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Disruptive Situations
 In the series Sexuality Studies,
edited by Janice Irvine and Regina Kunzel
Also in this series:

Andrew Israel Ross, Public City/Public Sex: Homosexuality, Prostitution,

and Urban Culture in Nineteenth-Century Paris
Heike Bauer, The Hirschfeld Archives: Violence, Death,
and Modern Queer Culture
Ryan Murphy, Deregulating Desire: Flight Attendant Activism,
Family Politics, and Workplace Justice
Heike Bauer, Sexology and Translation: Cultural and Scientific Encounters
across the Modern World
Lynette Chua, Mobilizing Gay Singapore: Rights and Resistance
in an Authoritarian State
Thomas A. Foster, Sex and the Founding Fathers: The American Quest
for a Relatable Past
Colin R. Johnson, Just Queer Folks: Gender and Sexuality
in Rural America
Lisa Sigel, Making Modern Love: Sexual Narratives and Identities
in Interwar Britain
Disrupti v e
Situations

Fractal Orientalism and

Queer Strategies in Beirut

Ghassan Moussawi

Temple University Press

Philadelphia • Rome • Tokyo
Temple University Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122
tupress.temple.edu

Copyright © 2020 by Temple University—Of The Commonwealth System

of Higher Education
All rights reserved
Published 2020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Moussawi, Ghassan, 1985– author.

Title: Disruptive situations : fractal Orientalism and queer strategies in Beirut /
Ghassan Moussawi.
Other titles: Sexuality studies.
Description: Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2020. | Series: Sexuality studies |
Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Uses ethnographic research
from LGBT and queer subjects to challenge how sexuality has been used to provide an
exceptional narrative about contemporary Beirut and modernity. Offers an alternative
narrative that highlights the power of everyday life disruptive situations in shaping
LGBT life and queer strategies of survival”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019039562 (print) | LCCN 2019039563 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781439918494 (cloth) | ISBN 9781439918500 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781439918517 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Sexual minorities—Lebanon—Beirut—21st century. | Gender-
nonconforming people—Lebanon—Beirut—21st century. | Gays—Travel—Lebanon—
Beirut—21st century. | Social stability—Lebanon—Beirut—21st century. | Beirut
(Lebanon)—Social conditions—21st century.
Classification: LCC HQ76.2.L42 B4565 2020 (print) | LCC HQ76.2.L42 (ebook) |
DDC 306.76095692/5—dc23
LC record available at https://​lccn​.loc​.gov/​2019039562
LC ebook record available at https://​lccn​.loc​.gov/​2019039563

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National
Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1992

Printed in the United States of America

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 For Beirut

For the victims of all the senseless violence and

those who continue to live amid al-wad’

 Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: While “the World Is Beiruting Again” 1

1 From Binaries to Fractals: “Glitter and Fears of Gay Life

in Beirut” 29

2 “Because Lebanon Is Not Kandahar”: Beirut as Queer Exception 55

3 Against Reconciliation 76

4 Always Visible 105

5 The Bubble 136

Conclusion: Feeling Exceptional and Queer (Dis)Locations 157

Appendix: Methodology and Beirut Neighborhoods 167

Notes 171

References 177

Index 187
 Acknowledgments

I
write this a few weeks after the tragic passing of my dear friend and
graduate school colleague Jason Phillips—two months before his disserta-
tion defense. Jason’s kindness, intellect, and generosity have inspired me
and so many of his friends in countless ways. He left us too soon, but we will
continue to celebrate his life.
This book would not have been possible without the generous and invalu-
able support of so many individuals who believed in and engaged with this
project at various stages and reminded me of the importance of putting this
out in the world.
The seeds of this project started during my first term of graduate school
in a seminar with Arlene Stein, my dissertation chair and adviser, on the so-
ciology of culture. Many thanks go to Arlene for believing in this project and
for providing constant support and encouragement. She has been a wonderful
mentor and friend since my first day at Rutgers University. Arlene encour-
aged me to be methodologically open and flexible and pushed me to be a
better and clearer writer, always thinking about how to make my work acces-
sible. Judy Gerson’s unwavering support and instrumental advice throughout
graduate school shaped how I approach my research and taught me how to
embrace vulnerability in the research process. She showed me that a good
mentorship relationship is based on mutual respect and honesty. I am truly
grateful. I thank Ann Mische for introducing me to fractals. I am very grate-
ful for her belief in my project and for her genuine enthusiasm, guidance,
 x | Ac k now l e d g m e n t s

and friendship, even after moving to Notre Dame. I am thankful for Zakia
Salime’s critical comments, feedback, and advice, which pushed me theoreti-
cally and helped me think about my broader contributions to multiple fields
of study. Roderick Ferguson’s feedback, advice, and support have been vital
and pushed me to think outside disciplinary boundaries. His work continues
to inspire and inform my own understandings of queer theory in many ways.
I cannot thank Ashley Currier enough for all her mentorship, guidance, gen-
erosity, and friendship and for reading several drafts of chapters for this book.
She has been there for me in countless ways and in every stage of this process.
I was fortunate to learn from supportive faculty at Rutgers University,
including Ethel Brooks, Phaedra Daipha, Carlos Decena, Paul McLean, Julie
Phillips, Robyn Rodriguez, Louisa Schein, and Richard Williams. At Rut-
gers, I also had the great privilege of being a Graduate Student Fellow at the
Institute for Research on Women seminar “Decolonizing Gender/Gendering
Decolonization,” where I benefited from the feedback of Thea Abu El-Haj,
Simone Alexander, Ashley Falzetti, Nicole Fleetwood, Annie Fukushima,
Nadia Guessous, Juno Parreñas, and Sarah Tobias. I thank Nicole Fleetwood
for pushing me to realize and highlight the tensions and anxieties of the field.
I also thank my graduate school friends: Brittany Battle, Shruti Devgan,
Nada El-Kouny, Victoria Gonzalez, Elizabeth Luth, Rosemary Ndubuizu,
Jason Phillips, and Theresa Simpson.
At the University of Illinois, I owe many thanks for the support of my
awe-inspiring colleagues in gender and women’s studies and sociology. In the
Department of Sociology, I thank Asef Bayat, Cynthia Buckley, Brian Dill,
Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, Zsuzsa Gille, Tim Liao, Anna-Maria Marshall,
Ruby Mendenhall, Daniel Steward, and Assata Zerai. I thank the Depart-
ment of Gender and Women’s Studies for the warm welcome. My thanks
specifically go to Teresa Barnes, Toby Beauchamp, Ruth Nicole Brown, Jodi
Byrd, Karen Flynn, Maryam Kashani, Chantal Nadeau, Fiona Ngô, Mimi
Thi Nguyen, and Siobhan Somerville. I am grateful to Karen Flynn for her
support and uplifting conversations and for reminding me to “keep it real.”
Many thanks go to Chantal Nadeau for her friendship and for reading sev-
eral earlier drafts of this book and pushing me to write catchier and clearer
titles. Siobhan Somerville has been a mentor like no other. I am forever grate-
ful for her support. Her engagement with my project at multiple stages has
been transformational. She read countless drafts of the book and has always
been generous with her time and feedback. She helped me see my contribu-
tions when I thought I had none. In addition, I offer heartfelt thanks to the
dedicated staff in these departments. I am grateful for Shari Day and Mina
Seaton. Shari Day has made everything possible and has been the kindest
 Ac k now l e d g m e n t s | xi

friend one could ask for. I thank Jacque Kahn and Virginia Swisher for all
the amazing work they do.
Colleagues across campus have been very supportive, and I am grate-
ful for conversations and friendships with Tariq Ali, Valeria Bonatti, J. B.
Capino, Vincent Cervantes, Jenny Davis, Chris Eng, Hadi Esfahani, Jes-
sica Greenberg, Faye Harrison, Waïl Hassan, Deanna Hence, Linda Herrera,
Billy Huff, Brian Jefferson, John Karam, Craig Koslofksy, Isabel Molina,
Jennifer Monson, Ellen Moodie, Parthiban Muniandy, Mauro Nobili, Cyn-
thia Oliver, Naomi Paik, Dana Rabin, Junaid Rana, Gilberto Rosas, Sandra
Ruiz, Krystal Smalls, Mark Steinberg, and David Wilson. My Chemex and
Gali time with Sandra Ruiz has kept me afloat. I am fortunate to be her
friend and to work alongside her. Jennifer Monson is a kind and generous
soul who has introduced me to other ways of thinking about and feeling the
world. I am very grateful. I thank Maria Gillombardo, Craig Koslofksy, and
Carol Symes for organizing the First Book Writing Group; Craig and Maria
read countless drafts of my prospectus and offered crucial feedback. Cyn-
thia Oliver has been incredibly supportive and gave me feedback on multiple
grant applications. I thank her.
Susan Koshy welcomed me to the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive
Theory and gave me vital feedback on my project in its earliest phases. I
thank her for her support. Antoinette Burton has supported me since I joined
the University of Illinois. She has been very generous with her time and has
given me extensive and tremendous feedback on earlier chapter drafts. I am
forever grateful for her intellectual generosity and for the inspiring spaces and
dialogues she creates on campus.
Asef Bayat and Linda Herrera very warmly welcomed me when I moved
to Illinois and continue to be truly generous and supportive. I am extremely
grateful. My gratitude also goes to Hadi Esfanahi and Niloofar Shambayati,
who immediately welcomed me to the community. I am so happy and for-
tunate to have met Cynthia Degnan and to be her friend. I also thank Alicia
Beck, Tim Shea, and Karie Wolfson for their support. Many thanks go to
Karen Haboush. The memory of her kindness and wisdom remain with me
and helped me throughout this process.
Reading Martin Manalansan’s work in my first year of graduate school
transformed how I think of queer theory. To be his colleague—even if for
only two years at the University of Illinois—was such an honor and joy. I am
very grateful for his friendship, brilliant mind, and fabulousness.
Graduate students at the University of Illinois make my job more reward-
ing and stimulating. Special thanks go to my wonderful research assistant,
Shwetha Delanthamajalu, for her careful attention and help with organizing
 x ii | Ac k now l e d g m e n t s

my interview data. It is such a pleasure to work alongside my mentees Miguel

Avalos, Shwetha Delanthamajalu, and Jessennya Hernandez and to think
with them about their fantastic projects. I thank them for making me strive
to be a better mentor. I continue to engage with and learn from the projects
of numerous graduate students from both my Gender and Sexuality and
Queer Theory seminars, including Alana Ackerman, Miguel Avalos, Shwetha
Delanthamajalu, Nehal Elmeligy, Breanna Escamilla, Daniel Gonzalez, Jes-
sennya Hernandez, Cierra Humphrey, Heba Khalil, Bri Lafond, Leslie Mor-
row, and Po-Chia Tseng. I thank them for creating and valuing collaborative
learning spaces, for embracing vulnerability in their research and questions,
and for inspiring with their contagious passion.
I am very grateful to those who invited me to present parts of my book in
progress. Thanks go to the audiences at the Sexualities Project at Northwest-
ern University, the University of Cincinnati, and the University of Chicago.
Various stages of this book were supported by the Woodrow Wilson Disserta-
tion Fellowship for Women’s Studies; the Institute for Research on Women
at Rutgers University; and at the University of Illinois, the Illinois Program
for Research on the Humanities and the College Campus Research Board’s
Humanities Release Time and Multiracial Democracy Grant. Special thanks
go to Siobhan Somerville for organizing my book manuscript workshop and
to both her and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz for the most helpful feedback on an
earlier version of my manuscript. Many thanks go to Maryam Kashani and
Mimi Thi Nguyen for taking the most detailed and helpful notes during my
manuscript workshop.
I thank the Sexpots Writing Group, who welcomed me and gave me
great feedback on Chapter 4: Sinikka Elliott, Patrick Grzanka, Emily Mann,
Vrushali Patil, Jyoti Puri, and Evren Savci. I am thankful for conversations,
feedback, and tremendous insights from remarkable colleagues at other in-
stitutions: Chris Barcelos, Shantel Buggs, Héctor Carrillo, Moon Charania,
Cati Connell, Sara Crawley, Steve Epstein, Theo Greene, Kimberly Kay
Hoang, Angela Jones, Kerwin Kaye, Greggor Mattson, Nadine Naber, Ban-
dana Purkayastha, Chandan Reddy, and Atef Said.
Theo Greene, my friend and coconspirator, and I will continue to hold
each other up. I am grateful to Vrushali Patil, dear friend and collaborator,
for the fantastic work she does and for giving me the opportunity to present
my work. Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, mentor, friend, and collaborator, is an in-
credible source of support, and I am so fortunate to think alongside and with
him. His commitment and integrity are truly inspiring. Jyoti Puri taught me
to let the project breathe and reminded me countlessly that I have something
important to say. I am eternally grateful for her support, engagement with my
 Ac k now l e d g m e n t s | x iii

work, and unmatched kindness. I am beyond fortunate to continually learn

from Vrushali, Salvador, and Jyoti as scholars and people.
At the American University of Beirut, special thanks go to Kirsten Scheid
and Livia Wick, both of whom taught me to value the beauty and importance
of ethnographic methods. I am grateful for my dear friends in Beirut, whom I
miss deeply: Romy-Lynn Attieh, Lynn Darwich, Rima Majed, Lamia Mogh-
nieh, Zakaria Nasser, and Zeina Osman. Daily phone calls with Rima Majed
during the last year of writing this book sustained me. I thank her for help-
ing me better think of sectarianization and sect. Zeina Osman inspires me
in so many ways. I am grateful for her friendship, quirky wisdom, and all
the conversations we have had about al-wad’. I thank Victor Chedid, who
was a supportive friend during early stages of the writing process. Alexander
Ammerman taught me to write and appreciate literature. I am so grateful
that our paths crossed and saddened by his passing too soon. I also thank all
my interlocutors for trusting me and sharing their worlds with me. Without
them, this book would not have been possible. I hope I did justice to the
stories they shared. Any fault is mine.
Thanks go to Miriam Salah for designing the fractal Orientalism fig-
ures. I thank Janice Irvine for providing feedback and for supporting this
project and including it as part of the Sexuality Series at Temple University
Press. In addition, I thank Aaron Javsicas, Gary Kramer, Ashley Petrucci,
and the whole team at Temple University Press. Particular thanks go to Sara
Cohen, who believed in this project in its earliest forms and helped me better
articulate its contributions. Sara patiently guided me through the process of
publishing as a first-time author and answered all the questions I had. Sarah
Munroe took on the project during the last year, and I cannot thank her
enough for all the amazing work she has done. Sarah’s extensive feedback has
tremendously shaped this book. Any author would be fortunate to work with
her. Many thanks also go to the anonymous reviewers at Temple University
Press and Minnesota University Press who provided immensely generative
and helpful feedback.
I thank my parents, Haifa Harmalani and Ali Moussawi, for supporting
me and teaching me the importance of reading and writing early on in my
life. Though not always content with my career choices, they stood by me. I
hope my description of al-wad’ does justice to their experiences. I also thank
my dear sister and friend, Sarah Moussawi, for being there and always ask-
ing about my project. I love her dearly and hope for a future in which we live
closer to each other.
I owe thanks to Erik Wade, who has been there with me during the
toughest periods of graduate school. He taught me how to close-read, and
 x iv | Ac k now l e d g m e n t s

I am still very jealous of his skills. He remains my closest friend. Though

we are oceans apart, he was there during the writing and rewriting of this
book. I have not met a more selfless person, and I hope I can someday return
his kindness. Last, I thank Maddie and Nina, my cat-babies and family in
Illinois. Maddie has been my companion for the past five years and has sat
patiently next to me every morning while I write. Maddie and Nina are con-
stants in a world of everyday disruptions and change.
An earlier version of Chapter 1 was previously published as Ghassan
Moussawi, “Queering Beirut, the Paris of the Middle East: Fractal Oriental-
ism and Essentialized Masculinities in Gay Travelogues,” Gender, Place and
Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 20, no. 7 (2013): 858–875. It is re-
printed by permission of Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor and Francis
Group, www​.tandfonline​.com. An earlier version of Chapter 2 was previously
published as Ghassan Moussawi, “Queer Exceptionalism and Exclusion:
Cosmopolitanism and Inequalities in ‘Gay Friendly’ Beirut,” Sociological Re-
view 66, no. 1 (2018): 174–190, https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026117725469.
(Copyright © 2018 SAGE Publications.) It is reprinted by permission of
SAGE Publications. Sections of an earlier version of Chapter 4 appeared in
Ghassan Moussawi, “Not ‘Straight’ but Still a ‘Man’: Negotiating Non-het-
erosexual Masculinities in Beirut,” in Introducing the New Sexuality Studies,
3rd ed., ed. Steven Seidman and Nancy Fischer (New York: Routledge, 2016),
152–159. (Copyright © 2016 Nancy L. Fischer and Steven Seidman.) These
sections are reproduced with permission of the Licensor through PLSclear.
Disruptive Situations
 Introduction

While “the World Is Beiruting Again”

When the [civil] war ended, it appeared that the things I was
saying were too big. It’s like I used to dream more; now I dream
less. . . . I wanted the war to end so I could fulfill my dreams.
It ended, and then everything started appearing smaller and less
significant.
—Hana, in Phantom Beirut

Beirut is Reliving its Golden Age: with an intensity to live that

is strangely contagious and an energy that is nowhere else to be
found.
—Paris M atch billboard in Beirut, 2010

Beirut, whether it’s the Paris of the Middle East or not, might once
again become a great city.
—Michael Totten, “Can Beirut Be Paris Again?”

