In his book, ‘non-places, introduction to an anthropology of
supermodernity 1, Marc Auge defines non-place as having no identity, no history and no urban relationships. Non-places are transient spaces for traffic, communication and consumption, from inside a moving car on to the transit zones of an airport. Non-places are defined by the logic of excess information. The city has “lost its reference parameters, and gone into nothingness”, the streets are leading nowhere, circling in a maze, it had become a labyrinth of endless steps. “…The overwhelming presence of everything has finally transformed into pure nothingness. (…) The continuing streets flowing around an entirely empty individual” is the city nothingness.
When the city itself becomes a transit place, in a transitional phase waiting in the void, on the edge of another era, it becomes a ‘nonplace’. Beirut is passing through such situation of ending a phase and waiting on the steps of another, while still passing through a reconstruction period, living a utopian dream of prosperity that is yet to come. The post-war Beirut is marked by a feeling of emptiness, uncertainties and insecurities, and has undergo some abrupt changes, it is becoming a new urban space where the spatial intersect with the social and where flexibility and mobility become key qualities; new spatial orders with a transnational range are being superimposed on the familiar territorial lines.
The new architecture of non-places consist of spatial flows, movement and transitional zones, where the physical body fails to cope with the new urban vernacular, as Bilal Khbeiz wrote in his book ‘globalization and the manufacture of transient events’: “…absenting the physical body, effacing the face to dissimilate in a virtual existence behind a reconstructed image. (…) With globalization the body fails to cope with the imagination, and is quickly expelled and replaced by another body made of the imagined and the fantasized”.
The project
Beirut Metro Map 2 adds another virtual layer to the psychological and physical labyrinth of the city, focusing on the ever-present demarcation lines that were splitting Beirut during the long period of the civil war, and its relation to the social environment in post-war Beirut. The map is a virtual underground network of lines and stations.
The circulation flow seems illogical and irrelevant to the geographical urban structure of the city, in a way that all the metro lines will stop at the old demarcation lines, and passengers will have to change to another line in order for them to cross to the other side. As we know, still up until now, people taking ‘service’ cab have to take another cab on the old ‘crossing lines’ to continue to the other side, the driver on the west side of Beirut will not go to the east side and vies versa, even the buses have their major stops on the old crossing points of the old green zone.
After 1992 Beirut was unified and the physical demarcation lines where removed, but they still exist in the collective memory of all the inhabitant of the city and in the background of their conscious, because they still don’t have a reason to negate them, as the political and social situation has not changed after the war, sectarianism is still there, and class distinction is sharper then ever, and the political and economical situations are not stable. So all the reasons for the war are still alive, and in fact a lot of analysts fear that the civil war might regenerate again when the proper international situation will allow it. And the many civil wars that accrued throughout history in Lebanon serves as a reference for them to prove their theory.
But the Lebanese are in denial of this situation, trying to ignore the political and sectarian problems that were the initial reasons for the civil war, they are living a schizophrenic life between reality and illusion which they have created for themrselves just to hide any reason for another devastating conflict, while the war is still present in a lot of the daily behaviors. As Al Gorgen wrote in his article ‘The Politics in the Imperial Age’, “We are living in a world where there are hints and clues that there may be another world behind or beneath, a world more real than the one we are used to”. Lebanon is actually passing through a phase of “cold war” as Wadah Charara likes to call it. The Lebanese are living such a case of virtual reality under the illusion that everything is going fine, but underneath this illusion lays the actual reality of big political, sectarian, and social problems.
During the war Beirut was split into two parts, east and west, Christians and Muslims, Right wing and left wing, but these splits where not so sharp, it means that on each side you can find a lot of other social and political differences, in addition to the sharp horizontal class distinction split on both sides. On the west side, since 1982 and as a result of the Israeli invasion; all the Palestinian liberation groups were forced to get out from Lebanon, and the west side Beirut was open to many political, sectarian groups fighting for power. On the east side, since 1985 and after the ‘mountain war’, the different ‘Christians’ sects, families, militias and political groups started fighting for power. In addition to all that, the Israeli front in south Lebanon was also open and many resistance small wars were taking place at different stages as the occupation of the south continued after the Israeli withdrawal from Beirut.
And we should always bear in mind that the demographical map of Beirut has changed after the war, and thus the geographical distribution of political and sectarian powers throughout the city and the suburbs. Some new powers have emerged during the last phase of the civil war and also after the war (during the reconstruction period), and thus the ‘ruptures’ and power oasis are reshuffled again, so the borders has shifted and we have new imagined ‘demarcation lines’ that I should consider while working on my map.
- N.E.: https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jread2/Auge%20Non%20places.pdf→
- N.E.: A project by Hassan Choubassi realized in 2005. See below : https://lemerle.xyz/issue/beyrouth-montreal/?lang=french#related-beirut-metro-map-image →