I'd like to extend a thanks.
I would like to thank my two
colleagues Bonnie and Lynn.
I don't see her.
It was a pleasure to work on
this conference with them,
and I would like to
thank Gabrielle--
and I don't see
her-- but I really
would like to thank her for a
wonderful work on the archive
downstairs.
If you didn't see
it-- Brown people,
you have two weeks
to see the archive.
I would like to
think Trout and Keith
at [INAUDIBLE] Center for really
big help in making this happen.
I would like to thank
Amanda for having us here,
and I would like to thank
all the participants.
Until the very last
moment, it was not
decided if I'll just chair or
speak, but I couldn't resist.
I'll present myself
as a speaker.
So my name is
[? Aurelia ?] [INAUDIBLE].
I'm teaching a Comparative
Literature and Modern
Culture with Media.
And I'll present
the other speakers,
and then I will present
my non-paper argument,
and then we will move
to the next speaker.
So [? Masna ?] [? Catue ?]
is a junior research fellow
in history at King's
College, Cambridge,
and was previously [? Hebraim ?]
of [INAUDIBLE] Good Fellow
at a Center for Palestine
Studies at Columbia University.
She's currently
writing a history
of Palestinian education in the
first decade after the '48 War.
She's the author of a
sociohistorical database
and archive of Palestinian exile
and refugee communities as part
of the Civitas Research
Collective at Nuffield
College, Oxford, and
has written on issues
in histories of development,
class, and popular mobilization
amongst refugees, on the
politics and practices
if Palestinian archives, on
solutionism and histories
of recognition and refusal,
and various aspects
of comparative secular
colonial studies.
The third speaker would be
[? Iten ?] [? Goodgo ?].
She's an assistant professor
of political science
at Barnard College.
Her research centers on critical
approaches to human rights,
contemporary problems
of cities and shape,
and political and
ethical dilemmas
of international migration.
She is the author
of Rightlessness
in an Age of Rights by
Oxford University Press 2015,
and of articles in law
culture and the humanities,
contemporary-political
theory, and European Journal
of Political Theory, among
other journals and anthologies.
Then Charles Heller
and Lorenzo Pizami
that I'll present
separately, but they
are working collaboratively.
So let me start
with Charles Heller.
He's a researcher
and film maker whose
work has a longstanding focus
on the politics of migration.
Originally from
Switzerland, in 2015
he completed a Ph.D. in
research architecture
at Goldsmith
University of London,
where he continues to be
affiliated as a research
fellow.
He's currently based
in Cairo, conducting
a postdoctoral
research supported
by to Swiss National
Fund at the Center
for Migration and Refugee
Studies, American University
Cairo, and the [? Saint ?]
Attitude [INAUDIBLE]
de Economique [INAUDIBLE]
Social in Cairo.
He's part of the Precarious
Trajectories Documentary
Project based at Goldsmith.
His writing has appeared in
the journals Global Media
and Communication and
Philosophy and Photography.
And Lorenzo [? Pizami ?]
is an architect
based between London
and northern Italy.
His work deals with spatial
politics and visual culture
of migration, with
a particular focus
on the geography of the ocean.
He holds a Ph.D. in
research architecture,
and is [INAUDIBLE]
at Goldsmith College,
and at Bartlett School
of Architecture.
His writing has appeared in
the journals New Geographies
and Harvard Design Magazine.
Together, Charles and
Lorenzo-- since 2011--
they co-founded
the Watch the Med
and have been working on
forensic oceanography.
I don't know how
to say it, sorry.
Ocean geography-- oceanography--
a project that critically
investigates demilitarized
border regime,
and the politics of migration
in the Mediterranean Sea.
Their collaborative
work has been
published in several
edited volumes,
as well as in the journals
Cultural Studies, Post-colonial
Studies, and in the
Review [INAUDIBLE].
So I'll start with my
non-paper argument.
And my non paper
argument tries to bring
into the conversation
what I think
we can call a first wave
of forced migration.
And I'm speaking about objects.
Together with
slaves-- they were,
I think, part of the
first generation,
and it is no secret
that millions
of objects that had never
been designed for display
in white cubes were looted
from all over the world,
only to be carefully handled
and preserved in Western museums
as precious objects.
Once looted, these objects
were made inaccessible
to the people who
had created them,
and to the communities in which
they had been produced, used,
and exchanged.
This breach between
colonized people
or dispossessed of so
many of their artifacts,
cultural practices,
and infrastructures,
and objects they made--
which museums, archives,
and libraries now handle
according to imperial principle
and procedures of classification
and a discourse of salvation
and preservation is one
of the founding principle
of imperialism, which
has never been abolished.
