Abstract
A Break in the Future asks how activists keep hope alive and work towards future change when social movements fall apart and protests fail. Anthropologist Fuad Musallam investigates the endurance of political possibility in Beirut, Lebanon, between the Arab uprisings of 2010-11 and the Lebanese uprising of October 2019. Despite a regional collapse of political hope and a local inability to effect change in the context of political stasis, postponed elections, and the degradation of civil infrastructure, between every protest cycle a sizeable number of people remained engaged and built towards future political opportunities. Through an exploration of activist strategies, the book asks how we can grasp different phases of political (dis)engagement together, and is guided by a desire to better understand how to keep political possibility alive.
To make sense of how possibility endures, this book looks at the ebb and flow of political engagement together – not only at recent mobilizations but also at the times in between when, at first glance, little seems to be happening on the ground. Across the decade’s high and low points, the work explores how activists cultivated and maintained their political subjectivity, the active and engaged sense of self that motivates political action. Musallam finds this political subjectivity to be the product of heartbreak and defeat as much as victory, it underlies several movements at any one time and can sustain activists through multiple setbacks. And when political change seems most unlikely, a moment of rupture – or a ‘break in the future’– is central to Lebanese activists’ belief that their actions can and will transform their world. A Break in the Future ultimately argues that the experience of moments of rupture radically transforms what seems possible, and that the cultivation of these experiences keeps movements going even when things appear to fall apart.
To make sense of how possibility endures, this book looks at the ebb and flow of political engagement together – not only at recent mobilizations but also at the times in between when, at first glance, little seems to be happening on the ground. Across the decade’s high and low points, the work explores how activists cultivated and maintained their political subjectivity, the active and engaged sense of self that motivates political action. Musallam finds this political subjectivity to be the product of heartbreak and defeat as much as victory, it underlies several movements at any one time and can sustain activists through multiple setbacks. And when political change seems most unlikely, a moment of rupture – or a ‘break in the future’– is central to Lebanese activists’ belief that their actions can and will transform their world. A Break in the Future ultimately argues that the experience of moments of rupture radically transforms what seems possible, and that the cultivation of these experiences keeps movements going even when things appear to fall apart.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publisher | University of Pennsylvania Press |
| Number of pages | 264 |
| Edition | 1 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781512828078 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781512828061 |
| Publication status | Published - Jul 2025 |