SPACING THAWRA: Performative Inversions during the Grand Theatre of Lebanon’s 2019 October Revolution

Abstract

What spatial desires emerge from impromptu urban performances during revolution? As a transformative event in Lebanon’s political history, 2019’s nationwide October Revolution (Thawra) involved spontaneous and leaderless protests — beyond sectarian, class, religious, gender and cultural divides — which not only led to the government's resignation, but to constructive expressions of civic ‘spacing’. Although an inevitably failed mass uprising that challenged the political elite by demanding secular representation, Thawra was initially underpinned by optimism, joy and solidarity, which were demonstrated in how the populace took to the streets to claim public space that had been drastically depleted by half a century of internal war, external pressure and ensuing neoliberal commercial development. Thawra also radically challenged restrictive neoliberal urban development through complex spatiotemporal dynamics that emerged between protestors, the Lebanese security forces, citizen bystanders and the built environment, which was enabled by online platforms and citizen documentation. As a reclaiming of the public realm through temporary transformations of urban environments — in this case, the capital city of Beirut — fleeting spontaneous events enact potential innovations and longer-term transformations. Abandoned venues such as The Egg and Le Grande Théâtre du Beirut were briefly reclaimed as sites for public assembly and debate, while many more locations were occupied and physically embellished with protest art, spontaneous furnishing and 24/7 social engagement, thereby turning the city inside-out and outside-in through acts of domestication and publication. Such performative assemblages and inversions are here theorised as revolutionary ‘spacing’ — combining performance (as lived experience) and design (as speculative representations) — which is both situational and relational, transforming familiar settings into a mise en scène (staged arrangement) defined by performing, witnessing and participatory bodies, along with meaningfully selected or fabricated structures and objects. Ultimately, this exposes a desire for diwaniyat, which refers to gathering as spatial action and its designed artefact, positing an accessible civic environment for sociocultural and political spacing.