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- Convenors:
-
Samuli Schielke
(Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO))
Aymon Kreil (Universiteit Gent)
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- Format:
- Workshop
Short Abstract:
In On Humanity in Dark Times, Hannah Arendt argues that the world is what is between humans. “Dark times” are marked by “worldlessness”, the shattering of the shared world. Engaging with her work, we discuss how humans are able to - or fail to - maintain connections across divides today.
Long Abstract:
Hannah Arendt’s 1959 essay Von der Menschlichkeit in finsteren Zeiten (On Humanity in Dark Times) takes up the world as something that exists between humans, is the outcome of their actions together. This shared world, Arendt argues, makes us fully human. “Dark times” are marked by the shattering of the shared world, or “worldlessness”. Absolute truth claims hinder a discussion. Escape into private space results in a loss of connection. The shared experience of oppression could nurture a “brotherliness that obliterated all distinctions”, and yet Arendt proposes friendship as a better alternative to brotherliness of the oppressed which “has never yet survived the hour of liberation by even a minute.” Rather than compassion (Mitleid), she proposes the capacity to rejoice for someone (sich mitfreuen) as a possible basis for a friendship across irreconcilable differences and truth claims. Such friendship may help reestablish a shared world.
Arendt’s essay offers a key and little-read contribution to the theme of commoning and uncommoning, especially in our dark times. This workshop invites contributions in German or English based on ethnographic research that engage with Arendt’s text and relate to aspects of her intervention: how emotions of compassion or shared joy may shape relationships between people and groups; movements of escape from a shared world to the private; ways in which people are able to - or fail to - maintain friendship and connection across divides; and processes of polarisation that result in mutually hostile fragmentary worlds, which only meet in mutual shock and incomprehension.
Accepted contributions:
Contribution short abstract:
The paper presents Arendt's ontology of plurality as a timely contribution to contemporary debates in social anthropology concerning 'worlding', both in terms of worldbuilding and as sharing a common world. We claim that friendship, rather than solidarity, delivers the model for shared action.
Contribution long abstract:
Arendt's way of exploring human social existence claims plurality as its basic condition or 'the law of the Earth' (Arendt 1958, 1974). With this idea she provides conceptual possibilities gained from a phenomenological anthropological perspective to recent debates (within the anthropology of ethics as well as regarding the ontological turn in anthropology). According to Arendt, ontological diversity and irreducible plurality do not endanger mutual understanding and the possibility to share one world (as, following de Castro 2014, many scholars would hold). Those features are in fact the conditions for the meaningfulness of the very category of a 'world' to begin with (an argument recently put forward by Ingold 2018). She defends this account among other places in her famous address about G.E. Lessing, the 'father' of humanism in German enlightenment in the opening essay of her 'Men in Dark Times'. Friendship (greek philia) is not necessarily an attitude of private intimacy (HC, 243) but key to shared action, not solidarity, as identity-oriented social ontology nowadays would hold.
The talk will develop its line of argument from a selection of Arendt's texts including 'Men in Dark Times' and defend an Arendtian version of plural, critical phenomenology as a possible, feasible option for social anthropologists.
Contribution short abstract:
The discusses Mande humanism (West Africa) as a relational or intersubjective ethic in contexts marked by inhumane othering and violence. Critically engaging with Arendt's work, it also reveals how humanity and inhumanity can become entangled.
Contribution long abstract:
This paper critically engages with Arendt’s work on the human condition and humanity through the privileged standpoint of Mande humanism (West Africa). It focuses in particular on Arendt’s emphasis on the relational or intersubjective understanding of humanity, which chimes with views of the human and ethical practice in the Mande area. Rather than friendship and honest intellectual exchange, as in Arendt’s essay, discussions of how humanity and intimacy are bound up with and exceed hierarchy, violence and even inhumanity are focused on hospitality. I will provide two interrelated ethnographic illustrations of this ethic of in/humanity in host-stranger relations. The first draws on my historical ethnography of domestic slavery in the Gambia. In the late 19th and early 20th century, while slavery was waning, Gambian farmers hosted (free) migrant labourers and sometimes facilitated their assimilation of migrant labourers as “slaves”. Though free and autonomous, slave descendants have been since discriminated as an inferior endogamous status group. This has not prevented a shared humanity, friendship and intimacy from developing between “freeborn” and “slaves”. The second case study regards Gambian and other Sahelian emigrants in contemporary Angola creating ethical, albeit precarious, spaces of host-stranger “humanity” with the Angolan police in a context marked by illegalization, deportation and predatory policing. Ironically, this wider political violence also favours forms of commoning across the free-slave divide among the Sahelian migrants.