We really can’t afford another war. We are exhausted. We already

live in a state of everyday war. Anxiety and fear of the unknown, it
causes depression, you know?
—Cab driver in Beirut, May 2019

I
n July 2009, the New York Times published an article celebrating Bei-
rut, the capital of Lebanon, as the “Provincetown of the Middle East,”
where “gay men and women from other Arab countries and the West
are increasingly vacationing.” The journalist, Patrick Healy, described the
choice of vacationing in Beirut as “all the more sexy and thrilling for some
because they feel they are living on the edge and discovering a gay culture
that is freshly evolving” (Healy 2009). Such descriptions of Beirut do not
circulate in a vacuum. Lebanon, a sectarian, Muslim-majority country, has
often been regarded as exceptional in the Arab world for its seeming diversity
 2 | I n t roduc t ion

and cosmopolitanism. Following the assassination of Lebanese prime min-

ister Rafic Hariri in 2005 and the Syrian troops’ withdrawal from Lebanon
later that year, contemporary Euro-American presses hailed Beirut as a new
gay-friendly tourist destination in the Middle East. Euro-American presses
describe gay life using linear narratives of progress, gauging improvements
in the rise of “tolerant” attitudes and the growth of Western-style gay identi-
ties, gay-friendly spaces, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)
organizations. These representations use neoliberal logics to produce a Beirut
where both people and places are made intelligible, commodified, and ready
for consumption. Thus, they sell Beirut as a city that is welcoming and ac-
commodating to Western gay tourists to the extent that they describe it as
“the chameleon city, catering to any desire,” where anything one wants can
be found in abundance (Masri 2009).
I came across Healy’s article in August 2009, a few weeks after arriving
in the United States to pursue my Ph.D. I not only did not know what or
where Provincetown was—the famous LGBT vacation destination in Cape
Cod, Massachusetts—but also could not relate to the experiences that Healy
narrates. Reading Healy’s account of Beirut’s gay friendliness made me ques-
tion the extent to which I and my friends in Beirut had experienced the city
as gay friendly. My research found a growing trend of Euro-American articles
and gay travelogues encouraging gay men from Western Europe and North
America to visit Beirut. Such descriptions simultaneously liken life in Beirut
to and distance it from that in Euro-American cities, while often reminding
readers that Beirut is still in the Middle East. These articles make similar
distinctions between parts of Beirut that are progressive and gay friendly (like
the West) and those that are not (similar to other parts of the Arab world).
Once hailed as the “Paris of the Middle East,” Beirut has seemingly recov-
ered from Lebanon’s fifteen-year civil war (1975–1990) and now presents
an exciting, different, and relatively safer yet somewhat dangerous option
for travelers in the Middle East. Gay tourism to Beirut, however, is a newly
emerging phenomenon. The articles I found were clearly directed to a white
Euro-American audience of gay men, and they left me puzzled: Who has
these experiences of gay Beirut, and who gets to speak of gay life in Beirut?
This book challenges both popular and academic representations of con-
temporary Beirut as exceptional, while highlighting everyday-life disruptions
in Beirut. I argue that these representations rely on discourses of sexuality
(especially LGBT identity) that construct Beirut as “modern” in relation to
other sites in the Middle East (and other parts of Lebanon). In addition,
they use a market-driven, neoliberal framework that constructs Beirut as the
 I n t roduc t ion | 3

object of both consumer desire (tourism) and foreign investment. The Orien-
talist logics of these representations occur on multiple levels, which, in con-
temporary culture, take the form of what I call “fractal Orientalism.” As an
alternative to these exceptionalist representations of Beirut, the book focuses
on Beirut as it is lived by my LGBT interlocutors, who are primarily women
and genderqueer persons. Rather than analyze LGBT identity formation per
se, the book analyzes practices, particularly what I call queer strategies of ev-
eryday life, that my interlocutors use to navigate ongoing daily disruptions in
Beirut. In doing so, the book highlights the centrality of everyday-life disrup-
tions as a defining feature of life in contemporary Beirut—a condition that
confounds existing Foucauldian models of power that rely on distinctions
between normative and nonnormative positionings (or situations). Thus, the
book exposes the inherent “stability” that is assumed in these conceptions of
queer theory and offers an alternative theoretical lens that instead highlights
disruptions and precarity as normative conditions of everyday life. My use of
“queer” follows queer theorist Siobhan Somerville’s (2014) conceptualization
of “queer” as a verb, an action, and a relation. I use the term “queer” both in
relation to nonnormative gender and sexuality and in reference to the larger
social condition of everyday disruptions. That is, a queer situation refers to
an anomalous condition in relation to what we perceive as normative (for
example, imminent disruptions versus stability).

Tourism and Disruptions in Beirut

Despite decades of violent conflict and political instability, Lebanon has
maintained its tourism and service industry on which its economy is highly
dependent. The government promotes tourism by highlighting Lebanon
and Beirut’s exceptionalism and cosmopolitanism (see Lebanon Ministry of
Tourism, n.d.). While most of the tourists are Lebanese expatriates who live
abroad, there has been a growing informal gay tourism industry, which, even
though not endorsed by the state, is run by Lebanese tourism groups such as
Lebtour and the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association (IGLTA)
(discussed in more detail in Chapter 1).
Depictions of Beirut’s openness and cosmopolitanism cite Lebanon’s reli-
gious and sectarian diversity and “nascent” gay life as signs of exceptionalism
and modernity in the Middle East.1 Hariri’s assassination in 2005 and the
resulting Syrian troop withdrawal from Lebanon were regarded as a turning
point in recent Lebanese history, especially with regard to possibilities for
a new democracy and political reform. However, in the months and years
 4 | I n t roduc t ion

after 2005, the beliefs and promises of a new beginning and the possibili-
ties for the expansion of civil liberties were countered by the stark reality of
more state-led oppression targeting already-marginalized groups in Lebanon
(Makarem 2011, 106).
As sociologist Rima Majed (2016) illustrates, the Syrian troops’ with-
drawal from Lebanon in 2005 inaugurated a new phase in Lebanese postwar
history. Majed notes that social movements and political alliances shifted
away from primarily Pan-Arab and pro-Palestinian mobilizations to a focus
on internal politics and heightened calls for civil liberties. Violence and daily
disruptions took on various manifestations in the years that followed. The
period between 2005 and 2008 witnessed a series of targeted assassinations
against prominent journalists and politicians who were critical of the Syrian
regime; a number of explosions in various neighborhoods in Beirut; a thirty-
three-day Israeli war against Lebanon in 2006; a war between the Lebanese
Armed Forces and a radical Islamist Sunni group in the Nahr El Bared Pal-
estinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon in 2007; and an internal violent
conflict in May 2008 in Beirut between supporters of Hezbollah and sup-
porters of the government and the Future Movement, a political party led by
Hariri’s son. Political deadlocks became endemic in the post-2005 phase of
Lebanon’s history. There were two periods of political standstill when Leba-
non had no president, from November 2007 to May 2008 and from May
2014 to October 2016.
As the Arab uprisings began to spread, their effects were felt in most
countries in the region, even those—such as Lebanon—that did not witness
a revolutionary wave. In the summer of 2012, the Syrian uprising started to
shift into a full-blown war. The escalation in Syria spilled over to Lebanon,
manifesting itself as armed clashes between Sunni Muslim groups who op-
posed the Syrian regime and mainly Muslim Alawite groups who supported
the regime in the northern city of Tripoli and the southern city of Sidon. By
that time, the polarization around the Special Tribunal for Lebanon con-
cerning Hariri’s assassination had also intensified. The year 2012 witnessed
a number of assassinations targeting general security officers. As the conflict
in Syria developed and with Hezbollah’s direct involvement in the war in
Syria, the internal security situation in Lebanon deteriorated. In 2013, Beirut
also became a target of numerous Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)
suicide bombings and attacks. From 2013 to 2015, there were fourteen ISIL
car bombings and suicide attacks, mostly aimed at civilians and checkpoints
in the predominantly working- to middle-class Shia southern suburbs of Bei-
rut. This culminated in November 2015 when an ISIL suicide bombing in
the predominantly working-class Shia Burj al-Barajneh neighborhood in the
 I n t roduc t ion | 5

southern suburbs led to the death of eighty-nine people and wounded more
than two hundred (see discussion in the Conclusion).

Al-Wad’: Defining a Queer Situation

Life in Beirut remained highly precarious. Suicide bombings targeted civil-
ians and army checkpoints, and there were shortages of basic services (such
as daily electricity blackouts and the lack of clean drinking water). A citywide
garbage crisis began in 2015, which has not officially been resolved, “when
a huge landfill site closed and government authorities failed to implement a
contingency plan in time to replace it; dumping and burning waste on the
streets became widespread. The campaign group Human Rights Watch calls
it ‘a national health crisis’” (Smith Galer 2018).
For as long as I can remember, people in Beirut have used the term al-
wad’ to capture the complexity of everyday violence, disruptions, and lack
of basic services. Al-wad’ is the Arabic equivalent of the term “the situation,”
which can also refer to “circumstance(s); condition(s); position; setting; . . .
state (of affairs or things as they are)” or “status.”2 “The situation,” then, is
a general and nebulous term, commonly used in post–civil war Lebanon to
refer to the shifting conditions of instability in the country that constantly
shape everyday life. It simply refers to the ways that things are, the normative
ordering of things and events. However, it produces feelings of constant un-
ease, anticipation of the unknown or what the future might bring, and daily
anxieties. Perhaps this feeling is best captured by my conversation with a cab
driver in May 2019, when the driver describes the feelings of anxiety and fear
of the unknown that al-wad’ produces as living “in a state of everyday war.”
It is not uncommon for people to use unclear terms when speaking about
conflicts, which serve as vague containers for histories (and ongoing situa-
tions) of trauma, violence, and struggles. For example, people in Lebanon
distinguish between “the events” (al-ahdath) in reference to the Lebanese civil
war (1975–1990) and “the situation” (al-wad’). In a place where there is no
shared narrative or history of the civil war or postwar reconciliation among
people, these vague terms help keep a form of peace. Though one might wish
to analogize al-wad’ to “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland or “the Conflict”
between Israel and Palestine, it does not carry the same connotation or even
affective resonance, since the term “situation,” unlike “trouble” or “conflict,”
does not necessarily convey something negative. Al-ahdath, which is similar
to al-wad’, is a disaffected and nebulous term, yet it signifies more than just
“the everyday situation.” However, al-ahdath, the Conflict, and the Troubles
all refer to conflicts and histories of partition that are racialized.
 6 | I n t roduc t ion

Having such a seemingly neutral and nebulous term to describe circum-

stances of a place and people reflects the difficulty of finding words that can
capture or express what the situation actually is. “The situation” is a term that
in English might refer to a particular situation and might not carry much
weight; in the Lebanese context, however, al-wad’ is a loaded term. In Beirut,
people share their anxieties and experiences of al-wad’ as imminent disrup-
tions and refer to it in conversations with one another without having to
explain. The term establishes a shared sense of knowledge and feeling among
people in Lebanon. A person who needs to have the term explained is marked
as an outsider to al-wad’. Because there is no clear beginning or end to al-
wad’—it is constantly changing—what remains is its disruptive and affective
elements. Perhaps the power of al-wad’ is its generality and untranslatability
to those who do not experience it as a daily, precarious, and normative state.
What happens when the way that things are or the normative baseline implies
constant yet shifting disruptions? My interlocutors use the term al-wad’ to
name a condition but also to reveal the kinds of queer tactics or strategies
that become necessary under such disruptive conditions. These queer tac-
tics also gesture toward an expansive understanding of ­queerness—one that
does not necessarily link to LGBT identities but to practices of negotiating
everyday life.
This book uses the concept of al-wad’ in two ways: (1) to describe the
historical context and the backdrop of the research and to capture the chal-
lenges and precarity that shape everyday life and (2) to serve as a metaphor
and analytical tool to help understand queer strategies of everyday life in
Beirut. The queer strategies enacted by my interlocutors also disrupt domi-
nant discourses of Beirut’s exceptionalism and gay life in Beirut. My use of
the term “disruptive situations” might betray the concept of al-wad’, since it
assumes that there are moments or times when life is not disrupted. Al-wad’
is the situation that is always disruptive. It serves as a description as well as
a metaphor for the challenges and precarity as a result of war and strife that
shape quotidian life; it occurs when the out of the ordinary becomes the
normal. In other words, al-wad’ is a way of describing queer times. Though
language ultimately fails in articulating or accounting for what al-wad’ actu-
ally is, affect does not.

Exceptionalism as “Fractal Orientalism”

Despite the disruptive effects of al-wad’, in 2013, when violence from the
Syrian war had already spilled over to Lebanon and Beirut, the U.S.-based
urban policy magazine City Journal published an article by American jour-
 I n t roduc t ion | 7

nalist Michael Totten titled “Can Beirut Become Paris Again? Freed from
Syrian Domination, Lebanon’s Capital Could Shine.” In the article, Totten
(2013) considers how the war and devastation in Syria had the unintended
effect of making Beirut “potentially shine” again: “Today, the shoe is on the
other foot. Syria, not Lebanon, is suffering the horrors of civil war. With
Syria’s Bashar al-Assad possibly on his way out—or at least too busy to ex-
port mayhem to his neighbors—will Beirut have the chance to regain its lost
glory?” Taking into account the everyday violence and disruptions of al-wad ’,
how might we make sense of the numerous representations of Beirut being
circulated in Euro-American publications, including Healy’s (2009) celebra-
tion of gay tourism in Beirut and Totten’s (2013) hopeful vision for Beirut
to return to its “former glory”? While Beirut of the 1970s and 1980s (and
sometimes 1990s) continues to be represented as dangerous and war-torn
in the U.S. imagination, as depicted, for example, in the 2018 Hollywood
movie Beirut (filmed in Morocco), contemporary Beirut is also hailed as the
“Provincetown of the Middle East.” These Orientalist depictions, though
seeming to be at odds, complement each other. Current fighting, tensions,
and violence in Beirut become described as a natural state of the Middle
East and are not easily understood or explained as war. At first glance, these
representations appear to be “traditional” Orientalism, or what Edward Said
(1978) describes as historical discursive misrepresentations of the Middle East
that tend to paint it as homogeneous and backward, in opposition to the
progressive and diverse West. Orientalism relies on irreconcilable binaries
and differences between the West and the Middle East to explain the region,
cities, and peoples of the Middle East. However, on closer examination, I
suggest that these contemporary neoliberal representations of Beirut use and
rely on fractal Orientalism, or Orientalisms within the Middle East.
Fractals, or “nested dichotomies” (Abbott 2001, 9), are geometric pat-
terns that repeat themselves infinitely across multiple scales and contexts.
These geometric patterns are found in nature, such as in plants, leaves, and
snowflakes, where exactly the same shape is simultaneously reproduced on
multiple levels that keep repeating themselves (Peitgen and Richter 1986).
Fractals usually hide in plain sight, such as in nature, and therefore are often
hard to identify.3 Unlike Orientalism, which does not account for the mul-
tiple scales by which binaries are produced and circulated, fractal Orientalism
shows how the same binaries simultaneously operate on global, regional, and
local scales. While I draw on the effects of fractal Orientalism in the example
of Beirut, it is useful for other sites that are shaped by similar histories and
relations of power. As a theoretical lens, it is an imperial structure or imposi-
tion that functions concurrently at the transnational, regional, national, and
 8 | I n t roduc t ion