Under imperial temporality
and speciality,
this breach is not
conceived as an open debt
that Europe owes to colonized
people whose cultures were
destroyed in the
process of rescuing
rare samples of these cultures
to enrich European and American
institutions.
The process of
formal decolonization
provided the impetuous
to consolidate looting
by transforming stolen objects
into legally owned treasures,
exonerating imperial
powers of their debts,
and withdrawing
their responsibility
to restore infrastructures and
recover cultural practices that
were devastated through colonial
brutality while being construed
as belonging to a less
advanced stage of history.
As long as an imperial
temporality and speciality
remains intact, people
who are running away
from political
regimes in ex-colonies
and seeking asylum
in Europe are not
perceived as connected to the
precious, precious objects
of their cultures that were
illegally brought to the West
and long ago converted
into legal possessions.
Restitution claims for discrete
objects poorly addressed
for years are not
enough to overcome
the imperial temporality and
speciality that keep people
in unbridgable distance
from their culture
as it is showcased elsewhere.
The artifacts preserved in
European American museums
are not just exemplary
masterpieces,
but they're also monies
of imperial violence
that should be transformed.
European citizens acting
against their governments
to smuggle in refugees and
assist them are effectively
arguing that these
refugees represent
a pristine opportunity
for European citizens
to transform the legacy
of imperial violence
into a different contract
between descendants
of colonized and
descendants of colonizers
aren't objects so dearly
preserved and appreciated
by many can be the
first ambassadors
of a different ground for the
emergence of shared rights,
or rights in common.
Derived of access or
proximity to the artifacts
of one's own culture,
the right to live
where one's culture
was museafied
derides to have rights
to one's objects.
As you can see here
in this screenshot
that I took of refugees
working in the Pergamon
Museum in Berlin.
Only by introducing such
rights can phenomena
like the hiring of refugees
as guides in museums
that archive and present
artifacts plundered
from their homelands be not just
another way to exploit people,
but a way to excavate
the wound-- quote
unquote-- [INAUDIBLE]
to excavate
the wound of imperial crimes
to the plea of people who--
in the one world created by
imperialism-- of the right
to a place within living
communities created
with and around shared objects,
and not in their outskirts.
Thank you.
And after me, I think that it
is [? Masna ?] [? Catue ?].
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
So I want to reiterate
and thank everyone
who invited and coordinated
and conceptualized and dreamed
of this conference
workshop symposium.
And it's been especially
fun as a historian
to start thinking
of objects a little
differently, and be
able to bring a material
to bear in ways in which
I'm not as familiar with.
That also excavating for
myself on my own kind of forms
of knowledge production,
way of thinking
has been really productive and
fruitful before I even arrived.
So the objects that I'm
going to bring to bear today
are a film and a booklet.
And they serve to
bring forward some
of the themes of my broader
work on refugee schooling--
in particular, the
question of permanence
and the question of futurity.
And here, I want to think
about them from the standpoint
of the crisis appeals-- i.e.
the appeals that are made
in the US, and Europe,
and my conditions in the UK
around how to support and solve
this humanitarian crisis.
So the two objects
are first, a film
that was done in 1950 by the
Council for Relief of Palestine
Arab Refugees, which was a
consortium of various refugee
relief agencies that
had emerged in support
of Palestinian refugees.
It comes back to Tom's
talk about the Ad Council,
because this is an example
of a failed campaign.
So they created
this advertisement
to be distributed at the
beginning of films and cinemas
around the US.
No film distribution company
accepted to screen it,
so Quaker started screening
them in meeting houses.
I think the budgetary
aim was a few million.
They raised-- the figures
are kind of vague--
but about $8,000 in
total from this film.
One of the important things,
also, about this film
is that it's introduced
by Dorothy Thompson,
the anti-fascist journalist who,
as a result of her introduction
to this film, it was straw that
broke the camel's back in terms
of her public respectability
after a storied career
as a journalist during
the Second World War.
And she was
essentially blacklisted
as a result of her
participation in this film.
So to honor her, I will screen a
little bit of her introduction.
The sound is a little blurry.
It's on YouTube, and I will
talk a little bit about that,
but I have to apologize
for the sound.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-Hello.
Because I have recently
returned from visiting
the scenes of the picture
you are about to see.
Of course the impression
left on my mind
by the objective casualty
of political change
is much more depressing than
the film, for no film can convey
the icy winds of
Mount Hermon as they
blow upon slaves in
flawless tents in Syria,
or the rains that turn
dwellings into mudholes
in the rainy season in Lebanon,
nor the defeated feeling even
of those who are trying to help.
But this film tells part of the
story that until now has hardly
been told at all
outside the Arab world.
[END PLAYBACK]
We'll stop there.
So I wanted to go to
this section which is
about the schools in the camp.
