon of Christians, Druze, Sunnis, and others linking arms was a manifestation of a "new Arab nationalism." Not so, wrote the Middle Eastern analyst Tony Badran: "This is not an Arab nationalist revolution. This is a 'Lebanonist' revolution! This is about the coming together of the Lebanese (Druze, Maronite, Sunni, Shiite, etc.) for Lebanon and the idea of Lebanon as a plural society."

This Lebanonism of pluralism and difference draws on many sources. For example, Lebanon has been an emigrant...