The Art of Bypassing: Students’ Politicization in Beirut

This article explores how students experiment with politicization in contemporary Beirut. The objective is to refine the understanding of the interplay between memorialization, identification and politics in the Lebanese context. Based on ethnographic material and qualitative interviews, the article argues that politicization, defined as a twofold process of collectivization and conflictualization, is shaped by interactional positioning between students. It relies on identification along patterned storylines framing the cognition and recognition of the self and others. Largely dependent upon affective and memorial dynamics, these experiences of politicization become constitutive for students’ understanding of identity boundaries within the Lebanese plural society.