The occupied Syrian Jawlan has been going through an exceptional phase during the past decade; (specifically with the beginning of the events in Syria, and in part, as a direct result of them) characterized by anxiety, confusion, imbalance, and loss of peace of mind. These surrounding circumstances, and their repercussions on the Jawlani Syrians, generated a state of frustration and a decline in effectiveness on several levels. Perhaps the most prominent of these is the noticeable shrinkage of the civil and cultural spaces. We think that the fluctuating social dynamics and the destabilization of public consensus, revealed by recent conflict issues within the Jawlani community, may indicate a process of profound transformation in the public sphere, which has not yet taken a stable form.

      The last decade has provided favorable conditions for the colonial power to push the policies of integration and adaptation in the occupied Syrian Jawlan to their limits. It is no secret that it seeks to control important joints in the public sphere, extract political representation from civil society, and seize its cultural field. This is because tightening control over the public sphere cannot be achieved without possessing the cultural field and its contents. The vacuum and the regression of activists in the field of arts and culture have allowed a broader expansion of the “culture” of colonial power through the creation of spaces, youth movements, and containment projects, where “Culture” is the outer shell. At the same time, at the core lie the agendas of altering consciousness and distorting identity.

      The scene is not entirely bleak, as this preamble might suggest. It is undoubtedly insufficient to capture this period and understand the transformations that occurred during it, but it is necessary to say: reactivating the civil and cultural margin has become a necessity after ten years of atrophy, and it has become a fundamental need; Social and political before it is a purely cultural luxury.