Céline Semaan (سيلين سمعان) is a radical optimist. A designer, writer and advocate working at the intersection of environmental and social justice, her work is shaped by her lived experience. Displaced from Lebanon to Canada as a child refugee and war survivor, she was, as she puts it, “politicised at a very young age.” Facing racism in both Canada and France, where she later trained as an artist, Semaan chose to channel her pain into action, imagining a fairer, more sustainable world for those most often left behind. Her vision comes to life through projects like The Slow Factory, which develops climate-positive solutions; her media platform Everything Is Political (EIP); and her new book, A Woman Is a School.
Part memoir, part cultural anthropology, A Woman Is a School draws on the tradition of the hakawati (the Arabic word for storyteller) as Semaan weaves her own story with the oral histories of her grandparents and great-grandparents. “These oral histories have created the fabric of my understanding,” she tells Dazed, crediting her elders with teaching her far more than any Western education. Through storytelling, Semaan reclaims where knowledge lives, not in institutions, but in lived experience, ancestral memory and care. In doing so, she invites us to imagine new ways of being and new ways of (re)building the world.
Below, the multi-disciplinary artist speaks to Dazed about her book, the importance of education outside of the Western academy and how we can begin to challenge our capitalist fantasies.
Courtesy of Céline Semaan
You write about deeply painful memories and experiences in this book as a war survivor and child refugee. What was it like to relive those memories?
Céline Semaan: The book is very much from the personal to the political and ties the two together. Sometimes we look at ourselves in a vacuum, away from politics, but for me, everything is political. For me, my lived experience, which includes being born in a war, escaping the war, and navigating between cultures, has positioned me as a sort of outsider. I feel that this type of lived experience counts for something. The whole book is essentially the education that exists outside of institutions, the education that exists in our culture, in the way we are raised. In the book, I talk a lot about nonverbal education – a look, a stare, sounds that we make with our mouth, as a means of communication. I think that this type of education, especially in the cultures of the Global South, is as important, if not more important, than institutional education.
Yeah, in A Woman is a School, you take aim at a lot of things: Western therapy, sexism, European beauty standards – but in particular, you call out Western academic institutions. You centre people, not universities, as schools in their own right.
Céline Semaan: Absolutely. There is an education that is purposefully discredited by the Western Academy, which is the Indigenous way of life. Colonial frameworks are designed to erase, discredit and subjugate people. For us to be able to talk about decolonisation or liberation struggles, we must also create a framework for unlearning and for changing the balance between what is a form of education and why it characterises itself as superior. These notions of supremacy always suggest that there is something more valuable than another, implying that there is a culture that is more credible than another. There is a framework that is better, more advanced, or more civilised than another.
All of these ways of measuring value in terms of education are colonial frameworks of valuing education, often favouring the education coming from the West, at the expense of discrediting, nulling and rendering the education of the Global South as irrelevant.
For me, my lived experience, which includes being born in a war, escaping the war, and navigating between cultures, has positioned me as a sort of outsider. I feel that this type of lived experience counts for something
You write in your introduction: ‘My responsibility as a Lebanese Arab woman writer is to collect oral stories – small tales of resistance that would otherwise be forgotten.’ What do oral histories and their traditions mean to you? What have they given you?
Céline Semaan: These oral histories that I’ve heard throughout my life have created the fabric of my understanding. They’ve created the fabric of my perspective, of the things that have shaped my worldview. And when it came to me, to start an organisation, to begin connecting the dots in my life and creating something that didn’t exist, like Slow Factory or Everything Is Political – all of these have been built on these oral traditions. They are based on the idea that we give ourselves permission. We don’t need to wait for someone else to validate us. These are coming from the oral traditions of survival throughout my life, listening to my elders, to my grandparents, to teachers and neighbours, talking about their ways of surviving or their ways of resisting.
All of these oral traditions have also shaped the way I see the world, as a politicised world. I was politicised at a very young age, because I was living in a war zone. Because of that, or maybe even without that, because my culture is predominantly a circular culture where we talk about spirituality, philosophy, politics, and education as interconnected. We don’t isolate things like that in the ‘Middle East’, if you will. That’s what they call us. But even saying the word Middle East is extremely colonial, because it was named after the middle and east in terms of London. It’s the middle, starting from London and the east of the other land that London has colonised, which was India at the time. And so it was named the ‘Middle East’ by the British colonisers, to identify this region according to where they are.
Can I ask you about how you define ‘woman’ in the book? You define it as: ‘To be a human who identifies as a woman regardless of the national state’s definition of femininity and without limitation of gender norms imposed and established under patriarchal colonial rule’. How did you come to this definition of ‘woman’, and what was it informed by?
Céline Semaan: Throughout my childhood in Lebanon, and especially coming of age as a young woman, the definition of feminism felt like it excluded women from my country or even from the Global South. It was an exclusive definition that meant that you had to be a certain type of modern, right? For instance, the definition of feminism meant wearing revealing clothes, but a veiled woman is not a feminist because she’s modest. There was a cognitive dissonance with the word feminist because it didn’t feel like it was for all people.
But, the definition of ‘womanism’ coined by Alice Walker, which is defined as: ‘a Black feminist framework that centres the experiences and perspectives of black women, while also addressing issues of race, gender and other forms of oppression’, has always really spoken to me. I love this definition, and I thought, ‘OK, this is closer to what I’m talking about.’ So the word woman for me meant more than ‘feminism, you know? Then again, women also could be an exclusive term. We’re seeing now how JK Rowling, for instance, is anti trans and is trying to weaponise the word ‘woman’. And I did not want this book to weaponise the word or to remove it from whoever connects with it. So I tried to craft a definition that was as inclusive as possible, knowing very well that it’s impossible to include everything in one word, but to actually stretch it as much as we can, to include as many people as we need to.
We are living under Western failure right now. This is a failure. The system has failed. It has failed the majority.
In the chapter ‘Of Sacred Rebellion and Joyful Defiance’, you dare the reader to “access the Sacred Rebellion that lives in your heart and to allow that rebellion to move you towards Joyful Defiance.” A defiance that “creates change, that loves madly”. I wrote in the margin of that section: ‘How do we get there?’ As more and more of us internalise capitalist values without knowing, how do we challenge our capitalist fantasies and make way for liberation?
Céline Semaan: Let’s look at climate justice, for example, which is the field in which I work. There is an idea that a climate activist is a perfect person who never travels on a plane, never eats meat, never touches plastic, and somehow weaves their clothes. It’s almost as if we’re expecting people who have high ideals to live like monks, to live like nuns, to live in a way of abstinence. When we’re talking about liberation or rebellion, there is a joyful element to it. Maybe it’s because of the way my culture addresses rebellion and liberation. It’s a childlike, joyful, playful rebellion, you know? A sort of rebellion that is in spite of it all. In spite of it all, I’m not going to surrender. In spite of it all, I’m going to be sovereign. It’s not because I am perfect. It is because I am.
I cannot expect myself to be perfect when we are living under such a compounded crisis. We are living under Western failure right now. This is a failure. The system has failed. It has failed the majority. For instance, I’m in Beirut right now, and there are compounding crises that we live under. So to expect perfection from ourselves is utterly colonial. It excludes anyone from entering the dance of liberation. It excludes anyone from learning about liberation. It is exclusive. Ultimately, what I think I’m allergic to is exclusivity.
A Woman Is a School is out now. The A Woman is a School book launch in Beirut is at the Beirut Art Center in conversation with Noura Erakat on August 8 at 7pm BST.
