Trauma and the Invisible History of the War Disappeared

Although the Lebanese civil war ended in 1990, writing the history of those who had gone missing during the war remains a very challenging task. Given the reluctance of successive governments to conduct serious investigations in this respect, as it is in many post-conflict societies, will the traumatic experiences of the war disappeared remain forever buried? Join us on 11 May 14GMT as Dr Dani Nassif discusses the possibility of retrieving this invisible history by tracing its post-traumatic repercussions in the present. In a close reading of fictional scenarios from Rabee Jaber’s novels, Dr Nassif will explore the "traumatic aṭlāl", new dynamics of intergenerational trauma among the disappeared survivors, and an ambitious model of trauma testimonies that emphasize the role of fiction in mitigating the pain of the victim.

Dr Nassif is an Arabic Studies instructor and researcher at the University of Regensburg and the University of Göttingen in Germany. His research interests include modern Arabic literature and culture, with a particular focus on post-conflict trauma narratives, memory work, and historiography. In addition to his recent book Trauma, Memory, and the Lebanese Post-War Novel (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), he has several academic publications in both Arabic and English, such as “The War, the Undead, and the Labyrinthine aṭlāl: The Case of Postwar Beirut in Rabee Jaber’s Novel The Mehlis Report” (2021) and “Testimonies of the Living Dead: No Fantasy, No Tragedy – The Past” (2022).