By 1950, you saw the beginnings
of the institutionalization
of education for refugees.
The previous--
Can you use the microphone?
Oh, I'm sorry.
So by 1950, you
saw the beginnings
of the institutionalization
of refugee education.
You saw the first beginnings
of a kind of bureaucracy
around pedagogy.
So this is a kind of artifact,
or a kind of visualization
of what that looked like.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-The children sense a depressing
uncertainty as to their future.
No one seems to have the
answer to the eternal question,
why do we have to stay here?
Without a home,
family life, toys,
they have nothing to relieve
their boredom except schools.
Education of these
children is one
of the most important aspects
of the Arab refugee problem.
The donation of
just a blackboard
meant a new class
could be started
under a tent in
the open air, when
desert temperatures permit.
The old proverb, Idleness
is the devil's pillow,
holds good in a refugee camp
more than anywhere else.
They must be helped
now to become
useful citizens of tomorrow.
It's not enough to
train their minds.
What will be in store for them
when they grow past school age?
Are they too to be doomed to a
continuing life of uncertainty
and lack of hope such as is
now the lot of their parents?
The plight of these little
girls is a challenge.
Each is entitled to a seat in a
classroom, to have a textbook,
and a share of a teacher's
time and guidance.
For many months,
there were no schools.
Now, there are only a
few, enough to accommodate
about one tenth of them,
or 45,000 children.
And when school it
out, the same reaction
occurs all over the world,
hubbub and wonderful
excitement.
But let's not forget,
these are their homes.
Frolic--
[END PLAYBACK]
I will leave it at
that dramatic end.
And the second object,
which, because I'm
a fan of materiality, and
we couldn't kind of place it
in a tent, is a booklet that
was written by a former Chicago
journalist named Robert
Faherty, who is also
an amateur detective and
romance novelist who gets
hired to travel through
schools around the region
and to report on them and the
success of the [? Honore ?]
UNESCO program, which, by 1959,
had been around nine years
in development.
So in a sense,
what you're seeing
is the beginning of
the 1950s and the end.
And this is important
because in 1959, 1960,
you had the World
Year of the Refugee,
where you had mass
appeals around the world,
around the question of
refugees and support for them.
So this was the
Palestine contribution
to those mass appeals.
So I'm going to be
send this around.
[INAUDIBLE]
So I'm not going
to, I mean, I'm not
going to talk too long because
I hope the conversation will
bring out some things.
But what I think that
looking at these appeals,
and looking at them through
the prism of education offers,
is this fundamental question
around permanence and futurity
in these ways.
What is to be done with
the sacredness of strangers
when the hospitality
to newcomers
is replaced by the
unease of a guest who
has overstayed their welcome?
So in this film, you see
refugee support by Egyptians,
by a Lebanese priest who
distributes homilies and candy,
but also, further
away, this idea
of the duty of humanity
towards supporting and bringing
to refugees what
FDR, in 1941, called
the four freedoms, freedom of
fear, want, speech and worship.
So in these themes that we
see in nine or 10 years apart,
they bring out the question
of how time heightens fear.
Time heightens anxiety.
And it heightens
this sense that order
must be restored at any
cost, and that order
must be cordoned into
a trajectory, whatever
that might be.
I think you heard it
in this, where it says,
idleness is the devil's
playground for these children.
Time is the state's playground.
So in terms of futurity,
what this means
is that with education, by
1954, relief, emergency relief,
turns to a rapid
expansion of resettlement
as a solution to these refugees.
This is despite and
against refugee desires
that are vociferously expressed,
and yet, at the same time,
a contradictory
idea of education
being a form of social capital
that the refugee desires
in order to be able to
migrate out and form
some kind of mobility
outside the camp.
So what does this also tell us?
That there's often this
interest in the descriptions
on Palestine, in
particular of the 1950s,
there's a binary between
an international order that
imposes a certain kind
of disciplinary process
through education versus a
refugee imagination of return.
This binary, I argue,
elides the ways
in which refugees
themselves maneuver
through the infrastructure
and terrain of these orders.
Education is a good
example of this,
how classrooms in refugee
camps become sites, not just
the spaces of discipline,
but also of subversion.
The schools become sites of
surveillance by the state,
but also of mobilization
of secret societies,
of underground clubs.
In Fred Moten's terms, they
become an undercommons.
So the refugee futurism
that is foreclosed
by the international order
is perhaps one of return.
But it's also the
return to a future.
It's a future in which the
state no longer can cordon off
populations, no longer can
discipline them in ways
that make them desirable.
There's a kind of
criminality in the classroom
that I try to
resuscitate that is
kind of alluded to in the ways
in which these appeals project
the threat that not
caring for, or not
supporting these
students, might bring out.
