Description
Abstract:
This paper re-examines the roots of state fragmentation in Syria through the synthesis of Edward Said’s Orientalism and Malek Bennabi’s concept of Colonisability. While Orientalism illuminates the external production of domination through colonial discourse and intervention, Bennabi’s notion of Colonisability exposes the internal conditions of societal stagnation that make domination possible. Brought together, these frameworks offer a dual lens for analysing how external and internal forces have interacted to sustain political factionalism in post-colonial states. Using a qualitative, theory-testing process-tracing method, the paper traces Syria’s political evolution from the late Ottoman period to the contemporary civil war. It shows that neither Orientalism nor Colonisability alone adequately explains Syria’s chronic fragmentation. Rather, it is their intersection, manifest in elite co-optation, institutional manipulation, and the external legitimisation of competing power centres that perpetuates state disunity. By integrating Islamic and post-colonial thought, the study contributes a new theoretical synthesis for understanding how colonial legacies and internal vulnerabilities combine to reproduce factionalism. It speaks directly to BISA 2026’s call for “new thinking and new directions,” arguing that International Studies must engage with underused intellectual traditions to grasp the persistence of state weakness and dependency in the Middle East and beyond.
Keywords: Orientalism; Colonisability; Syria; post-colonial state; factionalism; governance; Middle East; decolonial theory.
