Affective atmospheres, urban geopolitics and conflict (de)escalation in Beirut

- Urban geopolitics needs to take seriously the lived experiences of urban conflict.
- Joining urban geopolitics and affective atmospheres literatures opens debate on intensities of feeling in urban conflict.
- Atmospheric shifts marked escalation and de-escalation of violence in Beirut.
- The built environment is key in propagating affective atmospheres of conflict and in shaping atmospheres of de-escalation.
- An atmospheric urban geopolitics produces less militaristic and more embodied cartographies of contested cities.

The article joins literature on urban geopolitics and on affective atmospheres to trace the intensities of feeling that propagate during escalation and de-escalation of urban conflict in Beirut. Based on two months of fieldwork in 2010 in the Lebanese capital, it considers the deadly clashes of May 2008 between government- and opposition-affiliated militias. Political decisions and deliberate interventions involving the urban built environment before and after the clashes, contributed to propagating affective atmospheres of (de)escalation, which in turn impacted on the residents' practical and emotional responses to violence. The paper proposes an atmospheric urban geopolitics that moves away from techno-centric, disembodied approaches to urban conflict, and that instead takes seriously the lived experiences of urban (de)escalation.