Ghostly ruins: conflict memories, narratives, and placemaking among Lebanese diasporas in Montreal

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe memory of past conflicts remains largely obliterated among the Lebanese diasporas in Montreal. Nonetheless, it invariably resurfaces in public performance of the Lebanese identity in the city as well as in people’s life stories. This ambivalent interplay underlines the role of remembrance and forgetting among diasporic populations in the construction of their local attachment to their places of residence. Stories as well as silences become ways of negotiating one’s presence and belonging. Building on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Montreal between 2017 and 2019, this contribution approaches war memories from a renewed perspective. Instead of examining their role in the mobilization and transformation of group boundaries, it resituates the politics of traumatic memories among Lebanese diasporas in the everyday negotiation of their presence in Montreal. In doing so, this article unravels how memory practices in diasporic lifeworlds also open creative imaginations that contest essentialized conceptions of identity and belonging.