EUME
2016/ 2017

Khaled Saghieh

Of the Left and Other Demons

Khaled Saghieh began his career as a journalist in 1998 at the Lebanese daily al-Safir. Until 2011, he was the deputy editor-in-chief of the daily al-Akhbar. Between 2012 and 2015, Saghieh worked as editor-in-chief of the news department at the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International (LBCI). He also earned an MA in Economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
 

Of the Left and Other Demons

In his book project entitled Of the Left and Other Demons, Saghieh retraces his trajectory as a journalist navigating both a turbulent region and a mutating political tradition. He does so by probing the notion of ideological self-fashioning against the backdrop of his own intellectual and professional transformations as a militant journalist in postwar Lebanon. As he reflects on his experience of covering two decades of neoliberal policies, imperialist invasions, and popular uprisings, he points to the ways in which traditional print and visual media have sustained the paradox of being both a catalyst for change and a tool for repression. At the intersection of autobiography and historiography, the book makes visible the fault lines of the contemporary Arab and Lebanese left and attempts to identify the prospects of leftist ideologies of emancipation.