"The Eager Arab Astronaut": Fantasies of (Superheroic) Flight in the Lebanese Diasporic Imagination

Abstract:This essay puts into conversation two texts that negotiate the fantasy of space, flight, and Arab identity, specifically focused on the Lebanese diaspora: A. Naji Bakhti's debut novel Between Beirut and the Moon (2020) and superhero comics about the Lebanese American Green Lantern Simon Baz (2012–2021). Drawing on a history of how aerial surveys and perspectives inflicted the modernizing logic of empires in Lebanon, this essay argues that the visual modalities of empire are reinscribed in these texts' fantasies of flight. In Between Beirut and the Moon, Adam dreams of becoming an astronaut and flying to the moon, a fantasy itself deeply entrenched and complicated by the logics of empire. In Green Lantern (2011–2016) and Green Lanterns (2016–2018), Simon Baz offers a complicated fulfillment of Adam's childhood fantasy as the "first Arab astronaut." Ultimately, while Simon's superpowers suggest the limitless, liberatory possibility of flight in the Lebanese imagination, in practice they reinforce many of the same restrictions that limit Adam's dream and necessitate his departure to England.