The Rule of Violence
Subjectivity, Memory and Government in Syria

Provides an original analysis of the routine and spectacular forms of violence deployed by the Asad regime in Syria over the last four decades.

Salwa Ismail (Author)

9781107032187, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 August 2018

240 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 1.5 cm, 0.51 kg

'This is a masterful account of how 'horror' came to be a central mode of governance in Syria under the Asad regime. Salwa Ismail's skilful scholarship expands our understanding of state violence through shifting focus to its affective dimensions in both the spectacular and the everyday. This is a powerful and utterly compelling book, a must read for students of Syria and authoritarianism.' Michelle Obeid, University of Manchester

Over much of its rule, the regime of Hafez al-Asad and his successor Bashar al-Asad deployed violence on a massive scale to maintain its grip on political power. In this book, Salwa Ismail examines the rationalities and mechanisms of governing through violence. In a detailed and compelling account, Ismail shows how the political prison and the massacre, in particular, developed as apparatuses of government, shaping Syrians' political subjectivities, defining their understanding of the terms of rule and structuring their relations and interactions with the regime and with one another. Examining ordinary citizens' everyday life experiences and memories of violence across diverse sites, from the internment camp and the massacre to the family and school, The Rule of Violence demonstrates how practices of violence, both in their routine and spectacular forms, fashioned Syrians' affective life, inciting in them feelings of humiliation and abjection, and infusing their lived environment with dread and horror. This form of rule is revealed to be constraining of citizens' political engagement, while also demanding of their action.

Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: the government of violence
1. Violence as a modality of government in Syria
2. Authoritarian government, the shadow state and political subjectivities
3. Memories of life under dictatorship: the everyday of Ba'thist Syria
4. Memories of violence: Hama 1982
5. The performativity of violence and 'emotionalities of rule' in the Syrian Uprising
Conclusion: the rule of violence – formations of civil war
Postscript
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Political corruption [JPZ], Political activism [JPW], Political oppression & persecution [JPVR], Human rights [JPVH], Political control & freedoms [JPV], Political structures: totalitarianism & dictatorship [JPHX], Islamic studies [JFSR2]