Spectacle, Citizenship, and Satire: The Theatricality of Conspiracy in Assad’s Syria
My project, which will serve as the fourth chapter of my first book, explores the use of the conspiracy trope (“al-muamara”) as a theatrical device in the context of Syria’s Baathist regime – shaping the domain of political possibility available to both the regime and its antagonists. It traces how conspiracy functions as a media spectacle that can be “staged” for national and international audiences: from internal strategies of managed dissent (“tanfis”) and disinformation campaigns, to the complicated ethics of citizen journalism and graphic exposure. The chapter reads texts from the revolutionary period of the 1970s and ‘80s – such as Muhammad al-Maghut’s satirical play Kasak Ya Watan (Toast to the Homeland, 1979) and Osama Muhammad’s film Nujum al-Nahar (Stars in Broad Daylight, 1988) – against a rich tapestry of media from the 2011 Syrian Revolution – experimental video art by Abounaddara, digital writing and viral clips by citizen journalists, and Tayseer Khalaf’s novel Malek Al-Lusus (King of Thieves, 2021). On the one hand, this analysis aims to show how conspiracy has always been a key trope in the Assad regime’s strategies of epistemic damage. On the other hand, it highlights how conspiracy discourse gets taken up and mobilized against the regime, as a tool of dissident artistic and political culture – a strategy for reclaiming public space by co-opting the regime’s language in ways that both help and hinder the revolutionary cause.