A Reading on Syria: Deconstructing Sectarian Discourse

Abstract

Transformations in trajectories of popular mobilization and its change from non-violence to violence, particularly as witnessed in Syria, stoke and feed orientalist readings. Such readings are generally skeptical of an Arab world capable of undergoing real revolutions like those experienced by the West. For the most part, orientalists resort to readings focused on confessions and divorced from their historical and social context. In this way, the confession forms the entryway to the reading of a political struggle or to the understanding of social crises. This paper tries to critique and deconstruct some aspects of these orientalist readings, especially with regard to Syria. It discusses the ideological discourse around the revolution and considers the claim that a revolution has not taken place. The Syrian revolution is here approached from a sociological perspective seeking to bring out the revolutionary aspects that orientalist studies try to efface.