The very short story in the time of revolution. al-Mihmāz (the Spur) and the Syrian author Zakariyā Tāmir

The mass protests swept through the Middle East in early 2011 underlined the role of modern information-communication technologies (ICT). From a literary point of view, the “Arab Spring” inevitably marked the birth of a new model of writing, characterised by a more participatory, global and immediate manner of expression that could be defined as Humanism 2.0. In this context, we may insert the experimental writing by the famous Syrian author Zakariyā Tāmir: on the al-Mihmāz (The Spur) Facebook page the writer begins a literary journey publishing daily posts and explicitly supporting the Syrian revolution. This contribution intends to analyse a few of Tāmir’s most significant posts published on Facebook. The time span is 2012, just one year after the Syrian revolution: thanks to aphorisms, posts and short stories, a new literary pact with potential readers is inaugurated, within a phenomenon that we can call al-adab al-raqmī (digital literature)