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.

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

Relevant Resources and names mentioned:

• The Armenian Genocide Is Not a Past Event, It Is an Ongoing Struggle with Sophia Armen (future guest) and Banah Ghadbian
• M. Bahati Kuumba
• Mexican Anarchist collective El Rebozo
• Jana (Raqqa group)
• Raqqa Free Youth Assembly
• Ghalia Rahal and Mazaya. Links 1 and 2
• Rethinking the concept of revolution through the Syrian experience by Dr Charlotte Al-Khalili
• The Book Collectors of Daraya: A Band of Syrian Rebels, Their Underground Library, and the Stories that Carried Them Through a War by Delphine Minoui
• Khotowat (images below)
• Rethinking the Apocalypse: An Indigenous Anti-Futurist Manifesto by Indigenous Action
• Randa Maddah + The fall of Syria’s Eastern Ghouta
• Women Now for Development
• Stop the Killing movement
• Example of Stop the Killing Grafitti campaign that happened in Qamishlo, Suweida, Tal and elsewhere + also
• The Al Jazeera doc
• Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Shami (Leila is an upcoming guest on the podcast)
• Yasser Munif’s book: The Stolen Revolution: Resistance from the Rubble in Syria
• The Syrian People Know Their Way
• The Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution
• Gayatri Gopinath’s book: Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures
• Aida Hozic
• Jane Elliot
• Majdal Center
• A look at the Lebanon uprising through its chants – my article for ShadoMag
• The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study by Fred Moten
• Gender Justice and Feminist Knowledge Production in Syria
• Why White Nationalists Love Bashar al-Assad by Mariam Elba
• Ghassan Halwani and the reclaiming of Lebanon’s imaginaries
• Social Justice and Israel/Palestine: Foundational and Contemporary Debates (I contributed a chapter to this)
• Bassel Shehadeh
• Sofia Armen (I’m interviewing her next)
• Syrians for Black Power
• Fadwa Souleiman
• Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870-1920 by Akram Khater
• Abounaddara

The Videos

2011

Current

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Images from Khotowat: Website no longer exists

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Freedom Days had a great YouTube channel, here’s a song that shows Syrian women’s invisibilized gendered labors in the revolution: 

Banah mentioned Free Women of Damascus. She calls them Masked Singers of Damascus 

Sustainable rooftop farming projects in liberated Syria 

Estayqazat, Syrian feminist film collective she mentioned 

Women of Banias using Olive branches in protest

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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

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Music by Tarabeat.