Contribution short abstract:
This presentation reflects on the relationship between personal migration experiences and seemingly disconnected public discourses on migration. It will think with Arendt’s essay whether the sharing, the making public, of personal migration experiences can be a basis for rebuilding a shared world.
Contribution long abstract:
This presentation reflects on the relationship between personal migration experiences and public discourses on migration. It is part of a broader endeavour to understand how such migration experiences affect how people talk and think about migration in the context of profound socio-economic and political transformations in regions experiencing large-scale emigration. Interest in this question arose from an apparent divide. On the one hand, sizeable out-migration means that many people experience migration, either because they themselves migrate or because people close to them leave. On the other hand, such regions are often hostile to immigration. Personal experiences of migration, often discussed only in private, if at all, are faced with a louder and seemingly disjointed public discourse on migration. This divergence is linked to who is seen and talked about as a migrant, as migration is often represented as immigration of ‘visible others’ who are fundamentally different from a homogeneous and fixed ‘host society’.
This presentation asks what difference it might make to bring various personal experiences of migration into the public discourse. Firstly, it will think with Hannah Arendt’s 1959 essay whether situations of large-scale migration can lead to the shattering of shared worlds and a retreat into private space. Secondly, it will explore whether the sharing, and thus the making public, of personal experiences of migration can be a basis for brotherliness and/or friendship and hence for commoning and rebuilding a shared world. Finally, it asks whether academic knowledge production about migration could also benefit from such a perspective.
Contribution short abstract:
We tend to think of the world as ‘out there’ with us ‘in it’, but for Hannah Arendt the world “arises between people” in discourse. Drawing on my observations from teaching her œuvre to students, I use her “On humanity in dark times” to rethink the university as a public realm of world-making.
Contribution long abstract:
“Nothing in our time is more dubious … than our attitude towards the world” said Hannah Arendt when accepting the Lessing prize in 1959. It has remained like this until today: we tend to think of the world as ‘out there’ with us ‘in it’. But in her speech “On humanity in dark times”, Arendt conceptualized the world as that which “arises between people” in discourse. When I teach Arendt’s œuvre to BA-students at the University of Konstanz, a key aspect of this seminar is a ‘walking lab’ in which the students and I leave the seminar room. Walking through the university adjacent forest, we retrace the flight story of Hannah Arendt and her companions, such as Walter Benjamin, and work through assembled materials that I hand out: maps, ID documents, letters, poems, and photographs. Through moving our own bodies, and by jointly engaging with these various artefacts, abstract concepts such as freedom, Paria, rights, or humanity take on a new, embodied connotation. Students begin to relate to Arendt’s insistence that thinking is a practice, too. They interweave their own accounts of foreignness and isolation into our group discussions. Teaching Hannah Arendt in contemporary times enables students to rethink the purpose of the university, to learn that critical thought is bound up with subjectivity, that truth is never final, and that the human condition needs an (imagined) other worth fighting (for). Instead of retreating into what Arendt calls worldlessness, I view the university as a public realm of world-making.
Contribution short abstract:
Drawing on two texts by Hannah Arendt, 'On Humanity in Dark Times' and 'Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,' this paper explores the post-war experiences of wounded Afghan veterans in Iran, examining the possibilities and limits of sustaining a shared world under dictatorship.
Contribution long abstract:
In 'On Humanity in Dark Times,' Hannah Arendt describes “worldlessness” as the shattering of the shared world that exists “in-between” people, depriving them of the ability to engage in discourse that respects differences. I situate Arendt’s call for open discourse in public space alongside her essay 'Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,' where she insists on the moral obligation to judge (discerning what’s wrong and right) and to resist complicity, even under authoritarian duress.
Drawing on fieldwork with Afghan refugees who returned to Iran after being injured in regional conflicts, this paper examines how these disabled ex-combatants actively sought to involve Iranian state actors and military cadres in their lives, inviting them to participate in intimate events such as children’s birthdays, religious gatherings, and even family disputes. Despite achieving a degree of state intimacy, their demands for kin-like care from the state unfolded within a broader context of national hostility. In public discourse, close identification with the state was equated with allegiance to an oppressive regime, leading neighbours and communities to respond with mistrust and derision. These dynamics often severed preexisting ties, highlighting the fraught nature of the ‘shared world’ in politically contested spaces.
By foregrounding these everyday, conflictual encounters, this paper draws on Arendt’s insights into the ‘moral imperative to judge’ and the ‘significance of discourse in sustaining the world and humanity’ to illustrate how individuals craft moral judgments and navigate collective life under conditions that strain coexistence, exploring both the viability and dissolution of a “shared world” under dictatorship.
