Abstract
Culture and Post-War Reconciliation: from Optimism to Resilience. At the end of the civil war, Lebanon tried to rebuild itself but fairly quickly wars, assassinations, repeated political crises and an influx of refugees weakened it. From 2019, it is downright descent into hell with an aborted popular revolt and a whole series of financial, economic and health disasters culminating in the explosion of August 4, 2020, which transformed it into a true martyr nation. Once again, the Land of the Cedars falls back into the cycle of the absurd, even into the circularity of the myth of Sisyphus, going so far as to relive scenes of violence reminiscent of the civil war as if we were returning to the “Zero Hour”. These recent events show that the structural causes that led to the conflict among Lebanese have not yet been resolved. Today the majority of them are lost, living day to day without hope or perspective. Faced with this fatality, should we question the impact of artistic projects aiming at social reconciliation following a conflict? Can culture in general and theater in particular still be vectors for promoting peace? In which category of the process of social transformation can we place these artistic practices today? Do the practitioners of this approach always do sustainable reconciliation work or rather attempt at societal resilience? Does this resilience still have a therapeutic role that heals wounds and trauma? Or does it risk contributing to pushing the Lebanese into denial by adapting them to their new reality?
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