Aftab, will you please specify the name of the place/city/country? On Feb 9, 8:59 am, Afthab Ellath <[email protected]> wrote: > The Institute of Women's Studies would like to invite you to a lecture by > Prof. Judith Butler: > > Precarity, the Assault on Gaza, or Whose Lives are Grievable? > Wednesday 10, 2010, 2:00-4:00 PM > Venue: Hall 101, Institute of Women Studies > > Precarity, the Assault on Gaza, or Whose Lives are Grievable? > > This lecture considers the relationship between media and war-waging > violence, and argues for the necessity to include forms of media and their > frames in the material of war-waging. Two cases are examined in developing > this argument: the photographs of torture in Iraq and their relevance to > war-waging, and the Israeli assault and siege of Gaza. It is argued that the > efforts of states to regulate the representation of their violence, through > media, are themselves acts of violence. Two sorts of violence are operative > in the work of media: the first suppresses the public comprehension of > violence, and the second regulates it, and by so doing justifies its > appearances. Both sets of practices are violent in that they construct the > public understanding of what is war, and therefore enable its waging; they > constitute a war on the senses and limit what is thinkable. The war on > perception cannot be separated from the material reality of war. Together > they result in maximizing the precariousness of targeted populations, as > opposed to recognizing precariousness as a shared condition. Differentiated > precarity marks a distinction between the ungrievable lives of targeted > populations, and the inherently grievable lives of others. Ungrievable lives > are those who cannot be lost, and cannot be destroyed, because they already > inhabit a lost and destroyed zone. To destroy them actively might seem > redundant or a way of simply ratifying a prior truth. One example of such > deadening before killing is Israel’s insistence that Palestinian children > operated as human shields for Hamas fighters during Israel’s assault on > Gaza. Such insistence is meant to convince us that these children are not > really alive, that they have already been turned to bits of armament, to > metal, to steal. Ultimately, the body of the child appears as nothing more > than a militarized metal, as no longer living, as already dead, and hence > ungrievable. If conceptual and visual frames transform the life of the > Palestinians into no life, whereby we must count the dead again and again, > those same frames make Israeli lives as the only ones that count as life to > be defended at all costs. And yet, the frames through which states wage wars > on our senses circulate and exceed states’ control. That loss of control is > one source of what can tentatively be called hope.
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