Social agency inventing the nation: The case of Rahbani Brothers, Abdel Halim Caracalla & the Lebanese folk dance

Since the raise of postcolonial discourse, it has been difficult to look at folk dance groups in a none-western, ‘developed’ context without situating them in relation to the ‘nationalist’ project attributed to the West and the Soviet ‘normalization’ project. Through the specific case of the Lebanese Rahbani Brothers’ theater and Abdel Halim Caracalla’s dance theater, this paper aims to discuss the possibility of a theoretical framework that involves the role of individuals in the formation of social and cultural structures that is not utterly dictated, shaped and controlled by supreme and homogenous ideological, political or economic power. The paper relies, primarily, on the explanatory theory of False-necessity proposed by Roberto Unger