2025 | Why Not: The Power of Imagination as Resistance

Why not…

It is our right to step away from our tasks for a moment, to pause our relentless attempts at understanding, to take pride, applaud, be overwhelmed with tears or joy like children. It is our right to postpone our search for tomorrow, even if just for a brief moment, to rise up and stand tall, to bury and mourn our dead as they deserve to be, and to lament the seasons of burnt bread. It is also our right, if we choose, to curse and scream, and to do as we please, however we please, without watching our very existence collapse over us this time.
Finally, we can regain a sense of hope with confidence. The dictator has fallen, the puppet of tyranny fled as figures like his rightfully should, and our spilt blood has blossomed as we too deserve.
Yet the place hasn’t changed; dawn is still gray and dim over our deliberately forgotten East, teetering on the edge of the abyss. Gaza bleeds as it catches its final breaths. Lebanon stumbles through its wounds and contradictions, standing before a new phase and an anxious tomorrow. Syria has freed itself, though it has been brought to its knees, gathering the scattered remnants of a plundered state and decaying institutions, wide open to the wagers of fraternal friends and foes alike.

Why not…

So long as all the swords that pierced our flesh failed to break the strength of our spirit, it is our duty to regain the confidence to dream and return to our first cry for freedom. It is our duty to catch our breath and pose all our questions anew, to craft our own vision: What shall we do? Where did we err? How can we conceal the contradictions within us and between us so that we may march together in unison, embracing our diversity and differences? How can we build a collective project to rise from the abyss, with one unified voice that simultaneously expresses our identity and respects our diversity?

Why not…

We are capable of reinventing our tools, of liberating them to become more attuned to the humanity within us. We can tread barefoot, stripped of our prejudices against those barricading themselves behind the opposing trenches within our own homelands, to jointly shape the question of freedom sought by all conflicting – almost irreconcilable – fronts within our peoples. This is our space, and this is our area of work to which we have no alternative. What does culture seek to achieve, and what can it do beyond obstinately defending our dwindling hope, beyond preserving the will to remember and hold on to all our fragile spaces? Imagination is the only remedy capable of safeguarding our ability to dream and visualize a future. As for the present, like history, it is shaped only by the spears of the powerful. These questions are not new, but they are more pressing now than ever before

Though the tools we hold may seem fragile against the onslaught of violence and genocide, we strive to create a space for resilience, art, literature, and imagination that resists and grants meaning to life in this abyss. As Jean-François Lyotard once said: “In the face of grand narratives, small stories emerge to reshape reality.” This is why we believe that creativity is our way of countering the violence of monolithic narratives – those that seek to suppress diversity and impose their versions of truth on everyone.
In an increasingly narrow and hostile world, art becomes a space for breathing, for life. And amid a reality that seems to be redrawing maps through wars, we resist by invoking the power of imagination – the last refuge of truth in an age where simulation has overtaken reality.

Yet as we resist, we realize that the challenges we face do not stem solely from wars or oppression but also from the profound transformations the world is undergoing in a post-capitalist and digital age. Here, knowledge and imagination are replaced by an abundance of superficial information, and humans become instant consumers of the very information they produce. In this context, imagination itself – the essence of creativity – is threatened with extinction. These rapid social transformations, in turn, have also diminished our appreciation for meaningful language. Writers are no longer just creators; they have become promoters, sellers, and employees for their audiences. We are witnessing a “commodification of the self,” where creativity is reduced to just another product in the marketplace.

In the face of such a reality, insisting on crafting beauty becomes itself a form of resistance. This is why our friends at Ettijahat – Independent Culture strive to offer new tools for creativity, in an attempt to resist the surrounding mediocrity by creating alternative spaces – a “refuge for shaping the future,” if you will, where thought and dialogue can thrive. They seek to reclaim the power of imagination as a means to understand and transform the world. What they do is more than merely create a workspace; they cultivate fertile soil for nurturing small dreams, enabling young men and women to invent new art forms that reflect their realities and resist exclusion. Their work includes documenting the truth and presenting through art, whether novels, films, paintings, or academic research. These small projects are not only acts of resistance against marginalization but also seeds of hope we plant to reap a different tomorrow.

This brings to mind a long conversation I once had with a friend in Syria, who was imprisoned in the 1980s and endured years of brutality and violence while in detention. I told her, “You are the ones who deserve the credit, we are indebted to you.” Back then, when our generation was still in its youth, we heard of those brave people who dared to say “No,” standing alone against tyranny. She humbly replied, “No one deserves credit; we simply carry these burdens and pass them along.” But I insist on saying that the voices of resistance, those who refused to surrender, those who said “No” in an age of submission – those are the voices that make us believe this is not the end. We are rediscovering ourselves thanks to these human chains that stretch across generations, connecting us to those who preceded us and to those who will follow. They enable us to create narratives that resist, to tell the world, “This is not the end.”

Why not…
We have enough willpower and strength to push through, despite our wounds and our incessant bleeding, and to march on towards hope.

Samar Yazbek