Lebanon: Domestic Turbulence in an International Community

Abstract

The relations between the Arab-American community and the rest of American society are proven time and time again (in the 2016 presidential race, in the mid-2010s migrant crisis, and in the post-9/11 situation in general) to be quite fragile. This thesis investigates the representation of the relations between Arab migrants and their host culture as represented in four pieces of Lebanese-American fiction; these novels use either the Lebanese Civil War or the 9/11 terrorist attacks as their backdrop. The work uses Edward Said's theory on filiation and affiliation (the formation of bonds based on birth and on personal choice, respectively), and Stuart Hall's theory on Othering, to analyse the themes of group formation, migration, and assimilation. These issues are interconnected, as the presence of migrants may problematise the stability of previously formed groups, and migrants can choose to either conform to the previously set boundaries, or transgress them. The thesis concludes that the tensions between different demographics are most often the result of "accidents of birth" (filiation), and that the main difference between the two Lebanese Civil War novels and the two post-9/11 novels is that even though the Arab-Americans in the post-9/11 novels are not "new" immigrants, it is these novels that show a more complete rejection of Arab-Americans.