NGOing and Its Imagined Afterlives: Activist Critiques After the August 2020 Beirut Port Explosion

ABSTRACT This article examines the reconfiguration of NGO activism in Lebanon following the catastrophic August 2020 Beirut port explosion. Lebanon's vibrant NGO sector, which flourished in the 1990s, witnessed another boom after the explosion, leading to expanding yet critical modalities of activist participation in NGOs. I argue that the recent boom simultaneously entrenched neoliberal and neocolonial forms of governance and generated critical communities that imagined NGO afterlives. NGO activists fostered grassroots networks of care and solidarity. They also contributed to a new translocal governance regime managed by the World Bank, the European Union, and the United Nations. In this process, growing numbers of NGO activists articulated critiques of corrupt state institutions, the NGOization of politics, and neocolonial translocal governance. Even though the NGO form persisted in Lebanon, experienced groups of Lebanese activists, who had previously believed in the potential of NGO‐led projects to bring positive change, began to imagine the afterlives of existing NGO‐aided governmental regimes that were dependent on Western funding. Diverse groups of activists more systematically and vocally questioned the promise of NGOs. A focus on the multilayered critiques of NGO‐centered development and humanitarian projects articulated by NGO activists advances conversations around the future of NGOs, activism, and political agency.