Cosmopolitan radicalism :

Maasri, Zeina,

Cosmopolitan radicalism : the visual politics of Beirut's global sixties / Zeina Maasri. - Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2020. - 281 p. ; 26 cm. - The global Middle East . - Global Middle East (Cambridge, England) .

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : Beirut in the Global Sixties : Design, Politics and Translocal Visuality - Dislocating the Nation : Mediterraneanscapes in Lebanon's Tourist Promotion - The Hot Third World in the Cultural Cold War : Modernism, Arabic Literary Journals and US Counterinsurgency - The Visual Economy of 'Precious Books' : Publishing, Modern Art and the Design of Arabic Books - Ornament is No Crime : Decolonising the Arabic Page from Cairo to Beirut - Art is in the 'Arab Street': The Palestinian Revolution and Printscapes of Solidarity - Draw Me a Gun : Radical Children's Books in the Trenches of 'Arab Hanoi.'

"Exploring the intersections of visual culture, design and politics in Beirut from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, this compelling interdisciplinary study critically examines a global conjuncture in Lebanon's history, marked by anticolonial struggle and complicated by a Cold War order. Against a celebratory reminiscence of the "golden years", Beirut's long 1960s is conceived of as a liminal juncture, an anxious time and space when the city held out promises at once politically radical and radically cosmopolitan. Zeina Maasri examines the transnational circuits that animated Arab modernist pursuits, shedding light on key cultural transformations that saw Beirut develop as a Mediterranean site of tourism and leisure, a nexus between modern art and pan-Arab publishing and, through the rise of the Palestinian Resistance, a node in revolutionary anti-imperialism. Drawing on uncharted archives of printed media this book expands the scope of historical analysis of the postcolonial Arab East"--

9781108487719 9781108720830


Art and society--Lebanon--Beirut.
Modernism (Art)--Lebanon--Beirut.
Cosmopolitanism--Lebanon--Beirut.
Design--Lebanon--Beirut.
Book design--Lebanon--Beirut.
Decolonization in art.
Visual communication--Political aspects--Lebanon--Beirut.


Beirut (Lebanon)--Civilization--20th century.

N72.S6 / M225 2020