Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria.

• Author: Mor, Shany
• Position: Brief Article - Book Review

AMBIGUITIES OF DOMINATION: POLITICS, RHETORIC, AND SYMBOLS IN CONTEMPORARY SYRIA Lisa Wedeen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 244 pages.

Public life in Syria during the 1990s was dominated by the presence of President Hafiz al-Asad, whose cult of personality could not be explained by the fervor of his followers or by the clarity of his aims. Lisa Wedeen's excellent work investigates the persistence of Asad's cult, although its relevance reaches well beyond the case of Syria to a host of other authoritarian regimes.

Wedeen skillfully highlights the ways in which such regimes of terror utilize various tactics such as "mass spectacles" to buoy their institutions, transforming compliance into complicity among both non-believing propagandists and an equally...