Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Michel Aoun, ‘Patriarch of the Christian Street’

2015; Brill; Volume: 8; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1163/18739865-00801007

1873-9865

Bruno Lefort,

Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender

Designating himself as ‘Patriarch of the Christian street’, Michel Aoun has become the main character of a social narration. A network of partisan media institutions orchestrates the circulation of the leader’s image. These productions operate in a fragmented media environment in which each complex primarily targets a specific and already sensitized population. These publics, for which the transmission of family memory has often worked as a prerequisite, in turn spread a specific interpretation of Lebanese reality. Such modes of representation, both vertical (inspired by the partisan institutions) and horizontal (relying on peer-to-peer circulation) frame Aoun’s image in reference to a triple aesthetics deliberately emphasizing affects: a patriarchal family trope revealing a sense of fusion, a heroic picture stirring inspiration, and a prophet’s metaphor fostering communion within the group. As a consequence, the group of followers is produced primarily as affective, in opposition to alternative negative figures. In that respect, the study of the representations of a figure like Michel Aoun enables us to investigate the contemporary configurations in which collectives are produced in Lebanon and thus to re-examine the very nature of politics in this segmented polity.