Shayna M. Silverstein

How to read or teach Fraught Balance

In poetic homage to the predominant choreosonic patterns of dabke practice, Fraught Balance is organized into three units, each of which comprises two chapters. The book is designed to be read through in its entirety; alternatively, individual parts can be selected for specific reading and teaching aims. Interludes serve as brief essays that introduce each of the three parts, offer background on relevant historical and political contexts, and discuss the methodologies that support the work of a given unit.

PART I, “Folkloric Dance,” looks at the gendered, ethnocentric and classed discourses entangled in cultural heritage practices as part of the formation of secular, territorial nationalism and the political ideologies of the authoritarian state. I ask what “Syria” means, and for whom, through a history of how social dabke became a national folkloric dance that projected specific visions of cultural citizenship in the newly independent Syrian nation-state (chapter 1) and in the Assadist regime (chapter 2).

PART II, “Everyday Performance,” examines gender and class dynamics in everyday practices and social spaces. I unpack the embodied and affective dynamics of dabke practice by focusing on the sonic and kinesic interactions that animate the social space of the live parties where dabke is practiced. Based on sensory and ethnographic fieldwork, this part portrays the dancing body as a listening body (chapter 3) and details how musicians craft a digital sonic aesthetic attuned to listeners’ desire for loud and distorted forms of live sound (chapter 4) that energize dancing.

PART III, “Conflict and Displacement,” extends the analyses of gender, class, and cultural difference from the earlier essays to the polarized politics of revolution, war, and displacement. I consider the role of dabke during these cataclysmic conditions, insisting on the tension between the affective capacity of performance to both forge and fragment social bonds. These final chapters employ digital ethnography (chapter 5) and in situ ethnography (chapter 6) to identify gendered spaces of power and reckon with the power of representation in precarious conditions of migration.

Table of Contents