#lebanonprotest

In this rapidly changing, sociopolitical context,there's an urgency to express instinctual feelings that bring us together.

Against a backdrop of burning tires and discontented crowds, the image of two people embracing takes on a heightened meaning. So why are these images powerful?

1. Alienation: The capitalist systems we live under have made us lose a sense of ourselves. We have become defined by what we do, how much we earn... our worth is equated by our social status. This makes us feel like digits in an ever-complex information system. We are hyper connected at all times, and in turn, our screen time and connectivity eats away at physical ties and connection.

As many, many people gather in Lebanon's streets to fight for their/OUR rights, we are reminded of the beauty of human connection en masse, as we gather together in the streets as one beating heart.

2. Affect: This is a visceral feeling, deeper than emotion, experienced through our interaction with others and people. It’s a motivation system with its own logic; it’s a sensory feeling experienced in the materiality of places and things. Affect is powerful. It’s shaping how we engage with this revolution. It builds bonds of solidarity from the north of Lebanon to the south. In every city, people are chanting for their fellow citizens in other regions of the country, not to mention other countries abroad. In a country where space was ‘territorialized’ by sectarianism, the October Revolution is re-drawing  our map through affect.

It’s helping form bonds of solidarity that transgress borders; the physical, the geographical, the ideological, and the bodily borders.

3. The right to love: And in these spaces that are reclaimed by the public, a call for rights also includes a call for the right to love.

And when talking about love, and hearing stories about proposals and weddings amid the protests, we hope for a secular state that allows people to join in union as humans, where personal status laws are abolished. It’s also high time that women be considered citizens of the state and not gendered citizens of the state.