Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle East The Case for Lebanon

Since the West's very early flirtations with the modern Near East, and especially in the past one hundred years of East-West relations, there has been considerable difficulty in understanding and defining the Middle East, the Arab world, pan-Arabism, Arab nationalism, and Middle Eastern identities in general. The Western impulse of conflating national identity with language, state, and ethnicity-often subsuming Arabic language into Arab ethnicity-has contributed to this misunderstanding and misreading of the region. For while the Middle East can be accurately referred to by way of the generic "Arab world" label, the appellation itself is a misleading over-simplification that conceals an inherent diversity and multiplicity of Middle Eastern cultures, ethnicities, languages, and nationalities. And while there is certainly a dominant Arab ethnos, there are also significant numbers of Middle Eastern peoples and nationalities with historical memories and ethnocultural bonds that challenge the dominant Arabist paradigm.

Franck Salameh is assistant professor of Near Eastern studies at Boston College.