city levels; hence, it provides us with a multiscalar spatial model that uncovers
how distinctions are made, circulated, and remade.
Since fractal Orientalism simultaneously operates on multiple scales and
a fractal takes the same shape as the whole, we can choose to focus on one
level or scale of the fractal and still get a narrative that seems complete.
Fractal Orientalism uses relational distinctions to produce Lebanon as ex-
ceptional and gay friendly—that is, “modern,” but only within the context of
the Arab Middle East. In addition, the supposed gay friendliness attributed
to Beirut obscures ongoing conditions of instability in Beirut and Lebanon.
Rather than take for granted that Orientalism produces a single binary of
East-West, this book zooms in and out to capture the multiple layers by
which fractal Orientalism works.
Disruptive Situations seeks to uncover the underlying processes of fractal
Orientalism that make it possible to think of Beirut as exceptional and to
unpack how queerness gets produced: what is considered “queer” and who
are considered as “legitimate” LGBT subjects. The process and act of situat-
ing Beirut and Beirutis as exceptional in relation to various “others” make it
possible to recount multiple stories and experiences of Beirut. Naming Beirut
the Paris (or Provincetown) of the Middle East is an act of situating Beirut in
relation to both Middle Eastern and Euro-American cities. Beirut is likened
to Paris yet distanced from it, because Beirut is in the Middle East. These
narratives suggest that Beirut has some qualities of the presumably progres-
sive Paris, yet it is not entirely Paris since it also shares qualities with other
(not-so-progressive) cities in the Middle East.
Fractal Orientalism illustrates how transnational discourses of national
and sexual exceptionalism operate on multiple scales. They are multifaceted
and circulate at global (not just in the West), regional, and local levels; they
are informed by and in touch with one another. Thus, the binaries of tradi-
tional versus modern and backward versus progressive are used to distinguish
the Middle East from Europe, Lebanon from other countries in the Arab
Middle East, and Beirut from other cities in Lebanon. Fractal Orientalism
makes it possible to distinguish Lebanese gays from others in the Arab World
and the West.
This book challenges how sexuality has been used to provide an excep-
tional narrative about contemporary Beirut and modernity. It offers an al-
ternative to the fractal Orientalist narratives of Beiruti and Lebanese excep-
tionalism and instead uses the queer materialities of al-wad’ to understand
LGBT people’s queer strategies of everyday life in Beirut. While fractals are
useful for thinking about the multiscalar production of binaries and discur-
sive misrepresentations of Beirut and Lebanon, they have their limitations
 I n t roduc t ion | 9

in fully accounting for how differences are negotiated, felt, and experienced.
Al-wad’, however, is not about representations; rather, it is used to invoke a
felt experience of what the situation actually does: its material consequences
and effects. Rather than an empirical description of al-wad’, I offer LGBT
people’s experiences of al-wad’ as an alternative framework to fractal Orien-
talism. I investigate LGBT people’s “queer strategies” in navigating anxieties,
violence, and disruptions of everyday life, with a focus on queer subjectivities
and access to space.
My goal is to intervene in Orientalist representations of gender and sexu-
ality in the Arab world. Current representations (including scholarly work)
on gender and sexuality in the Middle East rely on binaries and a flattened
understanding of culture as a site of difference. This book builds on theo-
retical work that analyzes and critiques linear narratives of progress and mo-
dernity that are grounded in gay neoliberal ideals of coming out and visibil-
ity (Massad 2007; Puar 2007; Reddy 2011).4 However, it departs from such
works by privileging the affective dimensions of such discourses and the ways
that LGBT individuals articulate and negotiate them in their everyday lives.
What does it mean to think of Beirut as exceptional? Where does al-wad’
fare in such representations? How do various groups of individuals experience
al-wad’? How can learning about LGBT people’s everyday-life strategies help
us better understand both al-wad’ and the shifting precarious conditions of
daily life? Such questions animate this book.

(Un)Exceptional Disruptions and the Study of LGBT Lives

Disruptive Situations offers a methodological intervention in the study of
queer lives by mobilizing the voices of LGBT people in understanding larger
questions about war, violence, and precarity. It draws our attention to how
disruptions and violence become familiar and calls into question what con-
stitutes “ordinary” and “mundane” aspects of queer lives. Moving away from
perspectives that view disruptions as a reflection of exceptionalism or tri-
umphalism, the book highlights queer tactics or strategies of everyday life.
Queer tactics or strategies are not just a theorization. They are enactments
of political strategies that are not always calculated but essential in navigat-
ing the difficulties of daily life: for example, how LGBT individuals access
space, move throughout the city, cross checkpoints, and connect with others.
Though the book focuses on practices that LGBT people enact, queer strate-
gies of navigating al-wad’ are not necessarily enacted only by LGBT people.
They are also quotidian political practices enacted against oppressive regimes
that name and control certain individuals as nonnormative.
 10 | I n t roduc t ion

Focusing on local manifestations of everyday-life precarity and disrup-

tions in Beirut, I ask: How do queer strategies of everyday life better help us
understand “the situation” and the precarious? Unlike an event (such as a
natural disaster, a state of emergency, or war), al-wad’ does not have a clear
beginning or process of unfolding.5 Rather than try to make sense of its dif-
ferent manifestations or my interlocutors’ understanding of “the situation,”
my focus on queer strategies helps me get at how “the situation” gets lived
and negotiated.6 Based on ethnographic research, “deep hanging out” (Geertz
1998), and life interviews with LGBT individuals in Beirut in the periods
2008–2009 and 2013–2014, Disruptive Situations intervenes in, and disrupts,
portrayals of Arab LGBT persons as homogeneous minorities. Unlike current
ethnographic and interview-based research, it does not study gay Beirut or
seek to document gay life in the city.7 It is less concerned with questions of
whether gay life exists in Beirut, what forms it takes or how it looks, or what
gay subjects do; rather, my objects of study are the queer tactics enacted by my
interlocutors rather than the people themselves. I move away from analyses
that conceptualize LGBT people as a discernible category or minority and
assume that queer subjects in the Arab world are always in the process of re-
sisting or adopting Western conceptions of LGBT identities. My interlocutors
do not situate their lives along the lines of this rejection-adoption dichotomy.
They do not simply adopt LGBT identities; nor do they really attempt to
fit their lives within the dominant Euro-American LGBT framework. The
majority understand their sexual subjectivities to be intertwined with their
class, gender, and religious sect. Rather than document or look for the pos-
sibilities of LGBT life, I ask what everyday-life queer tactics can tell us about
local and regional politics. By asking what everyday queer tactics have to say
about queer life in contexts where precarity and disruptions are the condi-
tions of everyday social and culture life, I raise questions that apply to spaces
beyond Beirut.
One of the unintended consequences of working in and on a place such
as contemporary Beirut is the necessity of grappling with the question of
how we understand a social phenomenon like gender or sexual nonnorma-
tivity in a place that is so shaped by political turmoil and multiple disrup-
tions. Traditionally, literature on nonnormative gender and sexualities in the
Arab Middle East focuses on marginality of LGBT and queer communities
(Whitaker 2006; El-Feki 2013). However, another growing body of research
looks at the multiple positions that LGBT individuals occupy, beyond their
nonnormative gender and sexualities (Ritchie 2010; Makarem 2011; Naber
and Zaatari 2014; Merabet 2014). For example, anthropologist Nadine Naber
and feminist researcher Zeina Zaatari (2014) examine the antiwar activism of
 I n t roduc t ion | 11

LGBT and feminist organizations in Beirut, focusing on their humanitarian

and relief work during the Israeli war against Lebanon in 2006 rather than
only on their LGBT activism. Naber and Zaatari document the effects of
the transnational war on terror by shifting the lens “away from the center of
power (the empire) to the everyday lives of feminist and queer activists liv-
ing the war on terror from the ground up” (2014, 92). I build on Naber and
Zaatari’s work by emphasizing what queer strategies of everyday life can tell
us about larger everyday-life disruptions and violence, which are emblematic
of what’s happening at the geopolitical level. While Naber and Zaatari focus
on a state of emergency during the Israeli war against Lebanon in 2006 as an
example and extension of the war on terror, I look at disruptions that are not
easily captured by a particular moment or incident. These everyday-life dis-
ruptions are not seen as states of emergency but as normative aspects of daily
life in Beirut. I consider how gender, class, and normativity simultaneously
shape LGBT individuals’ queer tactics of everyday life and their engagements
with discourses of cosmopolitanism and national exceptionalism in Beirut.
Anthropologist Sofian Merabet’s (2014) Queer Beirut also pays careful at-
tention to the constitutive role of sect and class in understanding sexual sub-
jectivities in Beirut. In his ethnography of “queer Beirut,” Merabet does an
excellent job of capturing the experiences of inhabiting and moving through
the streets of Beirut (and beyond), taking us on a journey through a num-
ber of neighborhoods and the ways that spaces have become coded as “gay
friendly” by gay men. His focus on sexual difference, rights, and normalized
homophobia sheds light on space making and identity acquisition. Disruptive
Situations, however, explores a different kind of ethnography. While Mera-
bet raises questions about sexual subjectivities, he does so by attending to
the everyday performative and bodily practices of men and the construc-
tion of urban gay or what he refers to as “queer spaces”—and the changing
landscapes of gay spaces in Beirut. Using queer methods, this book focuses
on queer strategies of everyday life rather than an approach that minoritizes
LGBT people, and it sheds light on larger questions of disruption, coloni-
ality, and power. It destabilizes the seemingly coherent narrative of queer
exceptionalism in Beirut by attending to everyday-life disruptions and the
transnational flow of discourses of modernity, progress, and cosmopolitan-
ism. Unlike Queer Beirut’s focus on Lebanese men and gay Beirut, this book
does not privilege Lebanese gay cisgender men; rather, it centers women and
genderqueer persons.
Disruptive Situations extends emerging scholarship on transnational queer
studies, urban studies, and social-scientific and interdisciplinary research that
employs queer methods and political economies of sexuality in understanding
 12 | I n t roduc t ion

social life, including but not limited to sexuality (Allen 2011; Benedicto 2014;
Cantú 2009; El-Tayeb 2011; Haritaworn 2015; Perez 2015; Puri 2016). In ad-
dition, it complicates transnational queer and sexuality studies and queer the-
ory.8 I am indebted to queer of color critique (Cohen 1997; Ferguson 2004;
Muñoz 1999; Reddy 2011) for decentering whiteness in our understanding
of queer theory and for illustrating the ways that queer theory is “an explic-
itly racialized project” (Vidal-Ortiz 2019, 75).9 Queer of color critique also
decenters sexual-identity categories and instead focuses on people’s relation
to state power. However, by doing so, it unwittingly takes the nation-state
as a category of analysis for granted. Because of the theory’s near-exclusive
focus on U.S. racial formations and its overreliance on the state, it falls short
in accounting for the transnational. Transnational and geopolitical structures
and lenses are necessary for understanding local formations. Thus, building
on queer of color critique, I focus on what queer strategies of everyday life tell
us about geopolitical and transnational formations in Beirut.
While the field of queer studies destabilizes identities and interrogates
modes of knowing about the social world, its reliance on categories of nor-
mativity has been understated. That is, queer theory presumes a normative
standard that needs to be “shaken” or “upset.” The notion of al-wad’, how-
ever, illustrates the impossibility of establishing that distinction (normative-
nonnormative) in any consistent or continuous way over time and space.
Therefore, I ask what becomes of queer life when conditions of everyday
life upset the tethering of a normative baseline that queer theory presumes
exists. In other words, what analyses can queer studies offer when everyday-
life disruptions and precarity are the conditions of social and cultural life? By
regarding normativity as a contested category, I shed light on the tensions
between queer modes of life and an already-disruptive or queer situation.

Queering Lebanese Exceptionalism

Discourses on Lebanon’s exceptional status in the Middle East have their
roots in the colonial French Mandate that founded Lebanon as a country
primarily for the protection of Christians and other religious minorities in
the Arab Middle East.10 Prior to the 1975–1990 civil war, Beirut was often
described as the Middle Eastern equivalent of Paris and also as the “Switzer-
land of the Middle East,” particularly for its banking industry, nightlife, and
flourishing art scene. Contemporary discourses on Beiruti exceptionalism
emerge from the neoliberal policies of the Rafic Hariri governments of the
1990s, which employed discourses on openness and progress to attract for-
eign investments—particularly from the Arab Gulf—to rebuild the country
 I n t roduc t ion | 13

after the fifteen-year civil war. However, narratives concerning progress are
narratives about capital, neoliberalism, and consumption. Prior to the civil
war, downtown Beirut had been a major hub for all Lebanese, but during
reconstruction, Hariri’s governments and the company Solidere transformed
it into a high-end shopping district, an exclusive space primarily for the con-
sumption of high-end goods and food catering mostly to tourists from the
Gulf (Masri 2010).11
Since 2005, with the increase in assassinations of anti-Syrian politicians,
journalists, and activists, and later ISIL suicide bombings in Lebanon, tour-
ism advertisements focused mostly on rebranding the safety of Lebanon.
The Lebanese Ministry of Tourism’s advertisements cater predominantly to
Lebanese diaspora and tourists from the Arab Gulf. While not being able to
deny al-wad’, these advertisements redefine safety, suggesting that to be safe
is to be in a familiar (and familial) setting and to be reunited with family
and friends. For example, a 2007 advertisement titled “Lebanon the Safest
Country on Earth” explicitly stated that “there is no safer place than in the
arms of your loved ones.” In 2013, in another ad, titled “Don’t Go to Leba-
non,” the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism cast as narrator the famous Lebanese
singer Assi Helani, who recited a number of practices that people in general
are cautioned not to do:

They say don’t stay in the sun too long, but is there anything more
beautiful than the sun? They say too much food is bad for you, but is
there something better than food? They say don’t stay out too long,
but is there something more fun than partying? They say stay away
from arguments, but is there anything more beautiful than democ-
racy? They say stay away from Lebanon, but is there something more
beautiful than Lebanon?

This advertisement acknowledges the risks of visiting Lebanon, especially

those issued by Euro-American governments and Arab Gulf states; however,
at the same time, it reshapes the discourse by inviting Lebanese expatriates
to visit, using the notion that breaking the rules is an exciting adventure.12
In addition to the state and local tourism organizations, fractal Orien-
talist discourses on Lebanese and Beiruti exceptionalism have and continue
to globally circulate in Euro-American media and press. For example, jour-
nalist Michael Totten simultaneously employs fractal Orientalist distinc-
tions at the global, regional, and local scales to account for life in Beirut and
­Lebanon. At the global and regional levels Totten (2013) makes the following
distinction:
 14 | I n t roduc t ion

Beirut is nevertheless by far the most cosmopolitan, liberal, and even

Western of Arab cities. To an extent, you can chalk that up to the
cultural influence of Lebanese Christians and imperial France. But
the Sunni half of town is no less culturally developed than the Chris-
tian. Art galleries, fantastic bookstores, film and music festivals, and
even gay bars—unthinkable in Baghdad or Cairo—proliferate in
both parts of the city.

Totten (2013) claims that Beirut, although not Paris, is the “most cosmo-
politan, liberal, and even Western of Arab cities.” This fractal Orientalist
positioning makes it possible for Totten to situate Beirut as more Western
in relation to its Arab counterparts yet not Western enough in relation to
its Euro-American counterparts. He cites French and Lebanese Christians’
influences as a distinguishing factor in Beirut. However, he is surprised that
Sunnis are “no less culturally developed” than their Christian counterparts,
pointing out that they too have galleries, bookstores, festivals, and even gay
bars. In doing so, Totten gauges culture and progressiveness of a place and
people by looking for the presence of Western conceptions of art and culture.
However, for Totten to establish Beirutis’ exceptionalism in the Arab world,
his use of fractal Orientalism makes it necessary to contrast it to Cairo and
Baghdad, where such cultural events remain “unthinkable.”
Totten not only makes distinctions between Beirut and other cities in the
Arab world but also distinguishes locally between the Lebanese themselves.
He celebrates imperialism and French colonialism, citing it as the cause for
Lebanon’s and Lebanese Christians’ exceptionalism:13

The Christian half of the city sustained less damage during the [civil]
war than the Sunni half did, and it is consequently the more French-
looking of the two today. Its culture is also more French, since many
Lebanese Christians feel a political, cultural, and religious kinship
with France and the French language that Lebanese Muslims do not.
The western side of the city is more culturally Arab and also, since so
many of its buildings were flattened during the war, architecturally
bland. Though the Sunnis there are more liberal and cosmopolitan
than most Sunni Arabs elsewhere, their culture, religion, language,
and loyalties are, for the most part, in sync with those of their more
conservative Middle Eastern neighbors. (Totten 2013)

To highlight Beirut’s exceptionalism and cosmopolitanism, Totten looks

for signs of “Frenchness” in the city, which he finds in the Christian rather
 I n t roduc t ion | 15

than the Muslim areas. Lebanese Christians become hailed as the bearers
of Beirut’s cosmopolitanism, whereas Muslims—Sunnis in particular—are
depicted as more traditional since they have affinities with their counter-
parts, their “conservative Middle Eastern neighbors.” Totten continues by
contrasting the majority Shia southern suburbs of Beirut, or al-Dahiyeh,14 to
Christian areas in Beirut:

The dahiyeh looks and feels like a ramshackle Iranian satellite, even
though you can walk there from central Beirut in an hour. Once
known as the “belt of misery,” the area is still a slum. Most of the
buildings are 12-story apartment towers built without permits or at-
tention to aesthetics of any kind—especially the French kind. There
are places in East Beirut where, if you try hard enough and squint,
you could fool yourself into believing that you’re in France. You could
never get away with that in the dahiyeh. (Totten 2013)

Totten continues to use the adoption of French aesthetics as a barometer or

a sign of the progressiveness of Beirut. Any resemblance to France becomes
the example of whether a place can be considered cosmopolitan. Presumably
Totten is not talking about the Parisian suburbs (banlieues), where North
African French and Muslims live, but other parts of France that he considers
cosmopolitan. At the same time, resemblance to an imagined Iran, which
he links to the Shia southern suburbs, suggests a space that is backward
and lacks culture. His use of fractal Orientalism is even more pronounced
when distinguishing between the Lebanese themselves: Christians (being
more progressive and “cultured”) versus Muslims (and Shias in particular,
who have “no bearing to culture”; Totten 2013). Totten’s article demonstrates
how Western representations create the fractal Orientalist comparisons, but
these discourses are also taken up and circulated in Beirut by the Lebanese
themselves.
Lebanese development, reconstruction, and urban-planning companies
such as Solidere heavily rely on such discourses to advertise (and sell) Beirut.
For example, they cite Euro-American newswires and journalistic accounts
of Lebanon to promote Beirut. On a research trip to Beirut in the summer
of 2010, I came across advertisements for a high-end shopping and restau-
rant promenade that reproduced selections from Euro-American magazine
articles that highlighted the fact that Beirut is regaining its place as a top
tourism destination (see Figures I.1, I.2, and I.3). The circulation of state-
ments such as “Beirut is back on the map” and “the revival of a landmark,” by
Western news outlets such as the British Broadcasting Corporation, Agence
Figure I.1. “The World Is Beiruting Again,” 2010. (Photograph by the author.)

