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The Ambivalence of Syrian Revolutionaries' Activism Facing Exile and Defeat
Abstract
For the exiled Syrian revolutionaries, the perceptions and emotions related to the experience of exile are intertwined with those of war and defeat. The sufferings caused the multiple losses they experienced, as deaths and disappearances of relatives and other kinds of political violence, are still acute. They vary according to the conditions in which the refugees live and the past and ongoing events in Syria. This paper proposes to analyze the nexus between defeat and exile. Defeat is understood here as a perception shared and expressed among Syrian refugees who participated in the uprising. My study will focus on a distant exile context, namely France, where I conducted more than fifty interviews with Syrian activists since 2015. I will highlight the ambiguity of perceptions and emotions concerning defeat. The refugees express different forms of nostalgia for their previous life in Syria: nostalgia for a country at peace, but also nostalgia for the lost revolution. Nostalgia coexists with a desire to refocus on their present and future, around more individual and private concerns than collective and public ones. In other words, we can observe how the conditions of exile hasten the acceptance of the defeat. However, although the defeat of the movement in Syria is undeniable, many activists in exile are still reinvesting their critical dispositions and activist skills in other arenas or other causes, even beyond the Syrian cause. The feeling of defeat does not imply a total abandonment of their belief in the value of activism. Many even still share a belief in the possibility of a victory for their revolution, or at least a fall of the ruling regime in the longer term, and still try to fight against it at a distance. These ambiguities invite us to pay attention to the nuances of activism, to the variations of activist practices and discourses, situated between the extremes of a complete commitment and a full disengagement.
Discipline
Political Science
Sociology
Geographic Area
Europe
Syria
Sub Area
None