Cosmopolitan Radicalism
The Visual Politics of Beirut's Global Sixties

Exploring visual culture, design and politics in 1960s Beirut, this compelling interdisciplinary study examines a critical period in Lebanon's history.

Zeina Maasri (Author)

9781108720830, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 16 June 2022

343 pages
24.3 x 16.9 x 1.8 cm, 0.596 kg

'… Cosmopolitan Radicalism is a captivating and beautiful read, richly illustrated through both black and white figures throughout the text and colour plates at the centre of the book … It offers a good starting point to dive deeper into these trajectories and look at each of the actors involved - be it people, objects or institutions - in further detail.' Nadia von Maltzahn, H-Soz-Kult von

Exploring the intersections of visual culture, design and politics in Beirut from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, this compelling interdisciplinary study critically examines a global conjuncture in Lebanon's history, marked by anticolonial struggle and complicated by a Cold War order. Against a celebratory reminiscence of the 'golden years', Beirut's long 1960s is conceived of as a liminal juncture, an anxious time and space when the city held out promises at once politically radical and radically cosmopolitan. Zeina Maasri examines the transnational circuits that animated Arab modernist pursuits, shedding light on key cultural transformations that saw Beirut develop as a Mediterranean site of tourism and leisure, a nexus between modern art and pan-Arab publishing and, through the rise of the Palestinian Resistance, a node in revolutionary anti-imperialism. Drawing on uncharted archives of printed media this book expands the scope of historical analysis of the postcolonial Arab East.

Introduction. Beirut in the global Sixties: design, politics and translocal visuality
1. Dislocating the nation: Mediterraneanscapes in Lebanon's tourist promotion
2. The hot Third World in the cultural Cold War: modernism, Arabic literary journals and US counterinsurgency
3. The visual economy of 'precious books': publishing, modern art and the design of Arabic books
4. Ornament is no crime: decolonising the Arabic page from Cairo to Beirut
5. Art is in the 'Arab street': the Palestinian revolution and printscapes of solidarity
6. Draw me a gun: radical children's books in the trenches of 'Arab Hanoi'
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]