Figure I.2. “Beirut Is Back on the Map,” 2010. (Photograph by the author.)
 I n t roduc t ion | 17

Figure I.3. “The Revival of a Landmark,” 2010. (Photograph by the author.)

­ rance-Presse, the Financial Times, and the New York Times, illustrates that
F
Beirut is lucrative for foreign investors and as a new tourist destination. Most
notable is the advertisement taken from Agence France-Presse, which states:
“The World is Beiruting Again: Brimming with Style, Beirut Is Regaining Its
Reputation as a Shopper’s Paradise.” What does it mean for the world to be
“Beiruting” again? Given these advertisements, “Beiruting” as a verb signifies
an act of consumption and commodification. More specifically, Beiruting
becomes equated to style and luxury shopping. Here, the political economy
of progress becomes directly related to particular neoliberal patterns of con-
sumption and the selling of places.
One of the main questions this book asks is: Who has access to and gets
to engage in the consumptive practices of Beiruting? While the world is
seemingly Beiruting again, there is no consensus about whether Beirut has
become or has “regained its title as Paris of the Middle East” (Sherwood and
Williams 2009) or whether Beirut can be Paris again (Totten 2013). To queer
the term “Beiruting,” I use it as a verb and ask: How do my interlocutors and
I “Beirut”? The idea of Beiruting, and what it means to Beirut, pairs with
another major question: Who experiences Beirut as gay friendly?

Modern “Gays”
Transnational discourses about modernity and progress, currently animated
by the specter of a unitary Islam, often use sex and sexuality to determine a
 18 | I n t roduc t ion

society’s progressiveness (Bracke 2012). Sexual politics, as queer theorist Ju-

dith Butler argues, often link modernity “to sexual freedom, and the sexual
freedom of gay people in particular is understood to exemplify a culturally
advanced position, as opposed to one that would be deemed pre-modern”
(2010, 105). In other words, the realm of “sexual freedom” determines how
people and places are positioned and assessed in relation to one another in
transnational narratives of modernity and progress (Cruz-Malavé and Mana-
lansan 2002; Reddy 2011). These transnational discourses of progress employ
mainstream gay visibility as markers of freedom of expression and signs of
national/cultural progress (Manalansan 1995). Similar to sociologist Lionel
Cantú (2009), I am less interested in tracing where these discourses come
from and whether LGBT identifications are imported or not (Vidal-Ortiz
2019). Rather, the focus here is on how discourses of sexual progress and
modernity are circulated and articulated in Beirut. More specifically, I pay
attention to the political economy of these discourses by centralizing the
role of power in how they travel and how they make certain designations of
people and places possible. For example, while discourses of progress des-
ignate certain neighborhoods in Beirut to be more “modern,” people, too,
take up these discourses in various ways, whether to discount, reproduce, or
redefine themselves and others. Ultimately, as Chapter 2 describes, narra-
tives of progress are not unidirectional but take on multiple manifestations.
I acknowledge the slippages between categories of cosmopolitan, secular, ex-
ceptionalism, and modernity. Instead of trying to parse out and use these
concepts neatly, they are used as brought up in the field, particularly to show
their grit, messiness, and entanglements.15 For example, while I used terms
such as “openness” and “inclusive,” my interlocutors used designations such
as “gay friendly” and “cosmopolitan.”
Among the challenges faced while conducting fieldwork in Beirut was
explaining to my friends and acquaintances the topic of my research. Many
assumed that working on queer subjectivities in Beirut meant working on
identity acquisition and LGBT communities, or “gay life” in Beirut. I did not
initially frame queer experiences only in terms of LGBT individuals’ lives and
had intended to include individuals whose sexual lives and experiences are
not considered normative in Lebanon and do not benefit from heterosexual
privilege, such as asexual individuals and single mothers. However, even by
focusing on LGBT people’s narratives and strategies, I am able to touch on
multiple experiences that are beyond sexuality. In explaining my research,
the term “queer” is used as a shorthand for and interchangeably with LGBT
people. In a May 2013 fieldwork trip to Beirut, an acquaintance, Sura, asked
me about my research. I explained that it is about queer subjectivities. She
 I n t roduc t ion | 19

directly responded by saying, “Oh, there aren’t a lot of people identifying as

queer anymore here. They used to, but now, since there is more openness,
people don’t need to identify as queer. They can just say, ‘I am gay.’” Queer
as identification, according to her, gave people the possibility to live in and
inhabit multiple worlds. In addition, it could also be used as a “cover” for
lesbian or gay. What is striking about her claim is the assumption that with
time and more acceptance, nonheterosexual individuals are more likely to
identify as gay instead of queer. Hence, she conceives of queerness and gay-
ness teleologically: One precedes the other, and each identification is based
on and derived from the political situation and the safety of the actors. Two
points are worth noting: First, for Sura, queer is used to blur “gayness” and
hence acts as a safer identification that people would abandon over time when
they feel safer. Second, Sura does not make distinctions regarding what forms
of gay visibilities might be safer and for whom and how the form might dif-
fer based on gender, class, and context. To think about who is accepted is
to always have to think about gender, class, race, and religious sect and how
they inform one’s position and one’s possibility of being accepted for being
queer. Framing societal acceptance of LGBT people as an undifferentiated
group, as Sura does, glosses over the multiple exclusions and inequalities that
constitute and are constitutive of nonnormative and LGBT formations and
spaces in Beirut.
Others who asked about my research often followed up by bringing up
the issue of gay marriage in Europe and the United States, pointing out that
“we” in Lebanon are still stuck in the past, despite it being 2013–2014. Such
explanations employ linear narratives of progress that perceive gay marriage
as the pinnacle of gay and lesbian acceptance. In addition, they locate neolib-
eral concepts and understandings of rights, acceptance, and diversity, often
coded as “modern,” in Western Europe and North America and point out
that “we” have yet to catch up. Such examples suggest that tolerance and a
celebration of gender diversity, sexual diversity, and visibility signify the cul-
tural advancement of Lebanese society.16 While Lebanon is imagined as more
modern than other Arab countries in this fractal Orientalist comparison, it
still lags behind its Euro-American counterparts.

Beyond the International Gay

On July 28, 2012, the Lebanese Internal Security forces raided a porno-
graphic cinema in the district of Bourj Hammoud in Beirut and arrested
thirty-six men accused of engaging in what was termed “indecent and im-
moral acts” (“Lebanese Authorities” 2012). This raid, as has been discussed
 20 | I n t roduc t ion

on various internet social-media outlets, was directly linked to an episode of

the Lebanese talk show Enta Horr (You are free) on the Lebanese TV sta-
tion MurrTelevision (MTV) a few days before the arrests, when the host had
outed such cinemas and exposed what he referred to as the “deviance” and
homosexuality that takes place in “such places.” Following the arrests, gay
men and transgender women were taken to the infamous Hobeich police
station in the neighborhood of Hamra in West Beirut and subjected to anal
examinations and probes to “prove” whether they had engaged in homo-
sexual activities.17 These “tests of shame,” as local activists have called them,
were performed by forensic doctors and sparked an outrage within Lebanese
LGBT circles and a number of mainstream media outlets. However, days
after the tests, a decree was issued by the Lebanese Order of Physicians, Leba-
non’s main medical association, “making these anal examinations unlawful
and warning doctors they would face disciplinary measures if they carried
out the act” (“Lebanese Authorities” 2012).
Although same-sex behavior is technically illegal in Lebanon and can be
punished by up to one year in prison, Beirut has been recently represented as
a more open city for LGBT individuals than other cities in the Arab world,
primarily because of the somewhat open gay and lesbian events, bars, clubs,
and an LGBT travel agency (Moussawi 2013). I use “Technically illegal”
because Article 534 of the French Penal Code explicitly outlaws “sexual acts
that are contrary to nature” without defining such acts. However, the law
has been and can be used as proxy for same-sex sexual acts (Makarem 2011).
Despite the depiction of Beirut as a “safe haven for homosexuals” in the Arab
world and a “beacon of hope” for many gay Arabs (Zoepf 2007), stories of
arrests and crackdowns are not unheard of, and they especially target indi-
viduals or groups of people who already occupy marginalized positions in
society (Makarem 2011). In addition, the antisodomy law, like other laws
in Lebanon, does not apply to those who have “connections” (wasta), which
afford people protections because of their association with famous political
figures, factions, or political groups (Naber and Zaatari 2014).
LGBT rights in Lebanon continue to be vexed. In May 2018, Lebanese
General Security forced the cancellation of Beirut Pride, a nine-day event
for International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT),
because it claimed that these events did not get its approval (Human Rights
Watch 2018). One of the organizers, Hadi Damien, was arrested by police
officers who showed up at an IDAHOT public reading event. Damien was
held overnight at the Hobeich police station and asked to sign a pledge to
cancel the activities (Barrington 2018). In July 2018, the Lebanese Court of
Appeals in Mount Lebanon reexamined Article 534 of the Lebanese Penal
 I n t roduc t ion | 21

Code and “issued a new judgment holding that homosexuality is not a crime”
(Hajj 2018). This was a historical and unprecedented act. While individual
judges have considered the article to be problematic, especially since “natural
sex acts” are undefined and ambiguous, and hence have refused to use it to
prosecute same-sex sexual relations, this decision was made not by individual
judges but by a court majority (Hajj 2018).
Although this book does not focus on rights or activism, a majority of
my interlocutors are and were involved in LGBT organizing. During my
research, I interviewed members of Helem and Meem, the two most well-
known LGBT organizations in Lebanon at the time.18 Helem (2004–­present)
is a publicly visible, rights-based nongovernmental organization (NGO)
working on LGBT rights in Lebanon; Meem (2007–2014) was a partially
underground, grassroots group working for lesbian, bisexual, transgender,
and queer women’s empowerment and community building. Helem adopts
an affirmative strategy of visibility, pride and coming out, albeit in a more
cautious way than its Euro-American counterparts, by taking advantage of
the ambiguities and discrepancies between the law and its irregular enforce-
ment in Lebanon. Meem, however, adopted a strategy of relative invisibility,
focusing on women’s empowerment and community building while being
critical of international human rights discourse. Both groups define and con-
ceive of LGBT identities and communities by both simultaneously engaging
with and contesting dominant models of Euro-American LGBT organiz-
ing. Even though at an international level Helem and Meem are similar in
their focus on geopolitics and the multidimensionality of their positions and
struggles, they are divergent in their LGBT organizing methods at the local
level. Both call for sexual diversity and LGBT community empowerment in
Lebanon but do so differently.
Prior to the development of Meem, a group of women who were mem-
bers of Helem started Helem Girls, a support group for women, which was
developed to open up a space for centralizing women’s issues within the orga-
nization and derived its strategies from feminist politics (“Helem and Sexual
Harassment” 2012). In a conversation with one of the former Meem coordi-
nators, she told me that many women felt that Helem was very male domi-
nated; Meem sought instead a space that centered on women’s experiences.
In addition, she claimed that, even though Helem Girls provided a space for
some women, many remained unsatisfied with the affirmative and visible
strategies of Helem and its hierarchical organizational structure. Hence, a
group of women from Helem Girls started Meem in 2007 to create an alter-
native space that was not male dominated and had a different organizational
structure and organizing strategies. Meem stressed the safety of members,
 22 | I n t roduc t ion

and former Meem members stressed during interviews that the organization
did not want to be as visible as Helem. They wanted an organization that
was grounded in feminist issues and did not foreground fixed identity-based
approaches to gender and sexuality. However, many women and gender-
nonconforming and trans people remained in Helem but also joined Meem.
(Chapter 5 goes into more detail about the history of LGBT organizing in
Lebanon.) Meem’s concerns about visibility and safety relate back to Sura’s
conception of what constitutes safety (or safer conditions) in “the situation.”
But in Beirut, living in al-wad’—a permanent state of ­precarity—what is
seen as safer? What queer tactics are enacted to create safer conditions amid
al-wad’?

Precarious Situations: Moving beyond Victims and Heroes

A book on imminent everyday-life disruptions and queer strategies is a book
about precarity and precarious situations. While the concept of precarity has
been used primarily to capture the reality of precarious labor conditions and
practices (Bourdieu 1998; Standing 2011), it is also employed in accounting
for the precarious nature of the human condition, particularly in a post–
September 11 moment (Butler 2006, 2010). In Precarious Life: The Powers of
Mourning and Violence, Butler (2006) contends that all humans are vulner-
able because of the social condition of life.19 Precarity, as a condition or state
of life, produces feelings of precariousness, which are feelings of constant
vulnerability and insecurity, including fear of violence and loss of human
life (Butler 2006).20 While this literature on precarity locates it as a global
condition, because it focuses on a post–September 11 moment, it is still U.S.-
centric. To consider precarious life only after a post–September 11 moment
is also to disregard the myriad ways in which people of color, undocumented
migrants, and immigrants and refugees have and continue to lead precarious
lives in the United States and worldwide. As previously stated, this book is
concerned with how queer theory fails in accounting for the precarious as
a normative condition. The proliferation of scholarship on precarity uses
Butler’s (2006) work as primary for understanding the precarious nature of
the human condition; however, scholars miss important work, such as that
of Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa. In the preface to This Bridge We Call
Home, Anzaldúa describes the state of nepantla:

Bridges span liminal (threshold) spaces between worlds, spaces I

call nepantla, a Nahuatl word meaning tierra entre medio. Trans-
formations occur in this in-between space, an unstable, unpredict-
 I n t roduc t ion | 23

able, precarious, always-in-transition space lacking clear boundaries.

Nepantla es tierra desconocida, and living in this liminal zone means
being in a constant state of displacement—an uncomfortable, even
alarming feeling. Most of us dwell in nepantla so much of the time
it’s become a sort of “home.” Though this state links us to other ideas,
people, and worlds, we feel threatened by these new connections and
the change they engender. (2002, 1)

Al-wad’, like nepantla, is shifting and ongoing. Though al-wad’ might seem
to be a period of transition to those unfamiliar with everyday life in Beirut,
it is experienced as a normative state of being for those living in it day in and
day out. The state of nepantla—the bridges or liminal spaces—as decolonial
theorist Walter Mignolo reminds us, “is not a happy place in the middle, but
refers to a general question of knowledge and power. The kind of power rela-
tions inscribed in nepantla are the power relations sealing together modernity
and what is inherent to it, namely, coloniality” (2000, 2). My reference to
precarity and the liminal states that al-wad’ is regularly (re)producing is not
a romanticized gesture to the nature of the postmodern condition of fluid-
ity (Lyotard 1984; Jameson 1990). Rather, it is about capturing the state
of constantly living in uncertainty. While people remain uncertain about
the present and the future, the affective state of uncertainty itself becomes
familiar or known.
I propose that we think of precarity as a relational experience of vulner-
ability, since it does not affect everyone similarly. To do so, I draw and build
on feminist geographer Lynda Johnston’s argument that precarity and vul-
nerability are “embodied, contextual, multiscalar, and relational” (2018, 4).21
Fractal Orientalism, like precarity, is also multiscalar, relational, contextual,
and embodied: It simultaneously takes place on multiple scales, it can gain
meaning only in relation and context, and it is embodied by individuals on
either side and scale of the fractal. Here, I am not trying to include or ac-
count for the lives of LGBT people in war and its aftermath but am looking
at what their experiences can tell us about everyday-life disruptions. That is,
by using the lens of LGBT persons’ queer tactics of everyday life, this book
sheds light on the situation and everyday-life disruptions in Beirut beyond a
framework of LGBT rights.

