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- Convenors:
-
Lucilla Lepratti
(Leipzig University)
Viola Castellano (University of Bayreuth)
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- Format:
- Roundtable
- Transfers:
- Open for transfers
Short Abstract:
In the wake of what has largely come to be recognised as a genocide of the Palestinian people, we ask what anthropologists can do to uphold the dignity and worth of every life, in Palestine/Israel, Lebanon, Germany and beyond. What is our responsibility and how do we live up to it?
Long Abstract:
In November 2023 the DGSKA published a statement condemning the attack of 7 October on Israel by Hamas and other armed groups, as well as the war waged on Gaza by the Israeli state. It was one of the few German disciplinary associations to also acknowledge the violence inflicted upon Gaza's population, one month into what the ICJ determined to be plausibly amounting to genocide. More recently, the UN Special Committee to investigate Israeli practices found Israel’s warfare methods in Gaza consistent with genocide. Against this, students around the world have been protesting and have often been faced with repression and police brutality. Scholars speaking out in their support and in support of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination have been silenced. German campuses have become particularly hostile environments for anti-war protests. Nonetheless, scholars and students have been forging new alliances and opening up discursive spaces. In this roundtable we want to look back at the years since the DGSKA statement was published and ask what anthropologists have been doing and what more we can do to uphold the dignity and worth of every life, in Palestine/Israel, Lebanon, Germany and beyond. What is our responsibility and how do we live up to it in the face of repression and censorship? We ask this as anthropologists who are part of a global scientific community, as members of the universities and other research institutions we work at, and as people living and working in countries that are complicit in the atrocities committed against Palestinians.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Contribution short abstract:
In light of the silencing of anti-genocide voices within neoliberal academia, researchers can either, as organic intellectuals, raise political consciousness against hegemonic state narratives and find modes of collectively working towards societal change or succumb to the oppressive status quo.
Contribution long abstract:
Knowledge production in the neoliberal university is not neutral as the very edifice of bourgeois academia serves certain hegemonic interests, is built on furthering one’s career and creating academic works that garnish university positions and (state or private) funding. Currently, academics who raise their voice in solidarity with the Palestinian people are faced with banishment from the ivory tower, as repressions and silencing campaigns have increased. This was made transparent by the Stark-Watzinger scandal that saw the German minister of education attempting to find ways to cut the funds of scholars who signed an open letter opposing police violence against anti-genocide protesting students at a university in Berlin. Hence, academics and institutions who stand behind the German state’s “Staatsräson” see themselves on the “safer side” of academia, while simultaneously there exists an environment of “self-silencing.”
Yet, if we conceive of our responsibility as researchers and as anthropologists (with anthropology’s despicable history of serving to legitimize colonialism), to work towards alleviating societal ills, then it is our duty to not remain silent in the face of injustice. In light of the systematic silencing of anti-genocide voices within German academia, researchers can either, as organic intellectuals in the Gramscian sense, utilize their position to raise political consciousness against hegemonic state narratives and find modes of collectively discussing and working not only against repressions but against war, militarization and genocide; or succumb completely to the status quo, remaining comfortable and complicit, thus denoting any lip service to “critical research” void of meaning.
Contribution short abstract:
Palestine has revealed that there is a notion of "perfect victimhood," modelled around a passive subject. Palestinians are seen as aggressors and even as engaging in victim-perpetrator reversals. This talk engages the notion of perfect victimhood and Palestinian refusal as a decolonial praxis.
Contribution long abstract:
The case of Palestine has revealed that there is a notion of perfect victimhood, modelled around a passive and docile subject. Palestinians have been seen as aggressors and even as engaging in victim-perpetrator reversals, long before October 7, 2023. The notion of perfect victimhood, the one who does not engage in violence, not even in self-defense grows out of a longer genealogy rooted in the Holocaust and Genocide studies.
This talk engages the notion of perfect victimhood and Palestinian refusal in order to return to the core principles of anthropology: to engage a people on their own terms and within their own socio-cultural environment. What can anthropology learn about victimhood, violence and human dignity when taking Palestine seriously?
Relatedly, what does Palestinian refusal to be perfect victims reveal about forms of decolonial practice? How can anthropologists take such practices seriously, in relation to other wars and genocides in past and present? And what are the perils of thinking refusal as an indigenous practice beyond settler-colonial contexts (Simpson 2017). Moreover, how can anthropology be responsible beyond knowledge-production and in fact contribute to the well-being of all groups involved, and especially those, whose human dignity is in question.
Contribution short abstract:
Drawing on my experiences with decolonial activists in Indonesia and German Universities, I argue that our duty as anthropologists is to understand the structural conditions of the discourses we are embedded into and to refuse the choice between engagement against antisemitism and decoloniality.
Contribution long abstract:
While my university has expressed its solidarity with Israeli victims of the October 7 attack, it remained – like many other German universities – largely silent when it comes to Palestinian victims, turned a blind eye to Israel's severe human rights violations, and ignored attempts for dialogues on this issue within the university. In Indonesia, on the other hand, solidarity with Palestinian issues is widespread from reactionary Muslims to progressive leftist activism. However, issues such as antisemitism both as a worldwide phenomenon and within Indonesian society, as well as the holocaust, are often not mentioned when debating about Israel. Drawing on my insights from the documenta fifteen-controversy, with decolonial activists in Indonesia, as well as within the University of Bonn, I argue that the task for anthropologists is to critically assess the structural conditions that shape our self-images and enable certain forms of solidarity while making others impossible. A fruitful dialogue between post- and decolonial approaches and engagement against antisemitism is not only possible but more important than ever. This dialogue is, however, structurally hampered. In my talk, I explore these structural obstacles regarding my experiences in Germany and Indonesia, and suggest challenging the seeming binary between commitment against antisemitism on the one hand and decoloniality on the other. The first political act, in this regard, is to refuse to choose between engagement against antisemitism and decolonial struggles.