Cosmopolitan radicalism : the visual politics of Beirut's global sixties / Zeina Maasri.

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2020.

1 online resource (xxi, 281 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

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Exploring the intersections of visual culture, design and politics in Beirut from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, this compelling interdisciplinary study critically examines a global conjuncture in Lebanon's history, marked by anticolonial struggle and complicated by a Cold War order. Against a celebratory reminiscence of the 'golden years', Beirut's long 1960s is conceived of as a liminal juncture, an anxious time and space when the city held out promises at once politically radical and radically cosmopolitan. Zeina Maasri examines the transnational circuits that animated Arab modernist pursuits, shedding light on key cultural transformations that saw Beirut develop as a Mediterranean site of tourism and leisure, a nexus between modern art and pan-Arab publishing and, through the rise of the Palestinian Resistance, a node in revolutionary anti-imperialism. Drawing on uncharted archives of printed media this book expands the scope of historical analysis of the postcolonial Arab East.

Cambridge core frontlist 2020.

Print version:

Books / Online

English

August 14, 2020

Introduction : Beirut in the Global Sixties : Design, Politics and Translocal Visuality - Dislocating the Nation : Mediterraneanscapes in Lebanon's Tourist Promotion - The Hot Third World in the Cultural Cold War : Modernism, Arabic Literary Journals and US Counterinsurgency - The Visual Economy of 'Precious Books' : Publishing, Modern Art and the Design of Arabic Books - Ornament is No Crime : Decolonising the Arabic Page from Cairo to Beirut - Art is in the 'Arab Street': The Palestinian Revolution and Printscapes of Solidarity - Draw Me a Gun : Radical Children's Books in the Trenches of 'Arab Hanoi.'