Methods
This book draws on three types of data: ethnographic observations; in-depth
interviews in Arabic, English, and French; and textual analysis. I conducted
 24 | I n t roduc t ion

ethnographic observations and twenty semistructured interviews with LGBT

activists and individuals in Beirut during fifteen months in 2008–2009 and
2013–2014, along with shorter fieldwork stints in 2010, 2011, and 2012. In
addition to my observations and formal interviews, I rely on a larger number
of informal interviews and interactions throughout my fieldwork, particu-
larly at social outings and gatherings with friends and acquaintances. Though
I conducted research in 2008 and 2009, the main bulk of the book is on the
research conducted from 2011 to 2016.22
It is over multiple conversations, meetings, and times spent together with
my interlocutors that I gained insight into queer tactics in Beirut. I empha-
size that I am writing about my interlocutors’ experiences and stories rather
than about them. Like queer studies scholar Jin Haritaworn (2015, 14), I
refuse an “objectifying gaze” on LGBT people’s lives. Instead, I gain access
to my interlocutors’ experiences through their stories and consider them to
be knowledge producers.23
During the research and writing processes, I became aware of how I, too,
was enacting and drawing on some of these queer tactics during my time
in Beirut. Since I was able to leave “the situation” (and come back multiple
times for research), I also became more aware (and reminded) of the times
when I historically could not. In their article on “fugitive anthropology”
and considerations of several dangers in the field, feminist anthropologists
Maya J. Berry and colleagues remind us of the importance of decentering a
disaffected, privileged researcher: “The intimacy with which terror invades
our minds and bodies also poses a challenge to the idea of the researcher who
is inherently privileged in relation to her field site or collaborators” (2017,
550).24 Thus, I acknowledge not only my positionality but also my own feel-
ings conducting ethnographic work in an intimate setting, where I grew up
and lived, and the unease of having to manage “the situation.”25
This book is not about generalizations or about merely including mar-
ginalized voices; rather, it is about specificity. Indigenous scholar Hayley
Marama-Cavino (2018) asks us to rethink inclusion in social justice work and
theorizing, as it erases the specificity of particular populations. Thus, I focus
on the specifics of my interlocutors’ experiences and the situation in Beirut
rather than try to fit their lives into narratives of gay globality, discussed in
more detail in Chapter 3. In a similar vein to the work of anthropologist
Jafari S. Allen, this book attempts to “resist simplifying the complex” by ac-
cepting the shifting nature of my interlocutors’ and (my) subjectivities and
our experiences of precarity (2011, 9). It is about the specificity of precarious
life in a queer situation. It tells the stories of multiple everyday-life disruptions
of research and of people’s lives and the queer strategies that they use to navi-
 I n t roduc t ion | 25

gate violence and disruption. My fieldwork was disrupted multiple times by

the situation in Lebanon. My interlocutors disrupt the dominant narratives
of coming out, visibility, LGBT organizing, and modernity. And this book
attempts to disrupt dominant representations of sexualities in Beirut and the
Arab Middle East. I conducted this research not as a spectator or observer but
as someone with familial ties and intimate friendships in the field. Finally,
as Berry and colleagues remind us, for some “the field travels with us and
within our bodies” (2017, 540). Though I do not currently reside in Beirut,
al-wad’ stays with me while writing this book, and I remain accountable to
the “field” in a number of ways.

Overview of the Book

Chapter 1 critiques the projection of Beirut as gay friendly and suggests how
such designations misrecognize conditions of economic and political inequal-
ities. It unpacks transnational discourses of the gay friendliness of places
by focusing on the representations of Beirut as gay friendly since the year
2005. It analyzes gay travelogues on Beirut and Euro-American tour guides
from 2005 to 2016 and argues that categories such as “elite cosmopolitan gay
subjects” and “Beirut as exception” are invoked to make Beirut intelligible
as a gay-friendly city and tourist destination. Euro-American representations
of gay life in Beirut employ narratives of linear progress, gauging improve-
ments in the rise of tolerant attitudes and the growth of Western-style gay
identities, gay-friendly spaces, and LGBT organizations. I argue that these
representations produce and rely on “fractal Orientalism,” which positions
Lebanon and Beirut as exceptional in the Arab world. These distinctions,
which are represented along a seeming binary, extend to divisions within
Beirut and among the Lebanese. Fractals allow us to see how distinctions
are mobilized at the levels of multiple scales (global, regional, and local)—­
distinguishing, for example, between “good” and “bad” Arabs and Muslims.
These representations employ their understanding of Lebanese culture and
religion to make the social organization of gender and sexuality intelligible
to Euro-American audiences. I, however, am concerned with using material
and geopolitical conditions to show how embodiments of race, gender, and
class shape people’s experience of gay-friendly Beirut.
Chapter 2 builds on the previous chapter’s discussion of fractal Oriental-
ism by considering how it operates at the everyday level and by examining
how discourses of exceptionalism obscure exclusionary practices and disrup-
tions of everyday life, or al-wad’, in Beirut. It draws on my ethnographic
work and interviews with LGBT individuals in Beirut to show how concepts
 26 | I n t roduc t ion

such as exceptionalism and elite cosmopolitanism are circulated and articu-

lated among LGBT individuals in Beirut, while considering the material
realities that these terms hide. Whereas discussions of cosmopolitanism tend
to assume Western urban centers as reference points for understanding the
category, my interlocutors have different referent categories. First, I illustrate
that LGBT Beirutis create relational understandings of modernity and cos-
mopolitanism by situating Beirut in relation to other Arab cities rather than
just Euro-American cities—a regional fractal Orientalism. Second, I unpack
the multiple ways that Beirutis use narratives of cosmopolitanism, arguing
that, in addition to being aspirational and instrumental (to attract tourists),
the narratives are also affective. While for some, narratives of exceptionalism
provide exuberance in times of despair, for others, they invoke anger at the
classist and racist undertones that they express. Many individuals contest
discourses of Beirut’s exceptionalism and cosmopolitanism by drawing on
experiences of gendered and classed exclusions, particularly regarding access
to public and gay-friendly spaces and LGBT organizations. Beirut’s seem-
ing tolerance of middle- to upper-class gay and lesbian tourists—and not of
groups such as Syrian and Palestinian refugees; migrant domestic workers;
and gender-nonnormative, trans, and working-class people—becomes a sign
of modernity and cosmopolitanism.
Chapter 3 moves away from fractal Orientalism to highlight al-wad’,
a condition that fractal Orientalist discourses take for granted and ignore.
This chapter analyzes my interlocutors’ strategic uses of identity, arguing that
they are also strategies of managing al-wad’. I contend that critical sexual-
ity scholarship has replaced the older “coming-out narrative” with a what I
call a “reconciliation narrative,” which assumes that LGBT subjects need to
reconcile what are represented as mutually exclusive aspects of their subjec-
tivities, such as being Muslim and being gay. Similar to the coming-out nar-
rative, the reconciliation narrative is used as a marker of the development of
“universal” LGBT subjectivity. My interlocutors contest the framing of their
experiences as narratives of reconciliation; that is, they do not present their
lives or stories as harmonizing or resolving seemingly oppositional aspects
of themselves. I show that my interlocutors resist reconciliation narratives,
keeping their subjectivities separate and deploying them at different times as
ways of simultaneously managing their multiple positionalities and al wad’.
Unlike analyses that foreground reconciliation as a central organizing con-
cept, my analysis shows how queer subjects in Beirut unsettle, trouble, and
disrupt these frameworks.
Chapter 4 builds on the previous chapter’s discussion of reconciliation
narratives by focusing on LGBT visibility, which is often deployed in the
 I n t roduc t ion | 27

fractal Orientalist accounts but is not a useful metric or tool to understand

LGBT life in Beirut. The chapter examines LGBT individuals’ strategies of
visibility, which are based on gender, class, and sectarian visibilities rather
than sexuality. It argues that one is always visible, since visibility is constantly
shifting and contextual, particularly amid al-wad’. For example, in the con-
text of al-wad’, Syrian refugees are treated as suspect and become “visible”
by being racialized and criminalized, regardless of their gender, sexuality,
class, or religion. I move away from an agential understanding of visibility
toward visibility as it is experienced. I understand strategies of visibility not
as manifestations of “closeting” but as complex strategies of maneuvering the
city. The chapter argues that visibility is about (1) knowledge (something is
assumed or known), (2) intelligibility, and (3) vulnerability. I touch on the
role of LGBT visibility in Lebanese media and the ways that it reproduced the
conflation between gender nonconformity and sexual nonnormativity. Fi-
nally, the chapter problematizes the tendency to focus on either gay activism
or coming out, which presumes a desire for certain types of queer visibility.
Chapter 5 rethinks the notion of community and focuses on what my
interlocutors call “the bubble,” a metaphor for temporary sheltered spaces
(metaphorical, physical, and relational) of retreat from both conditions of
al-wad’ and gender and sexual normativity. It presents the various ways that
LGBT communities have failed a number of my interlocutors and how they
use queer tactics such as the creation of bubbles. I conceive of the bubble as
a shared sense of a public (including relations between people) that is best
understood as a contradictory formation: It is an expression of both privilege
and protection, critique and investment. Hence, it becomes both a strategy
for the negotiation of life in Beirut and a part of the larger ideology of excep-
tionalism and progress. While the metaphor of the bubble has been employed
in urban studies of inequalities, governance, and gated communities, I cri-
tique the concept by pointing out how bubbles abstract the material condi-
tions through which they are produced.26 I ask: Who has access to bubbles,
and who can afford to create bubbles? Oftentimes coupled with everyday
practices of denial of al-wad’, the bubble unwittingly maintains fractal Ori-
entalist narratives of modernity and progress and of Beirut’s exceptionalism.
The concluding chapter returns to and foregrounds the following ques-
tions: Why exceptionalism now? What does it serve? How do people feel and
embody exception? In light of my question about what queer theory can do
when disruptions are the conditions of everyday life, I suggest that fractals,
as a theoretical tool of analysis, might be more useful than “queerness” in
understanding the geopolitics of transnational sexualities. In addition, using
the lens of al-wad’ captures the everyday-life strategies of LGBT people in
 28 | I n t roduc t ion

Lebanon rather than frames their experiences through the lens of culture.
Finally, while my fieldwork and interview process are discussed throughout
the book, I highlight the importance of queer and feminist methods in navi-
gating research where uncertainty and disruption are the norm. While not
uniform, we are living in a precarious time when there is growing concern for
researchers conducting work amid unexpected and unsettling disruptions. I
propose moving toward “queer flexible methodologies” as an orientation that
asks us to consider the constantly changing nature of the field, disruptions,
and nature of access. A queer flexible methodology accepts that our methods
are co-constituted by the field and are part and parcel of fieldwork. It requires
a certain form of letting go and of being humble.
 1

From Binaries to Fractals

“Glitter and Fears of Gay Life in Beirut”

Beirut sometimes looks like what you’d get if you put Paris, Miami,
and Baghdad into a blender and pressed puree.
—Michael Totten, “Can Beirut Be Paris Again?”

I
n January 2009, the New York Times chose Beirut as the number-one
travel destination for that year, specifically for the luxury it promised and
the fact that it was “poised to reclaim its title as Paris of the Middle East”
(Sherwood and Williams 2009). Later that year, the New York Times pub-
lished another article, this time hailing Beirut as the “Provincetown of the
Middle East,” where “gay men and women from other Arab countries and the
West are increasingly vacationing” (Healy 2009). “Paris of the Middle East”
and “Switzerland of the Orient” are among some of the labels given to Bei-
rut prior to the Lebanese civil war. More recently, however, Euro-­A merican
media have referred to Beirut as “San Francisco of the Arab World,” “Am-
sterdam of the Middle East,” “French Riviera of the Middle East,” and “sin
city” of the Middle East, specifically for its more liberal atmosphere and its
thriving nightlife in relation to that of other neighboring Arab cities. Journal-
ists depict tourists from Europe, North America, and the Arab world flock-
ing to experience what many describe as Beirut’s “glamorous nightlife, glitzy
shows, nudist beach parties and gay clubs” (Yazbeck 2009). As noted earlier,
following the assassination of ex–prime minister of Lebanon Rafic Hariri and
Syrian troop withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005, there has been an upsurge
in Euro-American journalistic interest in Lebanon, particularly in gay life
in Beirut (e.g., see Zoepf 2007; Healy 2009; Teulings 2010; Totten 2013).
These homo-orientalist representations create and codify Beirut as a new gay-
friendly destination to be visited, discovered, and consumed by adventurous
Western gay male travelers who are cosmopolitan, affluent, and willing to try
 30 | Chap t e r 1

a somewhat dangerous yet exciting destination. Homo-orientalism refers to

essentialist discourses about the Middle East in which Western male writers
describe the region as imbued with “homo-erotically charged encounters”
with “natives” (Boone 1995, 90).
This chapter analyzes how Euro-American journalistic publications, gay
travelogues, and an international gay tour guide represent gay Beirut from the
period 2005–2016, especially in light of al-wad’, or everyday life disruptions
and violence. It closely examines and analyzes seven articles and gay travelogues
on Beirut and the 2009–2010, 2011–2012, and 2016 editions of Spartacus Inter-
national Gay Guide. Five of the articles are targeted primarily to gay audiences
since they are published in gay magazines (Out Traveler and Winq Magazine),
and two address a more general public.1 Spartacus, published in Germany, is
examined because it claims to be the most widely read international gay guide
(Alexander 1998; Puar 2002; Massad 2007). Since one of the primary means
that gay destinations are presented and marketed is through international gay
guides, having one such example is important for locating similar trends in
these circulated images. As various scholars have argued, what makes Spartacus
especially intriguing is that it “set[s] in motion an evolutionary narrative, where
homophobia and heterosexism emerge as markers of cultural difference and act
as a social border” (Waitt and Markwell 2006, 88; see also Alexander 2005).
Given the dearth of contemporary gay travelogues on Beirut, the analysis also
draws on more than twenty articles about tourism in Beirut since 2005.2
To make Beirut, Lebanese people, and “the situation” intelligible by and
for Euro-American travelers, gay travelogues often trade in imagined “sexual
utopias” and promise encounters in unfamiliar and exotic settings with other
locals (Alexander 1998). At the same time that political and everyday-life
disruptions are sometimes downplayed in these publications, they are also
instrumentally foregrounded to present Beirut as a “thrilling” gay tourist des-
tination. Everyday-life disruptions are used to mark Beirut as different from
typical gay tourist destinations and are cited only to draw attention to the
“exciting dangers” of Beirut as a travel destination. Rather than a deterrent
for tourists, al-wad’ is used as an attraction device to distinguish Beirut as
a new option for adventurous gay travelers, a selective, even exclusive, audi-
ence. Furthermore, these representations use an understanding of disruptive
situations as static even though everyday disruptions of al-wad’ undergo vari-
ous changes after 2005. Therefore, “the situation,” in addition to Lebanon’s
multiconfessional political system and its liberal and laissez-faire traditions,
is used to highlight a much-desired liminality and hybridity for travelers.
Travel writing has been historically used to produce different and ra-
cialized others, “as well as universal knowledge regarding the human body,
 F rom Bi n a r i e s to F r ac ta l s | 31

desire, nature, history, and civilization” (Patil 2018, 4). The significance of
this medium, alongside sexology and medicalized discourses of racial differ-
ence (Somerville 2000), is understated in documenting contemporary social-
scientific understandings of transnational sexualities. Unlike medical texts
that rely on medical authority, in travel writing, such as that analyzed here,
the traveler gains authority and expertise based on his or her encounters with
“the other.” Since writing about other places and people entails a process
of self-making and self-definition, these texts actively shape and construct
relational images of Western gay tourists with the locals. The following dis-
cussion looks at how both tourists and locals are gendered, sexualized, and
racialized in these accounts by considering the intersections of race, gender,
sexuality, class, physical ability, and transnational mobility.3 Ultimately, I
argue that even though gay tourism is premised on disruptions of hetero­
normative spaces, these travelogues circulate and rely on essentialist and
reductionist understandings of gender and sexuality and focus exclusively
on flattened understandings of culture and rights. Such accounts emphasize
Lebanon’s exceptionalism in a region known for political and religious con-
flict and overlook political economies of gender, race, and sexualities, as well
as patterns of exclusion based on race, class, gender, and immigration and
refugee status. In addition, they end up (re)producing exclusionary spaces
that can be accessed only by those with economic capital and those who are
racialized as “proper” gay subjects.
Orientalist undertones and their reliance on discourses of discovery, ex-
ploration, and adventure present a certain notion of a gay identity premised
on visibility, “outness” (openly identifying as gay or lesbian), transnational
mobility, and racialized and masculinist assumptions of travel. I ask: How
do the “queer other” and “other queer spaces” become conveniently defined
and represented in these travelogues? How do these articles situate and char-
acterize Beirut in relation to other Arab and Euro-American cities? How are
images of potential gay tourists and locals relationally constructed? How is
sexuality (specifically gay homosexualities) deployed and used in ways that
rely on narratives of modernity and progress? How do neoliberal economic
policies and their various formations on the ground in Beirut structurally
shape and help foster dominant discourses and exclusions?

