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- Convenors:
-
Giacomo Mantovan
(CRIA ISCTE-IUL)
Michèle Baussant (CNRS, ISP)
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- Chair:
-
Maria Kokkinou
(CEFRES)
- Discussant:
-
Michèle Baussant
(CNRS, ISP)
- Formats:
- Panels Network affiliated
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 21 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel aims to introduce defeat as a heuristic concept in anthropology. Defeat is a space of transformation which can help reframe (post)conflict situations. The panel seeks to grasp how the vanquished rethink their past and future, and how they attempt to be reintegrated in the new context.
Long Abstract:
Although anthropologists have often studied populations who have lost political conflicts, these social groups were almost never analyzed as defeated. This panel aims to fill this gap, showing that defeat is a heuristic concept for anthropology. Indeed, defeat is not only a military or political matter, but it may lead to a dismantling of the imaginary, the culture, the religion, and the social organization of the defeated (Wachtel 1971). A military defeat doesn't only affect the armed actors and the activists, it can entail a broader defeat of an entire society's "intellectual order" (Bloch 1946). Indeed, it can foster the emergence of new outlooks, forms of identity, and political regimes (Dower 1999; Hashimoto 2015), which is an opportunity to find new paradigms for the interpretation of a community's history (Koselleck 1988), or of its new ways of living. Therefore, the defeat is a space of transformation, which can help to reframe (post)conflict situations and ongoing social changes.
We look forward to papers focusing not only on military defeats but also on those of social movements, political activists, and similar cases. We aim to articulate the concept of defeat in relation with the heterogeneous characteristics of the vanquished (in terms of class, gender, ethnicity, etc.). How does the defeat shape the imaginary, the past, and the future? Which social changes occurred because of the defeat? What happens to the vanquished? Do those who were engaged in radical movements de-radicalize? How is the defeat conceived in related diasporic communities?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 21 July, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
How is democracy activism affected when activists find out that a majority of the people does not want democratic reforms? The defeat of Jordanian democracy activists during the Arab Spring, this paper argues, offers a vantage point from which to rethink liberal ideas about democracy and openness.
Paper long abstract:
How is democracy activism affected when activists find out that a majority of the people does not want democratic reforms? This was a question that several Jordanian democracy activists asked themselves after their failure to bring about large demonstrations during the Arab Spring, and especially after their small demonstrations were violently dissolved by counterdemonstrations. The paper shows how this experience of defeat gave birth to an activism with a new view on the state, the opposition, and democratic debate. Jordan's political landscape changed, but an intellectual aspect of the defeat is as significant as the political aspect. Reinhart Koselleck has characterized the historiography of victors as short-termed. The defeated, on the other hand, are "forced to draw new and difficult lessons from history," which, Koselleck argues, seems to "yield insights of longer validity." In other words, can a failed democratic transition teach us more about democracy than a successful transition? Jordanian security forces retreated from political life during the Arab Spring, but democratic change, Jordanian democracy activists concluded, was dependent on something else than the absence of an authoritarian state. They came to believe in a form a discussion, but not the one that liberal authors commonly describe as the basis for democracy: it was not public and was based on a rhetoric of flattery and half-truths rather than only arguments. The defeat of democracy activists during the Arab Spring, this paper argues, offers a vantage point from which to rethink liberal ideas about democracy and openness.
Paper short abstract:
This communication focuses on the construction of these contrasting figures of 'tiers-exclus' and vanquised, through the production of narratives that covers up processes of dispossession still ongoing for Palestinians, and a long history of discrimination for Jews in Islamic countries.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation focuses on narratives that revisit the memories of the Jewish communities in Islamic countries by mobilizing references to the Shoah and the Palestinian Nakba. Today, if some authors consider the history of these communities as reduced to mere fragments of personal memories shared in small family circles, the price of their integration was their "disorientation" in a country that regarded the "Levantine mentality" as a factor in the destruction of individuals and societies. This history has, however, recently received a renewed attention in academic, associative and/or activist circles, the media and various national and transnational public spheres. Based on individual experiences and testimonies, this past is invested with a new significance, calling for the recognition of Jews as refugees from Islamic countries. This recognition is presented as a new debt of Palestinian refugees to Israel. By diverting and appropriating the concept of the vanquished "other", the histories of the Palestinians and of The Jews of islamic countries are inextricably intertwined. This communication focuses on the construction of these contrasting figures of vanquished and 'tiers-exclus', caught as hostages between different states, through the production of narratives that covers up processes of dispossession still ongoing for Palestinians, and a long history of internal discrimination for Jews in Islamic countries. This nexus, where debt and recognition are closely intertwined, reveals a genealogy of positions and ideas mobilized through references to the Shoah and the Nakba, in their chronology and sedimentations.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on the cultural impact of the Tamil Tigers' defeat through the narratives of its fighters. It highlights that defeat is more than just a military and political matter, as it has cultural implications: it spelled the end of their world, of their narrative, and of their imaginary.
Paper long abstract:
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was founded in 1972 in order to obtain the independence of the north-east territories of Sri Lanka inhabited by the Tamil minority. They expanded year after year, creating a quasi-state and gaining military, political and cultural hegemony among the Tamil communities in Sri Lanka and in diaspora. However, in 2009 the Sri Lankan Army succeeded in destroying the LTTE and killing its leaders, along with tens of thousands of fighters and civilians.
In this paper, I will analyze the cultural impact of the LTTE's defeat through the narratives of the fighters exiled in Paris. While this event was a traumatizing and a humanitarian tragedy for the civilians, for the fighters it was something more: it spelled the end of their narrative and of the world they had built in a 30-year struggle. In other words, this defeat is more than just a military and political matter, as it has profound cultural implications. The fighters' narratives highlight the fact that during the last months of war the dismantling of their social organization concerned all aspects of social life: their nation-building project but also more common cultural practices such as burying the dead, treating the injured, eating, and finding shelter. The paper will end with a reflection on what the fighters feel about having survived without having achieved their aim, i.e. to establish the Tamil nation-state, or to die for it.