Contribution short abstract:
How do Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in southern Kyrgyzstan overcome deep differences in their daily lives in the post-conflict context? How do Kyrgyz state authorities and Uzbek ethnic minority communities navigate cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity?
Contribution long abstract:
The Osh conflict of summer 2010 in southern Kyrgyzstan, the worst unrest in decades and the second largest in Soviet Central Asia's history after the 1990 conflict, involved significant tensions between the Uzbek business sector and the Kyrgyz state structure. This paper examines the practices of overcoming differences between Kyrgyz state authorities and Uzbek businessmen in the post-conflict environment of southern Kyrgyzstan. My aim is not to define what 'difference' is or how to overcome differences in the best possible way. Instead, I am interested in exploring specific practices of governing differences and understanding how they 'function' as everyday practices within a particular social environment.
At the heart of overcoming polarization—such as rebuilding inter-ethnic connections and fostering a symbiotic relationship between the state and business—many Uzbeks have employed strategies centered on re-establishing patronage networks with Kyrgyz state authorities. Uzbek businessmen use these networks to protect their enterprises in exchange for political loyalty and securing Uzbek votes during elections. These patron-client relationships, built on mutual obligation and strategizing, often blend elements of friendship and patronage, shaped by self-interest and bound by a moral system.
In this context, Kyrgyz kin terms play a vital role in bridging polarization and fostering patron-client ties. Specifically, the ritualized parenthood ökül ata-ene serves as a framework where patrons are selected by clients for economic support, security, and overcoming polarization. This paper delves into the dynamics of these relationships, highlighting their significance in navigating inter-ethnic and socio-political challenges in post-conflict southern Kyrgyzstan.
Contribution short abstract:
For Arendt, friendship is worth sacrificing any absolute claim on truth. This contribution focuses on a master calligrapher in Cairo after the 2011 uprising. His manner to navigate friendship during this period shows the uneasy interplay of humanness and politics, and its possible prospects.
Contribution long abstract:
A paradox in Hannah Arendt’s essay Humanity in Dark Times is the ambivalence towards truth she expresses in it. According to her, friendship is worth sacrificing any absolute claim on a better knowledge of the world to keep the dialogue open. Yet, she presents friendship as a way to engage with the world, and warns of the dangers of trying to escape responsibilities towards it. Thereby, giving priority to a struggle in the name of a cause or a conviction seems to go against the very notion of humanness she defends. Indeed, people often make strong claims about the world, yet maintain durable relations with others with diverging opinions. This contribution focuses on ‘Abd al-Qadir, a master calligrapher in Cairo, in the direct aftermath of the 2011 uprising. His great openness to people holding various opinions about religion and politics shows in the broad range of people frequenting his workshop for friendship’s aim. His attitude towards them involved uncompromising stances about his art, for which he was widely recognized, and positions in which politics were set aside for the sake of conviviality, with sometimes an active avoiding of conflictual topics, echoing antipolitics at state level, yet with different meanings. The manner ‘Abd al-Qadir navigated friendship during a troubled period shows the uneasy interplay of humanness and politics. At the light of Arendt's essay, it should prompt us to reflect upon what politics do to humanness and upon what political prospects humanness offer as a value to defend against all odds.
Contribution short abstract:
“How can they possibly support that?” is a rhetorical question that does not beg for an answer. I seek to answer it by following the lead of Hannah Arendt's "worldlessness”. When empathy and solidarity become the moral ground to support mass murder, what grounds exist to recover a shared world?
Contribution long abstract:
Following the outbreak in 2023 of the most recent and by far deadliest in the ongoing series of wars over Palestine, I was often told that the others have now shown their true face. Pro-Palestine activists said so about German media and authorities who supported Israel’s destruction of Gaza. Mainstream German media said so about activists who supported Palestinian militants. The recognition of the true face of the enemy does not imply a recognition of the enemy’s motivations but rather the opposite, incomprehension: “How can they possibly support that?” - a rhetorical question that does not beg for an answer. I try to provide a partial answer to this question by taking the lead offered by Hannah Arendt about the world as what is between us, and “Weltlosigkeit” or “worldlessness” as a feature of war and extreme violence. Based on conversations I participated in during 2023 and 2024, I suggest that under circumstances of violent polarisation empathy and solidarity can become the moral ground to support sustained mass murder. In the splintered world that results from exclusive solidarity and extreme acts of violence, emotions and stances of the enemy are not only wrong: they become impossible. People who hold them can be only stupid or evil. Seeking to restore a common ground with them is immoral, a betrayal of solidarity and humanity. Rather than offering moral alternatives, I therefore probe some historical precedents of the partial recovery of a shared world.