Fractal Orientalism and the “Fascinating” Middle East

European fascination with the mysteries of the Orient is a long-standing tradi-
tion, as Edward Said illustrates in Orientalism. The Orient, according to Said,
“was almost a European invention and had been since antiquity a place of
 32 | Chap t e r 1

romance, exotic beings, haunting memories, landscapes, and remarkable ex-

periences” (1978, 1). By defining and locating an assumed homogeneous other,
Europeans were able to define themselves especially in terms of binary oppo-
sitional relationships between East and West, which mapped onto binaries of
self-other, civilized-uncivilized, and progressive-unprogressive. Said describes
Orientalism as “a Western style for dominating, restricting and having author-
ity over the Orient,” which renders it both voiceless and with no authority over
its own representation. The other in Orientalist depictions is defined strategi-
cally and conveniently to fit familiar and intelligible Western imaginings of the
East. The Orient is often described as unchanging and ahistorical and always
has a precedent, whereby “every writer on the Orient assumes some Oriental
precedent, some previous knowledge about the Orient, to which he refers and
on which he relies” (20). Hence, the citationary nature of Orientalism becomes
central to its existence and perpetuation, where the representations and images
described are often located within other texts (Said 1978). Orientalism, as
Said demonstrates, goes beyond mere description; it gave Europeans a form of
justification for colonial domination and ruling of the Orient.
Despite its various and shifting contemporary manifestations, Oriental-
ism still exists today. For example, sociologist Asef Bayat calls today’s Orien-
talism neo-Orientalism, which he rightfully describes as “more entrenched,
multi-faceted and harmful than its predecessor” (2015, 1). Today, powerful
institutions, think tanks, and experts do most of the knowledge production
on the Middle East and suggest that Middle Easterners are not only exotic,
different, and irrational but also dangerous, threatening Euro-American val-
ues and ways of life (Bayat 2015). This, as Bayat argues, has direct nega-
tive consequences on the Middle Eastern and Arab diaspora in Europe and
the United States. However, these Orientalisms do not affect all regions or
peoples of the Arab Middle East similarly; nor are they circulated only within
Euro-American contexts.
Departing from Edward Said and Asef Bayat, I argue that even though
these homo-orientalist representations are engaged in Orientalist and nativizing
discourses, they do not simply rest on the binary of East-West and ­Lebanese–
Euro-American, as in nineteenth-century Orientalism. These contemporary
neoliberal representations of Beirut use and rely on what I call fractal Oriental-
ism, or Orientalisms within the Middle East. I suggest that fractals, or what
sociologist Andrew Abbott describes as “nested dichotomies” (2001, 9), serve
as a valuable metaphor to better understand how Beirut is presented as excep-
tional in the Arab Middle East. Fractal Orientalism employs neoliberal logics
and uses fractals instead of simple binaries to distinguish between parts of the
Middle East marked as “traditional” and “backward” and others marked as
 F rom Bi n a r i e s to F r ac ta l s | 33

