Spatial profanation of Lebanese sectarianism: Al-Nur square and the 17 October 2019 protests

Abstract

The ongoing 17 October 2019 Lebanese protests mark a critical moment that historicises the struggle of a people, from different sectarian and religious backgrounds, against political corruption. Tripoli, a conservative Sunni-majority city in Northern Lebanon, has caught the attention of researchers as its protests took the form of a ‘rave party’ held in its main public square, known as al-Nur Square. This article investigates the Tripolitan protests through the lens of Agamben’s Profanations to highlight the dynamics of the al-Nur Square protests that seem to conflate the religious and the political. The article specifically argues that the protestors reconfigure the space around the square in an attempt at profaning the sectarian apparatus that takes the ‘Allah’ icon as its centre. In their spatial attempt at profanation, however, the protestors seem to preserve the religious intact, thus giving credibility to their de-sectarianising act. Such an analytical reading of the protest sheds light on the spatial dynamics inherent in any Lebanese attempt at reform, including the 17 October 2019 protests. These protests become historical records that trace the protestors’ continuous negotiation of the religious and the political that embeds the attempt at desectarianisation within every demand they have for political reform.