Belligerent Optimism

This article argues that alternative music in Lebanon is a privileged site for imagining and reconfiguring the country's futures. The work of Lebanese bands like Soapkills, Scrambled Eggs, and Mashrou’ Leila articulates situated experiences of the present through their “belligerent optimism,” a musical and ideological orientation that is irreverent and cynical but meets sensationalist narratives of Lebanon's intractable violence with a stubborn insistence on the possibility of futures beyond endless war. Through the framework of belligerent optimism, the article considers how the sonic, aesthetic, and presentational qualities of their music become speculative tools for envisioning a different Lebanon. The article provides a framework for examining much of the Arab world and similar contexts that centers vitality and joy rather than resistance or suffering. More broadly, belligerent optimism maps a path toward theorizing radical action as possible in the absence of remarkable or revolutionary events and with a stubborn indifference toward engagement with ossified identity categories.