| Summary/Abstract |
This article explores how the Arab Marxist, Mahdi Amel (1936–1987), conceptualized hegemony in a colonial and sectarian context. I explore Amel’s articulation of ideology as class struggle in relation to Gramsci and other leftist intellectuals of his generation. My aim is to expand our understanding of how hegemony is transformed when it travels into anti-colonial, Arab Marxist thought in general and its Lebanese communist variant in particular. The first part of the article looks at Amel’s articulation of Arab bourgeois hegemony under colonialism and its manifestation in political rather than civil society. The second part details Amel’s theorization of sectarian bourgeois hegemony in Lebanon. In Amel’s thought, the relationship between class, sect and state, which I explore, gave rise to a chronic and sectarian hegemonic crisis that has haunted the Lebanese bourgeoisie from the time of independence until the present.
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