ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the question of mourning within the particular context of the Lebanese experience. The history of Lebanon has been marked by a series of violent events whose repetitive character has rendered their elaboration as necessary as it is difficult. The chapter examines, from a psychoanalytic perspective, the specific modalities of mourning that accompanied these events. The Lebanese civil war ended in 1989 with the Taif Agreement, known as the National Reconciliation Accord, which provided a return to political normalcy after fifteen years of armed clashes. The assassination in 2005 of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in a massive truck-bomb explosion marked a turning point in the very history of Lebanon and was to inaugurate a cycle of violence that brought about a large movement of revolt and counter-revolt. Lebanon was lurching toward a new civil war that was destroying what has remained of its political institutions and putting into question the very sustainability of Lebanon as a country.
