Introduction

What may best characterise worldwide revolutionary dynamics in the 1960s and 1970s lies in the junction between challenging a political and economic order and contesting social and cultural norms. A history of the New Left in the Arab East could be written through this lens and examine its numerous attempts to overthrow interlocking systems of power and oppression: to bridge the gap between workers, peasants and students, to rethink the connection between social struggles and national emancipation, and to experience new forms of organisation, of leadership, of social life and of gender relationships. From this perspective, this chapter traces the reframing of the Maoist notion of militant enquiry through the experiments of the OCAL in-the-making, with a special focus on the trajectory of the sociologist Waddah Charara.

Born in Lebanon's southern city of Bint Jbeil in 1942, into a Shi’ite milieu that was undergoing profound societal, economic and ideational changes, Charara co-founded Socialist Lebanon (SL, 1964–71) and shortly afterwards the Organisation of Communist Action in Lebanon (OCAL, 1971), whose creation resulted from the merger between Socialist Lebanon (SL), the Organisation of the Lebanese Socialists (OLS, 1969–71) and, to a lesser extent, the Union of the Lebanese Communists (1968–71) that split from the Lebanese Communist Party. The most significant New Left group in Lebanon, the OCAL constituted a crucible of ideas, which proved decisive in the formative years of individuals who would become leading figures on the academic and artistic stage. After he cut short his activities just prior the outbreak of the Lebanese wars (1975), Charara devoted his time to writing on diverse topics, ranging from Arab poetry and neighbourhood sociality in Lebanon to Arab political and social issues, and up to the rise of Hizbullah. Three questionings, though, drove his intellectual path: thinking the diversity of power and solidarity relationships, the dynamics of violence, and the structuration of the state.