Violence and Government in Syria

A talk by Salwa Ismail, SOAS University of London, about her latest book The Rule of Violence. Subjectivity, Memory and Government in Syria, Cambridge University Press (2018)

The Rule of Violence 
Subjectivity, Memory and Government in Syria
Salwa Ismail
Cambridge University Press (2018)

In this talk based on her recent book, The Rule of Violence: Subjectivity, Memory and Government in Syria (Cambridge University Press 2018), Salwa Ismail will discuss the politically formative role of both institutions and practices of governmental violence in Syria over the four decades preceding the 2011 Uprising. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews carried out in Syria between 2005 and 2011, a key question the book asks is how practices of violence, both in their routine and spectacular forms, shaped Syrian political subjectivities, and what effect this violence had at the level of society and the individual. This interrogation helps illuminate the conditions that entrenched polarisation and division among Syrians and ultimately laid the ground for breaking their country apart. 

Responsable scientifique: Eberhard Kienle, Sciences Po-CERI / CNRS