Building on her decades of research on Syria, Lisa Wedeen’s most recent book, Authoritarian Apprehensions, tackles one of the most challenging types of research: the non-occurrence of a phenomenon. In this case, Wedeen asks why so many Syrians, specifically the large mass of the population who did not directly or materially benefit from the regime, resisted the temptation to rise up against Bashar al-Asad and his regime, even as protests spread throughout the country starting in 2011.
As Wedeen demonstrated so adeptly in her first book on Syria, Ambiguities of Domination (1999), the regime of Hafiz al-Asad (which Bashar inherited at his father’s passing in 2000) was sustained in large part through practices of performative obedience. The public dissimulation she identified, which became widely known as the politics of “as if,” pushed our understandings of authoritarian resilience beyond apparatuses of state violence, for which the Syrian regime was also infamous. Authoritarian Apprehensions, too, pushes readers to think beyond materialist explanations to understand how the regime of the junior al-Asad secured the quiescence, if not the outright support, of so many of its citizens during this critical period. Here she argues that the regime has maintained its power through “ideological interpellation” (drawing on Althusser)—when a subject is hailed through moments of ritual affirmation that they simultaneously recognize and are produced by (as subjects)—of large swathes of its population that succeeded in making the status quo, and ambivalence, more appealing than possibilities of change. This focus on the “ambivalent middle” distinguishes Wedeen’s work in important ways from the main thrust of research on challenges to authoritarianism, which generally either focuses on outright opposition or core loyalists.
One of the notable aspects of this book is the way in which it masterfully weaves together and advances a wide range of literatures across subfields and disciplines—from debates in comparative politics on authoritarian resilience, and ethnic and contentious politics more broadly, to contributions in political theory and sociology on the power of ideology and political judgment. Temporally, the book begins with Bashar al-Asad’s rise to power and the development of what Wedeen terms “neoliberal autocracy” (chapter 1)—characterized by a turn toward some elements of market liberalism while, importantly, “cultivating desires for commodities, fostering new ambitions of upward mobility, and producing individual philanthropic programs envisioning citizens’ empowerment in ways that presume their limitations” (p. 32). This set of ideological productions and practices—epitomized by images of the first family and especially First Lady Asma al-Asad as sophisticated, urban, and even cosmopolitan—were particularly effective in reinforcing desires for order and calls for gradualism, rather than revolution, among the upper and middle classes in Damascus and Aleppo in the first year of the uprising. Each of the following chapters takes on a separate set of ideological forms that, for different groups and over time, come together to shape the response of the “ambivalent middle” (what came to be referred to as the “gray people” or al-ramadiyyin). Chapter 2 spotlights the role of humor, primarily in television serials but also in online series; chapter 3 turns to the oversaturation of news and informational media sources; and chapters 4 and 5 situate the functions of mourning and fear, respectively. As she did in her first book on Syria, Wedeen demonstrates how the examination of sites of cultural production reveals critical insights about the formation of complex attitudes and norms held by people whose political preferences and behavior can seem indiscernible to outsiders.
Although one can find a great deal to engage with in each of this book’s chapters, I want to focus on a few main contributions that are particularly potent for our time. First, Wedeen’s analysis of the foreclosure of the conditions of political judgment in Syria is instructive for other contexts where polarization is increasingly characteristic of politics. Rather than relying on the denial or censoring of information, Syria provides a cautionary tale of how “an excess of information and accelerated conditions of dissemination [are] exploited for authoritarian political gain” (p. 81). In addition to the more widely established mechanisms though which information overload and the dissemination of counterclaims can produce what Wedeen refers to as “siloed publics,” with people seeking out information that reaffirms their priors, her analysis draws attention to an overlooked and arguably more challenging consequence: “conditions of generalized uncertainty make it easy for people to find alibis for avoiding commitment to judgment at all” (p. 79; emphasis added). This process fundamentally privileges the status quo, even in contexts where “action might otherwise have seemed morally incumbent” (p. 80).
Second, Wedeen’s analysis of the seductive power of neoliberal ambitions of the “good life” in sustaining support for the status quo, particularly among the urban middle and upper classes, begs the question of the interplay of material and ideational factors. As Wedeen shows, purely economic and class-based arguments fail to capture the varied choices of many segments of Syrian society. Arguably, the economic openings ushered in by Al-Asad in the early 2000s likely had demonstrable effects on people’s assessments of their own potential. However, as the conflict wore on, these images receded in favor of other potent ideological forms, though never truly disappearing. As the economic situation in Syria deteriorates rapidly at the time of this writing, despite the reduction in hostilities, the “good life” may be as elusive as ever. Will alternative ideological forms be developed to maintain the politics of disavowal—reflected in the recurrent phrase in the book of “I know very well yet nevertheless…”—as international sanctions, rapid inflation, and internal fractures within the regime pose growing challenges to the potential for order? These questions are ever more important within Syria as well as beyond, as the world faces one of its most turbulent periods under the strain of a global pandemic—and potential challenge to the neoliberal order—in the modern era.
The book not only provides an analysis of the ideologies that sustain the position of “the ambivalent middle” (as well as certain elements of the opposition and loyalists) but also points to alternative spaces for discourse that “embrace the ambiguity of the situation … without giving up on judgment and political intervention as such” (p. 104). One notable example taken up in the book is the Syrian art collective Abounaddara, which posts weekly short videos online of complex, multidimensional, and nonsensational moments of Syria and Syrians. The question remains, however, whether and how these liminal spaces (which “interpellate” a limited set of audiences) can serve as incubators of profound challenge to the dominant ideological forms.
Finally, at a time when scholarship on Syria is rapidly growing in political science, even as the country itself remains inaccessible to most researchers, this book demonstrates the richness that can be achieved with deep contextual knowledge and ethnographic insights that go beyond the country’s most recent history. The research for this book also took Wedeen beyond Syria’s geographic boundaries, as she followed the paths of many of its citizens. As such, it provides an exemplar of sustained multisited ethnography and discourse analysis. The book is an invaluable contribution that will undoubtedly shape debates moving forward.
