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- The work offers an insightful approach to the history and formation of modern Lebanon through studying how modern art requires citizens to confront how they define themselves. This innovative strategy will surely influence similar studies of other postcolonial nations.
- Scholarship which seeks to understand power, hierarchy, and structure often tends to ignore art. This work addresses this deficiency through its clear exploration of the imaginative basis for self-expression, socialization, and political mobilization which is so fundamental to the construction of citizenship.
- The work will appeal to scholars working on the historical, social, or political studies of Lebanon and the Middle East more generally. It will also appeal to scholars working on postcolonial studies, art history, gender studies, and anthropology.
List of contents
Preamble
Acknowledgments
Notes on Language
Notes on Sources
1. Introduction: No Art Here
2. Exhibitions: Sociality as Fantasm
3. Nudes: The Citizen as Fantasm
4. Landscapes: The Nation as Fantasm
5. Art Lessons: Fantasmic Formations of the Lady-Artist
6. Portraits: Towards a Fantasmic Ontology of Art Acts
Conclusion: Between Art and Here
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Kirsten L. Scheid is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies at the American University of Beirut and Affiliated Faculty in the Department of Fine Art and Art History. She is Cofounder of the Anthropology Society in Lebanon (ASIL) in Beirut and Cofounder and Producer of the
Hikayat Wala min Bayrut [Stories of a child from Beirut]. She co-curated
The Arab Nude: The Artist as Awakener as well as
Jerusalem: Actual and Possible, the ninth edition of the Jerusalem Show.