“modern” and “progressive.” Fractal Orientalism simultaneously operates on

multiple levels: It represents the West as more progressive than the Middle
East, Lebanon as more progressive than other Arab Middle Eastern countries,
and Beirut as more gay friendly than the rest of Lebanon. These nested di-
chotomies extend to divisions within Beirut and between the Lebanese, where
neighborhoods that are more predominantly Muslim are represented as less
open than their Christian counterparts.4 Moreover, secularists and Christians,
more so than Muslims, become regarded as more appropriate gays.
Like neo-Orientalism, fractal Orientalism seemingly responds to crit-
icisms of itself as Orientalist and Islamophobic and thus presents a more
complex depiction of the Middle East. These fractal Orientalist accounts
trade in neoliberal concepts of “gay globality” (Benedicto 2008, 317; see also
Altman 1996; Benedicto 2014), which are global imaginings of what consti-
tutes gay-friendly spaces and people. Thus, they celebrate and describe gay
life in Beirut in terms of linear progress narratives, gauging improvements
in relation to the rise of tolerant attitudes and the growth of Western-style
gay identities, gay-friendly spaces, and LGBT organizations. Focusing on the
Arab Middle East as a region, these nested dichotomies are multiscalar, pro-
ducing regional and local distinctions to mark some spaces as queer(er) than
others.5 Depictions of Beirut gain meaning only through its geographical
context in the Middle East and its relation to other cities in Lebanon and the
Arab world. Beirut is positioned as a “better” option than other cities in the
Arab Middle East, yet it still lags behind other cities in Western Europe and
North America. Ultimately, transnational narratives of sexuality use fractal
Orientalist notions of “openness” and “tolerance” to nonnormative gender
and sexualities to market Beirut as a gay-friendly destination in relation to
other neighboring Arab cities. Figures 1.1 and 1.2 visualize these fractals and
distinctions and thus help clarify the workings of fractal Orientalism.6
Scale is crucial to understanding how these distinctions gain meaning
at global (Europe–Middle East), regional (within the Arab world), and local
levels (Beirut–other Lebanese cities). As this chapter demonstrates, these
multiscalar distinctions occur simultaneously and gain meaning from one
another. Though these narratives seemingly circulate outside Beirut, they
are informed and made coherent by various local manifestations and articu-
lations, such as the liberal economic policies of the Hariri post–civil war
government in the 1990s. Beirut’s exceptionalism is made possible by the
interworking of neoliberal logics at these multiple scales. This chapter focuses
on the larger geopolitical and transnational scales on which these discourses
operate. Subsequent chapters discuss how these discourses travel and are ar-
ticulated at the everyday level in Beirut.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
le double de sa population ordinaire,—devrait bien se charger en ce moment
de résoudre une question de quelque gravité, sur laquelle M. de Lespinasse
et un ou deux de ses collègues ont essayé inutilement d’attirer l’attention de
la Chambre.
Depuis plusieurs années, la consommation de la viande diminue à Paris
dans une proportion d’autant plus remarquable, que la population a, au
contraire, considérablement augmenté.—La viande est arrivée à un prix
tellement exorbitant, que les ouvriers qui, plus que personne, auraient
besoin d’une nourriture forte et substantielle,—sont obligés de s’en abstenir
presque entièrement, et qu’il a été découvert qu’il se mangeait à Paris une
horrible quantité de viande de cheval.
Je suis peu indulgent pour les prétentions sottement encouragées par une
partie de la presse,—qui pousse les ouvriers à demander des droits
politiques ou d’injustes augmentations de salaires:—mais j’ai toujours élevé
la voix plus haut qu’aucun de ces estimables carrés de papier—quand il
s’est agi de souffrances réelles.
Sous prétexte d’encourager et de soutenir l’agriculture en France,—
on grève de droits si énormes les blés et les bestiaux étrangers,—qu’il n’y
en peut entrer, parce que, dit-on, les éleveurs et les cultivateurs français ne
pourraient soutenir la concurrence.—J’ai entendu M. Bugeaud, agriculteur
distingué, dire à la Chambre des députés: «J’aimerais mieux voir entrer en
France une armée de Cosaques qu’un troupeau de bœufs étrangers.»—Et
personne n’a dit à M. Bugeaud:—«Parce que c’est à la fois pour vous un
métier profitable, et d’aller vous battre contre les Cosaques, et de vendre
cher les bœufs de vos prairies de la Dordogne!»
Je comprendrais,—à la rigueur,—s’il s’agissait de quelque industrie
dans l’enfance, que l’on voudrait acclimater dans le pays, que l’on pût,
pendant un nombre d’années limité, protéger les efforts encore incertains de
cette industrie, jusqu’à ce que nos compatriotes eussent acquis l’expérience
et l’habileté nécessaires pour produire avec les mêmes avantages que les
étrangers.—Mais, le temps fixé écoulé, il faudrait dire aux gens:—«Le pays
ne peut pas prolonger davantage ses sacrifices;—si vous n’êtes pas arrivés
au même degré que vos concurrents de l’étranger, tant pis pour vous:—c’est
que vous avez manqué d’intelligence ou d’activité,—ou que le pays manque
des éléments nécessaires.»
 Mais l’agriculture n’est pas, que je sache, une invention nouvelle,—pas
plus que la viande n’est une nourriture récemment découverte.
Si nos éleveurs ne peuvent donner leurs produits au même prix que les
étrangers,—on ne peut sacrifier, non pas seulement les intérêts, mais la
santé de toute la classe ouvrière et de toute la classe pauvre, aux intérêts des
éleveurs.
Cette protection, qui consiste à payer plus cher les produits du pays
qu’on ne payerait ceux de l’étranger, et à ne pas profiter de ceux-ci,—n’a de
prétexte qu’autant que cela ne durerait que pendant un temps limité,—et
que cela aurait pour but d’arriver à pouvoir donner les produits indigènes à
un prix inférieur à celui des produits exotiques;—car, si le prix n’était
qu’égal, on serait en perte de tout ce qu’on aurait payé de trop pendant tout
le temps de l’apprentissage de l’industrie protégée.
Et peut-être, dans ce cas-là,—serait-il plus sage et plus honnête de
donner aux éleveurs des encouragements en argent pris sur d’autres impôts,
pour compenser la perte momentanée qu’ils éprouveraient en donnant leurs
produits aux mêmes prix que ceux des étrangers.
Mais quand cette situation devient permanente; quand il faut payer dix
sous de plus par livre la gloire de manger le bœuf de sa patrie, au lieu de
manger le bœuf de l’étranger;—quand, surtout, plusieurs générations
d’ouvriers et de pauvres doivent ne pas manger de viande, s’étioler et
souffrir, et n’avoir pour consolation que la pensée que leurs compatriotes
plus riches mangent de la viande française,—je trouve cela un fricot
médiocre, et je ne puis m’empêcher de dire que ce système de protection est
une monstrueuse sottise et une niaiserie infâme.
Mais les choses seront ainsi, ou pis encore, tant qu’on n’aura pas
compris que les impôts devraient peser, non pas sur les choses de première
nécessité, mais sur tous les luxes, quels qu’ils soient;—que le pain,—la
viande,—les vins du peuple, devraient en être exempts,—et qu’on devrait
en grever les vins fins,—les voitures,—les chevaux de luxe,—que ce serait
un impôt raisonnable que celui qui s’établirait sur les gants, sur certaines
étoffes,—sur les chapeaux, etc.
Je sais qu’il y a eu autrefois en Angleterre,—et je ne sais si cela existe
encore,—un impôt sur la poudre à poudrer, qui était d’un assez grand
produit, parce qu’on tirait à vanité de faire poudrer les domestiques.
 Une loi qui établirait qu’on peut porter gratuitement une veste,—mais
que, si on y ajoute derrière deux pans pour en faire un habit, on sera soumis
à un impôt de tant par année,—suffirait pour remplir les coffres de l’État.
Et au moins une partie du peuple cesserait de payer sa part d’impôts en
abstinence, en jeûne et en maigreur.
Cette question, la plus grave, sans contredit, de la session,—n’a pas
obtenu un quart d’heure d’attention;—le ministère a dit: «Nous verrons plus
tard,»—et tout a été fini.
Il n’y a de questions réellement graves à la Chambre que celles qui
peuvent ramener ou renverser un ministère.
Mais nos représentants ne sont occupés en ce moment que de retourner
dans leurs foyers, suffisamment munis des bureaux de tabac,—des ponts,—
des routes,—des bourses dans les colléges,—des priviléges de toutes sortes
que leurs électeurs leur ont fait promettre pour prix de leur voix,—et tout en
leur recommandant l’indépendance et l’incorruptibilité.
Et la question si importante de la subsistance est ajournée;—tout ce
que MM. les députés vont faire pour le peuple en cette occurrence—sera de
bien boire et de bien manger dans divers gueuletons dits patriotiques, et de
porter des toasts à son affranchissement et à l’extension de nos droits
politiques.—Je voudrais bien qu’on y comprît le droit de manger—
autrement que par représentants.
LES JOURNAUX.—M. Duchâtel a dit à la Chambre:—«Tout le monde
convient que le gouvernement a besoin d’un journal.»
Je suis, à ce sujet, parfaitement de l’avis de M. Duchâtel; seulement, je
crains bien que nous n’entendions pas ce besoin tout à fait de la même
manière.
Outre la faveur qui s’attache en France à tout ce qui est contre le
pouvoir,—outre l’esprit fanfaron du plus grand nombre des gens qui se
croient braves et audacieux de lire sans danger, au coin du feu, un journal
qui attaque le gouvernement,—la presse systématiquement opposante et
dissolvante se répand sous toutes les formes, se glisse dans les masses par le
bon marché.
Pendant ce temps, le gouvernement actuel, inventé par le journalisme et
perpétuellement menacé dans son existence par celui qui l’a créé,—sent le
besoin d’avoir un journal;—il en a trois:—le Moniteur,—le Journal des
Débats et le Messager.—L’un des trois est le plus cher et le moins répandu
de tous les journaux;—les deux autres sont entre les plus chers après lui et
les moins répandus.
Ces trois journaux ne sont lus que par des gens qui, par leurs idées, leur
position et leurs intérêts, appartiennent au gouvernement.—Ils ne parlent
qu’à des gens d’avance convaincus;—ils y lisent les réponses à des attaques
contre le gouvernement, qu’ils n’avaient pas lues et qu’ils apprennent par
là;—tandis que ceux qui ont lu ces attaques dans les journaux de
l’opposition ne lisent jamais une ligne des journaux du gouvernement.
Cela fait un jeu peu divertissant et ressemblant beaucoup à ce qui arrive
aux gens qui mangent de ces bonbons appelés demandes et réponses,—que
l’on vend au poids et au hasard,—de telle sorte qu’une personne a
quelquefois toutes les demandes, et que c’est une autre qui a toutes les
réponses.
Certes, le gouvernement, au lieu de payer clandestinement certaines
plumes et certains journaux plus ou moins indépendants, pourrait avoir un
journal à lui, un journal le plus riche, le plus répandu, le plus recherché de
tous, avec les sommes qu’il jette honteusement dans la presse.—On a vu le
succès de la presse à bon marché: les journaux à quarante francs se
partagent plus d’un million de lecteurs. Pourquoi le journal du
gouvernement n’est-il pas à vingt francs?—pourquoi n’attache-t-on pas par
des liens avoués et honorables à sa rédaction les écrivains les plus habiles et
les plus aimés du public?
Tout cela serait facile,—mais quos vult perdere Jupiter dementat.
Ainsi, dans l’affaire des lettres attribuées au roi—tous les journaux
en ont produit des extraits;—des brochures de toutes sortes ont circulé en
grand nombre dans les départements;—la défense du roi a été mise—dans
un des deux journaux que personne ne lit.
A la Chambre, on avait annoncé que M. Guizot parlerait des fameuses
lettres;—il a parlé à côté.
Le bon M. Auguis—a principalement séduit ses électeurs par la
simplicité qui préside habituellement à sa toilette—et ils l’envoient à la
Chambre pour appliquer au gouvernement de la France l’économie qu’il
apporte dans son extérieur. La session presque finie, il a cru devoir faire son
examen de conscience et s’est demandé à lui-même contre quel luxe abusif
il s’était élevé;—il a alors songé à son embarras quand ses électeurs, à
l’époque des gueuletons représentatifs, l’appelleraient comme Dieu appela
Adam après sa faute,—Adam, ubi es?—et lui demanderaient compte des
économies qu’ils l’ont envoyé faire à la Chambre basse.
Il a vu avec terreur qu’il avait laissé passer les meilleures occasions; et
cependant, décidé à demander une économie sur n’importe quoi, il est
monté à la tribune et a déclaré à la face de la France que les animaux du
Jardin des Plantes mangeaient trop.
Il a demandé positivement qu’on les fît empailler, par économie,—
attendu que c’est une dépense une fois faite. Dans sa farouche
indépendance, M. Auguis a déjà bien des fois attaqué l’existence d’autres
hôtes du Jardin des Plantes, et on n’a pas oublié ses violentes philippiques
contre les singes et contre leur palais.
Voici le dénombrement des partis qui existent en Espagne: parti
libéral,—parti carliste,—parti exalté,—modéré,—progressiste,—rétrograde,
—monarchiste,—républicain,—catholique,—fanatique,—sanguinaire,—
constitutionnel soi-disant,—unitaire,—trinitaire,—chaussé,—déchaussé,—
absolutiste illustré,—absolutiste ténébreux,—etc.
Il faut y joindre encore le parti des apothicaires; car, dans la Chambre
des députés de Madrid, sur deux cent quarante membres, on compte
quatorze pharmaciens.
Je suppose que vous avez un frère illustre par ses vertus, par ses
talents, ou sans qu’on sache pourquoi.—Comme beaucoup d’autres,—ce
frère s’appelle François Tartempiou. Vous vous nommez Alfred ou Edgard
Tartempiou.
Vous vous présentez ou l’on vous présente dans une maison.
On annonce M. Tartempiou. A ce nom européen de Tartempiou, tout le
monde se retourne;—le quadrille commencé s’arrête; un beau danseur
manque son cavalier seul.—On murmure le nom de Tartempiou. «Ah!
Tartempiou vient ici?» Les femmes jettent un regard de côté dans une glace.
Mais un monsieur dit:
—Ce n’est pas là Tartempiou. Je le connais beaucoup.—J’ai dîné avec
lui avant-hier.—On a cependant annoncé M. Tartempiou.
—Oui, mais c’est son frère!
—Ah! ce n’est que son frère?
—Ce n’est rien, c’est son frère.
 Et tout le monde est déjà mal disposé pour vous.—Il semble que vous les
avez attrapés.—Ils vous siffleraient volontiers.
Le public est irrité comme celui d’un théâtre de province sur les
portes duquel on avait affiché: «La Dame blanche, opéra en trois actes;
paroles de M. Scribe, musique de Boieldieu.»
On entre en foule. On lève le rideau. Un acteur s’avance et dit: «Que les
cors se fassent entendre! Chez les montagnards écossais on donne
volontiers l’hospitalité.»
Un peu après, un autre personnage dit: «C’est réellement un état fort
agréable que l’état militaire.»
—Ah ça! dit un spectateur qui avait entendu la pièce à Paris, il y avait
des couplets: «Ah! quel plaisir! ah! quel plaisir d’être soldat!»
La remarque circule; on siffle, on crie, on hurle, on demande le régisseur.
Le régisseur s’avance, fait ses trois saluts et dit:
—Que veulent ces messieurs?
—La musique!
—Pardon, vous n’avez pas lu l’affiche; elle porte ceci, en caractères un
peu fins, il est vrai: «Un dialogue vif et spirituel remplacera la musique, qui
nuit à l’action.»
Le public du salon où vous entrez est trompé: il croyait avoir un
personnage illustre, et ce n’est que son nom, ce n’est que vous.
Un peu décontenancé d’abord, vous vous remettez cependant bientôt;
vous invitez une femme à danser, vous dansez de votre mieux; elle vous dit:
—Votre frère ne danse pas, n’est-ce pas?
—Non, madame.
—J’en étais sûre: les hommes supérieurs n’aiment pas la danse.
La contrariété vous anime, vous êtes plus spirituel que d’ordinaire, vous
trouvez des mots heureux, vous les dites sans en trop rire vous-même: vous
croyez vous être réhabilité.—La maîtresse de la maison vous dit:
—Ah! monsieur; monsieur votre frère a bien de l’esprit. Il n’a donc pas
pu venir?
—Non, madame.
—Je comprends,—ses moments sont précieux; il n’a pas voulu venir
s’ennuyer ici.
 —Eh bien! et moi,—pensez-vous,—et mes moments donc: ils ne sont
donc pas précieux?—Ce qui ennuierait mon frère est donc trop bon pour
moi?
Vous prenez un fiacre, le cocher vous rançonne.
Vous raisonnez, il vous bat; vous prenez son numéro, le citez chez un
commissaire;—le commissaire demande le nom du plaignant.
—Tartempiou.
Le commissaire sourit et s’incline.
—Ah! ah! le grand Tartempiou!—donnez-vous la p....
Il avance un siége.
—Non, monsieur; son frère.
—Ah! très-bien!
Et il retire son siége. Le cocher réclame cinq francs.
—Monsieur, je ne serais pas venu ici pour cinq francs; mais il faut
cependant punir ces gens-là; c’est cinq francs qu’il veut me voler.
—Ah! monsieur, dit le commissaire, pour cinq francs, vous ne voudrez
pas compromettre le beau nom que vous portez; donnez, donnez cinq
francs, et n’en parlons plus.
Un matin, votre frère daigne arriver chez vous.
—Ah! te voilà!
—Oui, monsieur.
—Oh! monsieur... qu’est-ce qu’il y a?
—Il y a que vous me déshonorez.
—Moi!
—Oui... vous avez accompagné au théâtre une femme...
—Parbleu, oui; c’est ma maîtresse.
—On vous a vu.
—Je ne me cachais pas; elle est charmante.
—On a dit et répété votre nom, mon nom.
—Ah!
—Croyez-vous que cela me soit agréable?
—Mais, mon frère, cela me l’est beaucoup à moi.
 —Ne plaisantons pas. Quand on est porteur d’un nom honorable, il faut
l’honorer; il ne faut plus qu’on vous voie avec cette femme.
—Tu es fou! c’est ma maîtresse, elle est jolie; je l’aime.
—Alors vous m’obligerez de ne plus venir chez moi.
Un autre jour, votre frère revient.
—Eh bien! j’en apprends de belles. Vous allez prendre une boutique?
—Ma foi, mon frère, c’est ma seule ressource: la famille a tout dépensé
pour toi, personne ne m’a aidé, je veux essayer de l’industrie.
—Fi!
—Fi plutôt de la misère et de la faim! Si tu veux me donner de l’argent,
je ne me ferai pas boutiquier.
—Je n’en ai pas.
—Alors laisse-moi en gagner,—ou plutôt aide-moi;—si tu veux, en me
recommandant à M...., tu peux faire presque ma fortune.
—Du tout, je n’avouerai pas que j’ai un frère qui porte mon nom, un
frère boutiquier, fi!
Ce nom, ce terrible nom,—illustré quelquefois par un faquin adroit et
intrigant,—c’est pour vous la robe de Nessus;—ou plutôt c’est comme un
habit qu’un ami vous aurait prêté;—l’ami est derrière vous qui vous dit à
chaque instant:
«Prends garde, tu vas verser du punch sur ton habit.
»Ne lève donc pas les bras comme cela,—tu vas faire craquer les
entournures de l’habit.
»Je t’avais dit de ne pas le boutonner,—tu vas déformer mon habit.
»Ne mets donc pas la main dedans pour te poser à la Chateaubriand,—tu
vas m’arracher un bouton.
»N’oublie pas de prendre une voiture,—il pleut, tu gâterais mon habit.»
Vous finissez par dire à l’ami: «Eh bien! reprends ton habit.»
De même, un matin, vous dites à votre illustre frère—«O mon illustre
frère! tu m’ennuies considérablement avec ton nom de Tartempiou; tu seras
désormais le seul Tartempiou, tu porteras uniquement ce nom devenu trop
grand et trop lourd pour moi: je ne m’appelle plus Tartempiou, je puis faire
ce que je veux.—Je m’appelle Tartempioux; l’x me rend la liberté et mon
bonheur, et de nous sortiront deux races distinctes: les Tartempiou dont tu
seras l’origine, et les Tartempioux dont je serai la souche; et si, dans cinq
mille ans d’ici, ces deux races, devenues ennemies, s’entre-déchirent; si nos
neveux, oubliant qu’ils sont cousins, s’avisent de se manger à des sauces
variées, sur toi seul en retombera le crime. Vade retro, Tartempiou!
Tartempioux n’a plus rien de commun avec toi.
Un égoïste de nos amis,—qui se croit à la fois le centre, le but et la
cause de tout ce qui est et de tout ce qui arrive, disait avant-hier:
—Il n’y a qu’à moi qu’il arrive de ces choses-là!
—Qu’avez-vous donc?
—Vous voyez bien, il pleut.
Dernièrement le danseur Barré a été mandé au couvent des
Augustins, où il a été introduit chez la supérieure, où il a appris pourquoi on
le faisait venir.
On venait de renvoyer le maître de danse de la maison,—parce qu’il
n’avait pas su montrer aux jeunes élèves,—demoiselles comme il faut,—la
danse à la mode aujourd’hui parmi les femmes élégantes,—le cancan;—et
on priait Barré de vouloir bien le remplacer.
Il faut avouer qu’aujourd’hui l’éducation des femmes est étrangement
perfectionnée, et que les femmes savantes de Molière auraient beaucoup à
apprendre auprès des petites pensionnaires d’aujourd’hui.
Depuis que le roi Louis-Philippe a obtenu ses fortifications tant
désirées,—il ne prend plus aucune part aux affaires et ne s’occupe de rien: il
est comme un académicien qui a enfin attrapé son fauteuil et qui s’y repose.
Aux fêtes de Chantilly, les légitimistes ont pris parti avec fureur
contre les chevaux du duc d’Orléans engagés sous le nom de M. de Cambis;
—ils applaudissaient avec frénésie quand le prix était gagné par un cheval
de lord Seymour—ou de tout autre,—et restaient tristement silencieux
quand le vainqueur appartenait au prince royal.
La lutte établie contre les fêtes de Chantilly par le parti légitimiste
n’a pas été heureuse.—Le soin de paraître s’amuser plus que les invités du
château a beaucoup nui au plaisir qu’on a éprouvé réellement.
On a répandu le bruit que les fêtes de M. Thorn sont le résultat
d’une souscription mystérieuse du faubourg Saint-Germain, qui se cotise
pour avoir une sorte de club dansant.—C’est fort bête, mais cela fâche
beaucoup M. Thorn.
 On rencontre souvent par les rues—un dragon ou un cuirassier au
grand trot.—Les fers de son cheval font jaillir du pavé des milliers
d’étincelles.—Son sabre résonne dans le fourreau.—On se range en toute
hâte sur son passage.—Les mères se serrent contre les murailles avec leurs
enfants.
Où vas-tu, guerrier?—Où s’arrêtera ton coursier écumant? Vas-tu sur un
champ de bataille, rejoindre ton drapeau,—donner ou recevoir la mort?
Ou, simple messager, apportes-tu la nouvelle d’une victoire ou d’une
défaite?—Demain les cloches des églises appelleront-elles les hommes
pieux et les hommes curieux à un De profundis ou à un Te Deum?
Quelque malheur public va-t-il réjouir les employés, les ouvriers et les
lycéens, en fermant les bureaux, les ateliers et les classes pour vingt-quatre
heures?—En te voyant passer si rapidement on s’interroge, et plus d’une
portière songe à retirer son argent de la caisse d’épargne.
Où vas-tu, guerrier, et d’où viens-tu?
Es-tu un messager de crainte ou d’espérance, de joie ou de deuil?
Non, le guerrier est une estafette envoyée du ministère des finances à la
rue de la Tour-d’Auvergne, par mon ami***, employé audit établissement,
pour me demander s’il n’aurait pas par hasard laissé chez moi un parapluie
vert.
Darmès,—qui a tiré sur le roi, vient d’être, par la Cour des pairs,
condamné à la peine des parricides,—c’est-à-dire à être conduit sur le lieu
du supplice et à avoir le poing coupé, puis la tête tranchée.
MM. les pairs ont, en cette circonstance, un peu agi comme les
architectes qui, sachant qu’on leur diminuera un quart ou un cinquième en
réglant leur mémoire, mettent sur ledit mémoire un cinquième ou un quart
de plus qu’ils ne veulent avoir.
Darmès a été exécuté deux jours après son jugement.
Le roi a, dit-on, fait grâce des accessoires, c’est-à-dire de la chemise
blanche et du poing.
UN VOISIN DE CAMPAGNE.—Le roi Louis-Philippe avait près de
Neuilly un voisin fort incommode. C’était un citoyen ennemi des rois en
général, et du roi de Juillet en particulier,—qui offrait à la patrie toutes les
tribulations qu’il trouvait moyen de faire subir au malheureux monarque.
 Sa propriété, contiguë à celle du roi, consistait en un petit terrain, sur
lequel il se plaisait à rassembler tous les chiens morts repêchés dans la
rivière, et en général tout ce qui pouvait offenser l’odorat.—Le roi s’en
plaignit à M. de Montalivet, qui prit sur lui de délivrer le parc de Neuilly de
cet inconvénient;—il alla trouver le voisin, et lui demanda s’il voudrait
vendre son petit terrain.
—Non, répondit le voisin.
—Parce que?
—Parce que j’aime mieux le garder.
—Mais si on vous en offrait un bon prix?
—Je ne le donnerais pas.
—Le double, le triple de sa valeur?
—Nullement.
M. de Montalivet revint tristement rendre compte au roi du mauvais
succès de sa démarche.—Le roi n’osait employer contre son voisin les
moyens judiciaires qui eussent servi au dernier de ses sujets.—Il fit venir
M. Legrand, directeur des ponts et chaussées, et lui fit part de son embarras.
—M. Legrand y rêva un peu et trouva le projet d’une route royale que l’on
fit passer au milieu du carré de terre du voisin, que l’on expropria pour
cause d’utilité publique,—ce qui força le roi d’abandonner, de son côté, à la
route, un petit coin de terre.
On lisait, ces jours derniers, dans le National, dans le Journal du
Peuple, etc., etc., un article ainsi conçu:
«Avant nous, M. Alphonse Karr, ami du château, qui fait appeler par le
roi des choses assez singulières les choses contenues dans les lettres de
1808 et 1809, avait inséré dans ses Guêpes que «si le roi avait écrit les
lettres qu’on lui impute, il n’aurait plus qu’à s’en aller.»
Il a paru à quelques personnes assez bizarre que ces estimables carrés de
papier prissent précisément, pour m’intituler ami du château, le moment où,
selon eux,—je les ai prévenus, eux, qui sont les ennemis du château, dans
leur appréciation des lettres attribuées au roi.
Cela me rappelle une mésaventure arrivée, en une autre circonstance, à
un autre carré de papier appelé le Pilote du Calvados;—ledit carré de papier
s’était donné plusieurs fois la distraction innocente de me dénoncer comme
vendu au pouvoir,—ce qui avait fait rire assez fort les gens qui avaient
l’extrême bonté de nous lire tous les deux.
Un jour, je ne sais comment il se fit que le carré de papier en question
imagina de transcrire dans ses colonnes un article que j’avais fait pour
blâmer avec quelque sévérité une mesure du gouvernement. Mon carré de
papier du Calvados est saisi à la requête du procureur du roi du
département,—moins indulgent que celui du parquet de Paris,—et on lui
fait tranquillement un bon petit procès par suite duquel il est condamné à
une bonne petite amende et à trois bons petits mois de prison.
La probité, l’impartialité et l’indépendance sont donc des choses bien
étranges en ce temps-ci, qu’on n’y croie pas, même en les voyant,—et que
leur apparition soit passée à l’état de miracles contestés par les esprits forts!
Faut-il donc que je fasse remarquer aujourd’hui à mes lecteurs, après
bientôt deux ans que je cause avec eux, que je dis à chacun son fait dans
l’occasion,—que je n’appartiens à aucun parti ni à aucune coterie,—que je
ne suis ami que du juste, du vrai, de l’honnête et du grand,—que je ne suis
l’ennemi que de l’injustice, de l’hypocrisie, de l’absurdité, de la sottise et
des platitudes.
Je n’ai gagné guère à cela que d’être fort mal vu de tous les partis et de
toutes les coteries,—de n’avoir l’appui de personne et de combattre seul
dans la mêlée.
Je suis bien heureux, vraiment, de mon indifférence pour les
clapotements que font dans les coins obscurs quelques langues contre
quelques palais.—Voici, maintenant, qu’on dit et qu’on imprime que j’ai
amassé des sommes énormes, que j’ai acheté un château, et que je cesse de
publier les Guêpes.
D’ordinaire, je demeure assez sur les chemins, n’ayant pas grand’chose à
faire à Paris, que je n’aime guère.—Avant cette invention, chaque fois que
je quittais Paris, on racontait que j’étais en prison pour dettes.—En vain,
quelque ami disait:—«Mais il est à Étretat, je l’ai mis en voiture.—Bah!
répondait-on, vous ne nous en ferez pas accroire, on sait où il est.
—Mais voilà une lettre que je reçois de lui avec le timbre de
Montivilliers, qui est le bureau de poste d’Étretat.
—Allons donc, on connaît ces ruses-là.
—Mais il revient demain.
 —Tarare!»
Cette fois, tout cela est changé.—Quand je m’absente, c’est pour aller
acheter un château ou une terre.—Je joue le rôle du marquis de Carabas,—
et j’éblouis les gens par une fortune scandaleuse.
Tout ceci n’empêchera pas les Guêpes de continuer à prendre leur vol
chaque mois, qu’elles sortent des roses de mon jardin de la rue de la Tour-
d’Auvergne, ou des joncs qui couvrent d’un tapis d’or les côtes d’Étretat et
de Sainte-Adresse.

FIN DU DEUXIÈME VOLUME.

