Buṭrus al-Bustānī and the Shipwreck of the Nation

Abstract

During the outbreak of violence and civil war in 1860 Mount Lebanon, Buṭrus al-Bustānī (1819–1883) in a series of political pamphlets entitled Nafīr Sūriyya painted an image of an imaginary nation that was meant to be the cure for this social crisis. He also translated the story of Robinson Crusoe during these times and proposed it as an allegory for the instruction of society. This article analyzes Bustānī's allegorical use of Robinson Crusoe for a war-torn society. It explores the implications of translation as an epistemological stance in the time of modernity. By Iooking at the two sources, Nafīr and Crusoe, we come to understand how the logic of 19th-century liberal political economy works to naturalize sectarianism and depoliticize it through the discourses of pluralism and co-existence that are articulated in Bustānī's formulation of ‘love’ as a binding force for the nation. The article explores the formation of a ‘national fantasy’ as a response to crisis in affectual terms. Moreover, it shows how Bustānī's invocation of the trope of human rights, ḥuqūq al-insāniyya, overlaps with a utopian view of justice that is knowingly anachronistic.