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Virtual space and Uncertainty: Reflections from Syria
Abstract
The paper proceeds to focus on one crucial way in which web 2.0 technologies have come to operate in Syria. Displacing an outmoded, brittle Ba`thist party rhetoric with increasingly sophisticated modes of ideological reproduction in the first decade of Bashar al-Asad’s rule, the regime has been able, in the course of the uprising, to counter human rights activists’ and citizen journalists’ efforts to document “the truth” by putting forth its own evidence—no more obviously believable than the opposition’s—which nevertheless serves to sow doubt about what is actually going on. The regime has successfully raised questions about the nature of evidence, the credibility of countervailing knowledge, and the comfort offered by familiar falsehoods as compared to the unknown. This element of doubt, frequently reinforced by an inexperienced, conflict-ridden opposition, has been crucial to the regime’s efforts at retrenchment. Competing images, rumors, conspiracy theories, the divisive testimony of “eyewitnesses” have raised questions about whether the political alternatives on offer would spell improvement over the regime, which personalities or sensibilities best represent the opposition, and how the veracity of images circulating could be determined. Here I take as exemplary two moments: 1) the mysterious controversy over who might have murdered the well-known singer Ibrahim Qashshush, or indeed if he was killed at all, his deployment as a symbol of oppositional courage, regime brutality, and then, as has lately been alleged, of regime cooptation and the opposition’s revenge—the overall sense of uncertainty that can dilute moral outrage and cause standards of political judgment to come unmoored; 2) the chemical weapons attack in eastern Ghouta, a devastating event, the “evidence” for which has pointed in different directions, animated a global community of politicians, activists, and scientists, and served to polarize those with already firm positions even while regenerating uncertainty (as to accountability) for those who were not so sure. The paper ends with a discussion of Wittgenstein’s analysis of uncertainty, drawing out its relevance for our understanding of politics in the local Syrian as well as more global present. It considers how virtual space matters politically in this information-awash era.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Syria
Sub Area
Comparative