The Levantine Warscape: Methodological Nationalism and the Politics of Normalization with the Israeli State

This article begins by identifying the Levant region in terms of a single warscape to argue that we should move beyond methodological nationalism when approaching and studying the region. It argues that if methodological nationalism remains unchallenged, the normalization of Israel by scholars becomes inevitable. Thus, after offering a critique of methodological nationalism, the article elaborates on the politics of normalization with Israel, which is one major aspect of war, and discusses how to combat normalization in denationalized terms. Seeing the Levant beyond methodological nationalism is not meant as a purely academic exercise. It has political implications for the struggle against normalization, and, importantly, opens a way to imagine futures with different and non-national empirical realities, where the present-day Lebanese, Israeli, Jordanian, and Syrian states (at least) are dismantled, and so are the politics of identity inherent to them.