“Stereotyping the ‘Syrian’ in Lebanon”, Arab Stereotyping
LAU, Beirut November 6-9 2001.
Intro: prejudice, stereotyping, racism and violence
– about the survey
– in its simplest definitions, stereotyping is casting in an unvarying form or pattern individuals or groups this casting becomes a fixed notion of a person and group held by a number of people allowing no individuality or critical judgement. stereotyping = an obstacle to real knowledge, replaces it by self-satisfaction by the stereotyping community and a sense of superiority.
– In our case, to stereotype means, first of all, to fix the group/community as an individual, al-suri, implies the reduction of 18 million people to an individual. Now the group can be cast as one individual.
– This tradition of individuation goes back to the war period. In fact, it was the phalangist leader Bashir Jumayyel who first named the collective by the individual term: the falastini, the suri. Later, the whole political class carried after him: the suri did this; the suri did that; what does the suri want; I tell you the suri is behind it, who else? etc.
– Meaning of this reduction: the characteristics of the one applicable to all; and conversely those of all to the one.
1.
– nationalism as a form of differentiation and hierarchization
– political (relations of power), cultural, class
– variations of stereotyping of the syrian
- i) the worker
- ii) the security service man
iii) the street vendor, more particularly, the kaa’k vendor
the amalgam between security service men mukhabaraat and kaak vendors is exemplified in many an anecdote: i) the cartoon diffused on the internet showing a kaak vending cart which reveals its inside made up of an intricate network of listening divices; ii) the joke about the military parade in Damascus the unit representing the Syrian troops in Lebanon shouting “Kaak, Kaak!” iii) the representation of the Syrian as a caak vendor becomes a codeword for Syrian as in this cartoon of the famous cartoonist of an-Nahar, Pierre Sadeq, who, to impress upon us that the whole Lebanese Parliament is under Syrian control, draws the House of Representatives emiting caak-shaped bulls with a legend saying “kaak, kaak, kaak”.
- iv) the homsi: the debrouillard, sophisticated (“shater”) Lebanese vis-à-vis the awkward, naïve Syrian.
- Functions of comparisons between stereotyping and stereotyped:
not only socially, but also culturally, inferior
less debrouillard than the Lebanese
less sophisticated