This is a conversation with Banah Ghadbian. She’s a Syrian activist whose dissertation “Ululating from the Underground: Syrian Women’s Protests, Performances, and Pedagogies under Siege” was the subject of our conversation. As usual, we ended up talking about a lot of other things as well.

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Topics Discussed:

Banah’s story growing up in a Syrian revolutionary family and being targeted by the regime as a result
The video that Banah released on YouTube in 2011, which the Syrian regime played on state tv
Her dissertation: Ululating from the Underground: Syrian Women’s Protests, Performances and Pedagogies under Siege (video summary)
“How do Syrian women and youth heal from violence? How can our communities be embodied when displaced from our lands and spirits?”
What is often missing from a lot of discourse regarding Syria?
The chronicles of Enab Baladi + An idea called Daraya
How does Banah think about the Syrian story and how it’s often misrepresented online?
What the Syrian revolution already achieved
Multiplicities and the entrenched ‘manliness’ of war analyses (reference to episode with Aida Hozic)
Undoing the diaspora/local binary
Pedagogies of liberation vs refugee/NGO industrial complex
Being friends with Hala Barakat, who was murdered in September of 2017 alongside her mother Orouba
Scarcity idea coming from an inherently capitalist logic
The Syrian revolution and anti-blackness; intersectionality
The misleading debates around ‘integration’, Alan Kurdi
Talking about sectarianism
Being in the dominant group at home, and in the minority in the diaspora

Recommended Books

Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline Paperback – November 18, 2014 by Malu Halasa, Zaher Omareen by Nawara Mahfoud
Zaatardiva by Suheir Hammad
Homegirls and Handgrenades by Sonia Sanchez

Music by Tarabeat.

Death of a Revolution