Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure

Includes bibliographical references and index.

The social life of maps of Beirut -- Images of before/after in the economy of postwar construction -- Concealment, liveness, and Al Manar TV -- The open secret of concealment at the Mleeta Museum.

"Visions of Beirut explores how the creation and circulation of images has defined the cultural imaginaries and spatial contours of the city of Beirut. It analyzes how techniques of visualizing the city have shaped regimes of power and the texture of political events. Hatim El-Hibri draws on fieldwork as well as range of archival and textual material in Beirut-maps and urban plans, aerial photographs and GIS systems, real estate industry films and advertisements, public screens and memorials, drone-cam footage and live television broadcasts. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach to analyze such phenomena as the postwar construction of the city center, and Hizbullah's guerilla media practices and museum. In delving into the specificities of Beirut, Visions of Beirut offers a critical perspective on regional and global media and visual culture, a fresh understanding of the eventfulness that is the modern infrastructural condition, and a searing account of the inequalities that define the present"-- Provided by publisher.

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