 TABLE DES MATIERES

1840

AOUT.—Les tailleurs abandonnent Paris.—Les feuilles

de vigne.—Une fourmi aux guêpes.—On prend l’auteur
en flagrant délit d’ignorance.—Il se défend assez mal.—
M. Orfila.—Les banquets.—M. Desmortiers.—M.
Plougoulm.—Situation impossible du gouvernement de
Juillet.—Le peuple veut se représenter lui-même.—M.
de Rémusat.—Danton.—Les cordonniers.—Les
boulangers.—M. Arnal.—M. Bouffé.—M. Rubini.—M.
Samson.—M. Simon.—M. Alcide Tousez.—M.
Mathieu de la Redorte et le coiffeur Armand.—La
presse vertueuse et la presse corrompue.—M. Thiers.—
Le duc d’Orléans.—M. E. Leroy.—Le cheval de Tata.—
Un bourreau.—M. Baudin.—M. Mackau.—Le Mapah.
—M. V. Hugo.—M. Jules Sandeau.—Les bains de
Dieppe.—Mme *** et la douane.—M. Coraly prévu par
Racine.—M. Conte.—M. Cousin et M. Molé.—Une
fournée.—Mademoiselle Taglioni et M. V. de
Lapelouze.—Coups de bourse.—M. de Pontois.—
Plusieurs noms barbares.—M. de Woulvère.—M. de
Ségur.—Naïveté des journaux ministériels.—Un
ministère vertueux et parlementaire.—Chagrins d’icelui.
—M. Chambolle s’en va-t-en guerre.—MM. Jay et de
Lapelouze le suivent.—Situation.—Am Rauchen. 1
SEPTEMBRE.—Prohibition de l’amour.—Le pain et les 28
boulangers.—Injustices de la justice.—La paix et la
guerre.—La feuille de chou de M. Villemain.—Le roi
sans-culotte.—M. Cousin.—M. de Sainte-Beuve.—La
pauvreté est le plus grand des crimes.—Les
circonstances atténuantes et le jury.—La morale du
théâtre.—M. Scribe.—La distribution des prix à la
Sorbonne.—L’éducation en France.—Naïvetés de M.
Cousin.—M. Aug. Nisard.—Ce que M. Thiers laisse au
 roi.—M. Hugo.—Monseigneur Affre.—M. Roosman.—
M. Gerain.—Les voleurs avec ou sans effraction.—Le
roi et les douaniers.—Un chiffre à deux fins.—Comme
quoi c’est une dot d’être le gendre d’un homme
vertueux.—M. Renauld de Barbarin.—M. Gisquet et ses
Mémoires.—M. de Montalivet.—M. de Lamartine.—M.
Étienne.—La Bourse.—M. Dosne.—M. Thiers.—La
vérité sur la Bourse.—Une petite querelle aux femmes.
—Un malheur arrivé à M. Chambolle.—Aphorisme.—
Coquetterie des Débats.—Mot de M. Thiers.—La curée
au chenil.
OCTOBRE.—Mort de Samson.—M. Joubert.—M.
Gannal veut empailler les cendres de l’empereur.—M.
Ganneron économise une croix.—Une belle action.—
Une vieille flatterie.—M. de Balzac et M. Roger de
Beauvoir.—Madame Decaze au Luxembourg.—Contre
les voyages.—Une guêpe exécutée au Jockey-Club.—
Un mot de mademoiselle ***.—Les ouvriers, le
gouvernement et les journaux.—A propos de
l’Académie française.—M. Cousin.—M.-Révoil.—
Notes de quelques inspecteurs généraux sur quelques
officiers.—M. Desmortiers placé sous la surveillance de
Grimalkin.—Attentat contre le papier blanc.—M.
Michel (de Bourges).—M. Thiers.—M. Arago.—M.
Chambolle.—M. de Rémusat.—Question d’Orient.—De
l’homme considéré comme engrais.—M. Delessert.—
M. Méry.—Lettres anonymes.—On découvre que
l’auteur des Guêpes est vendu à M. Thiers.—L’auteur en
prison.—M. Richard.—Avis aux prisonniers.—M.
Jacqueminot.—Aux amoureux de madame Laffarge.—
Les jurés limousins.—M. Orfila.—M. Raspail.—Le
petit Martin et M. Martinet.—On abuse de Napoléon.—
Idée singulière d’un Sportman. 48
NOVEMBRE.—Les Guêpes.—Un tombeau.—La 79
justice.—Ugolin, Agamemnon, Jephté et M. Alphonse
Karr.—Le nouveau ministère.—M. Soult.—M. Martin
(du Nord).—M. Guizot.—M. Duchâtel.—M. Cunin-
Gridaine—M. Teste.—M. Villemain.—M. Duperré.—
M. Humann.—L’auteur se livre à un légitime sentiment
d’orgueil.—Départ de M. Thiers.—Madame Dosne.—
M. Dosne.—M. Roussin.—M. de Cubières.—M. Pelet
(de la Lozère).—M. Vivien.—Lettres de grâce.—M.
Marrast.—M. Buloz.—M. de Rambuteau.—M. de
Bondy.—M. Jaubert.—M. Lavenay.—M. de Rémusat.
—M. Delavergne.—Le sergent de ville Petit.—Le garde
municipal Lafontaine.—Darmès.—Mademoiselle
Albertine et Fénélon.—M. Célestin Nanteuil.—M.
Giraud.—M. Gouin et les falaises du Havre.—M. de
Mornay.—La prison de Chartres.—Nouvel usage du
poivre.—La Marseillaise.—La guerre.—Un réfractaire.
—M. Chalander.—Les soldats de plomb.—Un bal au
profit des pauvres.—Les fortifications de Paris.—Les
pistolets du grand homme.—M. Mathieu de la Redorte.
—M. Boilay.—M. et madame Jacques Coste.—M. et
madame Léon Faucher.—M. et madame Léon Pillet.—
Madame la comtesse de Flahaut.—Madame la comtesse
d’Argout.—On continue à demander ce qu’est devenue
la fameuse enquête sur les affaires de la Bourse.—M.
Dosne se livre à de nouveaux exercices.—M. de Balzac.
—Une gageure proposée au préfet de police.—M.
Berlioz.—M. Barbier.—M. L. de Vailly.—M. de Vigny.
—M. Armand Bertin.—M. Habeneck.—Le Journal des
Débats porte bonheur.—Richesses des pauvres.—
Subvention que je reçois.—On demande l’adresse des
oreilles de M. E. Bouchereau.
DÉCEMBRE.—Rançon et retour des Guêpes.—Le 109
cheval Ibrahim.—Un mot de M. Vivien.—Mot de M.
Pelet (de la Lozère).—M. Griel.—M. Dosne considéré
comme péripatéticien.—La mare d’Auteuil.—Comment
se fait le discours du roi.—Un mot de M. Énouf.—Les
échecs.—Un mot de M. Lherbette.—M. Barrot.—M.
Guizot.—M. de Rémusat.—M. Jaubert.—Les
vaudevilles de M. Duvergier de Hauraune.—Deux
lanternes.—Le roi et M. de Cormenin.—Naissance du
duc de Chartres.—M. de Chateaubriand.—La reine
Christine.—Le général d’Houdetot.—Bureau de l’esprit
public.—M. Malacq et mademoiselle Rachel.—M.
Lerminier et M. Villemain.—Une guêpe de la Malouine.
—M. A. Dumas.—Forts non détachés.—Mot de M.
Barrot revendiqué par les Guêpes.—M. Cochelet.—M.
Drovetti.—M. Marochetti.—Une messe d’occasion.—
Obolum Belisario.—MM. Hugo,—de Saint-Aulaire,—
Berryer,—Casimir Bonjour.—M. Legrand (de l’Oise).
—M. Jourdan.—Un logogriphe de M. Delessert.—
 Dénonciation contre les conservateurs du musée.—M.
Ganneron mécontent.—M. E. Sue et monseigneur Affre.
—Les fourreurs de Paris et les marchands de rubans de
Saint-Étienne.—M. Bouchereau paraît.—Les
inondations.—Le maire de Saint-Christophe.

1841

JANVIER.—Sur Paris.—La neige et le préfet de police. 137

—Il manque vingt-neuf mille deux cent cinquante
tombereaux.—Deux classes de portiers.—Le timbre et
les Guêpes.—Le gouvernement sauvé par lesdits
insectes.—M. Thiers et M. Humann.—M. le directeur
du Timbre.—Une question des fortifications.—Saint-
Simon et M. Thiers.—Vauban, Napoléon et Louis XIV.
—Les forts détachés et l’enceinte continue.—Retour de
l’empereur.—Le ver du tombeau et les vers de M.
Delavigne.—Indépendance du Constitutionnel.—Un
écheveau de fil en fureur.—Napoléon à la pompe à feu.
—Le maréchal Soult.—M. Guizot.—M. Villemain.—La
gloire.—Les hommes sérieux.—M. de Montholon.—Le
prince de Joinville et lady ***.—M. Cavé.—Vivent la
joie et les pommes de terre!—Les vaudevillistes
invalides.—M. de Rémusat.—M. Étienne.—M.
Salverte.—M. Duvergier de Hauranne.—M. Empis.—
M. Mazère.—De M. Gabrie, maire de Meulan, et de
Denys, le tyran de Syracuse.—Le charpentier.—Doré en
cuivre.—Le cheval de bataille.—M. ***.—M. le duc de
Vicence.—Le roi Louis-Philippe a un cheval de
l’empereur tué sous lui.—M. Kausmann.—Aboukir.—
M. le général Saint-Michel.—Le cheval blanc et les
vieilles filles.—Quatre Anglais.—M. Dejean.—
L’Académie.—Le parti Joconde.—M. de Saint-Aulaire.
—M. Ancelot.—M. Bonjour veut triompher en fuyant.
—Chances du maréchal Sébastiani.—Réception de M.
Molé.—M. Dupin, ancêtre.—Mot du prince de L***.—
Mot de M. Royer-Collard.—M. de Quélen.—Le
National.—Mot de M. de Pongerville.—Histoire des
ouvrages de M. Empis.—Le dogue d’un mort.— MM.
Baude et Audry de Puyraveau.—M. de Montalivet.—Le
roi considéré comme propriétaire.—M. Vedel.—M.
 Buloz.—Un vice-président de la vertu.—La Favorite.—
Un bal à Notre-Dame.—École de danses inconvenantes.
—M. D*** et le pape.—M. Adam.—M. Sauzet.—J. J.—
Les receveurs de Rouen.—La princesse Czartoriska.—
Madame Lebon.—Madame Hugo.—Madame Friand.—
Madame de Remy et mademoiselle Dangeville.—
Madame de Radepont.—Lettre de M. Ganneron.—M.
Albert, député de la Charente.—M. Séguier.—Les
vertus privées.—La garde nationale de Carcassonne.—
Le général Bugeaud.—Correspondance.—Fureurs d’un
monsieur de Mulhouse.
FÉVRIER.—Nouveau canard.—L’auteur des Guêpes est
mort.—Les Parisiens à la Bastille.—Scène de haut
comique.—Les fortifications.—M. Thiers.—M.
Dufaure.—M. Barrot.—Influence des synonymes.—Les
soldats de lettres.—Le lieutenant général Ganneron.—
Tous ces messieurs sont prévus par Molière.—Chodruc-
Duclos.—Alcide Tousez.—Madame Deshoulières.—M.
de Lamartine.—M. Garnier-Pagès.—Les fortifications
et les fraises.—Ceux qui se battront.—Ceux qui ne se
battront pas.—Invasion des avocats.—Les hauts barons
du mètre.—Les gentilshommes et les vilains hommes.—
Cassandre aux Cassandres.—La tour de Babel.—
Avénement de messeigneurs les marchands bonnetiers.
—Le bal de l’ancienne liste civile.—Costume exact de
mesdames Martin (du Nord), Lebœuf et Barthe.—
Costume de MM. Gentil,—de Rambuteau,—Gouin,—
Roger (du Nord), etc., et autres talons rouges.—
Méhémet-Ali.—Le bal au profit des inondés de Lyon.—
On apporte de la neige rue Laffitte.—M. Batta.—M.
Artot.—Relations de madame Chevet et d’un employé
de la liste civile.—M. de Lamartine et les nouvelles
mesures.—La protection de madame Adélaïde.—Les
lettres du roi.—M. A. Karr bâtonné par la livrée de M.
Thiers.—Envoi à S. M. Louis-Philippe. 170
MARS.—L’auteur au Havre.—La ville en belle humeur. 196
—Popularité de M. Fulchiron.—Ressemblance dudit
avec Racine.—La Chambre des pairs.—Le duc
d’Orléans.—Le roi et M. Pasquier.—M. Bourgogne et
madame Trubert.—Les femmes gênées dans leurs
corsets par la liberté de la presse.—M. Sauzet invente
un mot.—M. Mermilliod en imagine un autre.—Les
 masques.—Lord Seymour.—Mésaventure du préfet de
police.—Histoire de François.—Sur les dîners.—La
liste civile fait tout ce qui concerne l’état des autres.—A
M. le comte de Montalivet.—Le roi jardinier et
maraîcher.—Plaintes de ses confrères.—Les Guêpes
n’ont pas de couleur.—Un poëme épique.—Un
bienfaiteur à bon marché.—Une croix d’honneur.—La
propriété littéraire.—Une prétention nouvelle du peuple
français.—M. Lacordaire et mademoiselle Georges.—
Les princes et les sergents de ville.—Une anecdote du
général Clary.—M. Taschereau.—M. Molé.—M.
Mounier.—M. de la Riboissière.—M. Tirlet.—M.
Ancelot.—M. de Chateaubriand.
AVRIL.—Histoire d’un monsieur auquel il manquait
trente-quatre sous.—Sur la propriété littéraire.—M.
Berville.—M. Chaix d’Est-Ange.—M. Lherbette.—M.
Durand de Romorantin.—M. Hugo.—M. de Lamartine.
—Histoire de M. M*** et d’un commissaire de police.—
Un mot d’ami sur M. Villemain.—De la valse à deux
temps.—Des miracles du puits de Grenelle.—Une
histoire d’un voleur.—Sur les fortifications.—A quoi
tient un vote.—M. Thorn.—Les fleurs des critiques et
des romanciers, et, en particulier, de quelques fleurs de
M. Eugène Sue.—Un œillet.—Un mot d’amie.—Un
distique sur un avocat.—De la tyrannie et de
l’inviolabilité de MM. les comédiens.—La vérité sur
mademoiselle Elssler aux États-Unis.—Le timbre, les
Guêpes et les cachemires.—De l’éloquence du palais.—
M. Léon Bertrand.—Deux nouvelles étoffes.—
L’exposition de peinture. 228
MAI.—Les lettres attribuées au roi.—M. Partarrieu- 255
Lafosse patauge.—Me Berryer.—Embarras où me met
le verdict du jury.—Opinion de saint Paul sur ce sujet.
—La Contemporaine.—Une heureuse idée de M.
Gabriel Delessert.—Sangfroid de M. Soumet.—M.
Passy (Hippolyte-Philibert).—Un mot de l’archevêque
de Paris.—Le faubourg Saint-Germain et un employé de
la préfecture de la Seine.—De M. Grandin, député, et de
son magnifique discours.—J’ai la douleur de n’être pas
de son avis.—M. Hortensius de Saint-Albin.—Deux
petites filles.—Une singularité du roi.—Réalisation du
rêve d’Henry Monnier.—Paris malade.—Vertus
 parlementaires.—A mes lecteurs.—Une église par la
diligence.—Récompense honnête.—Récompense moins
honnête.—Pensées diverses de M. C.-M.-A. Dugrivel.
—Les concerts.—De M. S*** improprement appelé
Sedlitz.—Steeple-chase.—Choses diverses.—M. Lebon.
—Les gants jaunes.—Des amis.—Un proverbe.
JUIN.—Fragments d’une belle réponse de l’auteur des
Guêpes à un homme étonné.—Les philanthropes.—Les
prisons.—Les fêtes.—Question des hannetons.—M.
Bazin de Rocou.—Quelques citations de M. de
Lamennais.—Une singulière oraison funèbre.—Les
médailles de baptême.—De M. Dugabé et d’un nouveau
théâtre.—Un mot du roi.—Véritable histoire de
l’infante.—Comme quoi un jeune Polonais est devenu
neveu de la reine de France.—Des cheveux roux.—M.
Villemain.—Mademoiselle Fitzjames.—On oublie M.
Molé.—Humbles remontrances à monseigneur
l’archevêque de Paris.—Question sérieuse traitée de la
façon la moins ennuyeuse qu’il a été possible à l’auteur.
—M. Duchâtel.—Économies de M. Auguis.—Le parti
des pharmaciens.—L’inconvénient d’avoir un frère
célèbre.—Un danseur de l’Opéra au couvent.—Repos
du roi.—M. Thorn.—Un parapluie vert.—Un voisin de
campagne.—De quelques carrés de papier. 283
FIN DE LA TABLE DU DEUXIÈME VOLUME.

Paris.—Typ. de A. WITTERSHEIM, 8, rue Montmorency.

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