So in this sense, the stakes for
the camps, as time progresses,
become larger than
just humanitarian care.
They become larger than a
sense of an emergency crisis.
They become larger than a
question of humanitarianism
or their humanness.
They become a question of the
very possibility of a world
that the refugees
themselves aim to conjure
and that the world order
has decided they must not.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Hi.
I would like to also
start by thanking
the organizers and those
who helped organize
this wonderful workshop,
especially Ariella, Bonnie,
and Gabriella.
I thought of this as a seven,
eight minutes presentation,
and then I realized
that as I was trying
to make it shorter
and shorter, it became
very cryptic and cryptic.
So I want to start
very briefly about how
this interest, and
this particular object,
came into being in
the first place.
I'm currently
working on a project
on the notion of
the human person,
especially how
this notion appears
in several human
rights' documents,
and how it gets to be
represented in different ways,
including the assumption
that these two terms have now
become conjoined so much so
that they are interchangeable,
the human as the person,
and the person as the human.
I'm interested in those
cases where there is actually
no overlap, or where we
see failures of recognizing
the human being as the person,
or as the rights bearing
subject.
And that came into
being from my research
on my book, Rightlessness
in an Age of Rights.
As I was doing the work on that
book, I came across a 2012 case
from the European
Court of Human Rights.
The case is called
Hirsi Jamaa v. Italy.
It's about, basically, the
Somali and Eritrean migrants
who were intercepted
honestly by Italian officials
and then given to Libyan
officials, who returned them
back to Libya.
And the court
ruled that this was
a violation of the right to be
free from collective expulsion.
And it was celebrated.
The case was celebrated by
many human rights organizations
as a case that actually
showed that human rights now
have an extraterritorial reach.
But what was interesting, and
I can talk about the case more,
but there were
these two migrants
who were included as
applicants in the case.
But they were dead by
the time of the trial,
by the time of the case.
And they had their
signatures as applicants.
But the court decided
that their demands
were identical to the
rest of the applicants.
And since they are now
dead, they don't actually
have legal standing.
So they were not
recognized as persons.
And those are the
kinds of issues
that I've now working on
which actually leads me
to questions of personhood
in cases of migrant deaths.
How do we think about
personhood and situations
of migrant deaths?
So that's what I'm going
to be talking about today.
And the object I chose
is related to that.
Border policies have
made the journeys
of migrants
increasingly perilous,
resulting in thousands
of deaths each year.
These deaths are
oftentimes recorded
as statistical estimates by
international organizations.
According to the International
Organization of Migration,
for example, there have been
approximately 40,000 fatalities
since 2000.
But these efforts to
create a sense of outrage
by the sheer
magnitude of numbers
leave much to be said
about these deaths.
So do the frequent news stories
about migrant boat tragedies,
which are often
accompanied by photos
of overcrowded or capsized
boats, search and rescue teams,
and dead bodies on the shore.
And it was these images,
perhaps not unlike the ones
that you see on
the slide-- I hope
you're seeing it on the slide.
I see something completely
different here--
that gave rise to
contemporary artists
Nikolaj Larsen's multimedia
installation End of Dreams.
As Larsen puts it,
and I'm quoting him,
"I saw a press photo where
many dead bodies wrapped
in cotton sheets were lying in
long rows next to each other.
And I want to
recreate that photo."
I'd like to focus
on Larsen's work
today to talk about accidents,
especially accidents that
may turn out to be crimes,
as well as the accidents that
go into the making and
unmaking of the human person.
But before I do that, I
want to say a few words
about the image I chose
and Larsen's End of Dreams.
Larsen's project
initially started in 2014,
when he prepared 48 sculptures
using fire, armature,
and concrete canvas,
which is a fabric embedded
with a specially
formulated concrete that
hardens when exposed to water.
And it's used especially
in the building
of shelters in disaster zones.
These sculptures, evoking
the now familiar images
of dead migrants wrapped in
fabric or placed in body bags,
were then installed under a
raft and submerged in the sea
off the coast of Pizzo
Calabro in South Italy.
The plan was to let them develop
a patina of water organisms
and to exhibit them as a
sculptural constellation
manifesting the wear
and tear of the sea.
However, a violent storm
destroyed the raft,
scattering the sculptures
across the sea bed
and onto the nearby beaches.
Many of the sculptures
disappeared altogether.
On that very same
night of the storm,
a migrant boat capsized
in the Sicilian strait.
The storm, along with the
news of the capsized boat,
led to a re-envisioning
of the project.
Larsen hired divers to locate
the scattered sculptures
and to film them.
What results from this effort
is a multimedia installation
comprising a five-channel
video shot undersea,
and a composition of some
of the sculptural remains.
The photograph I chose
for this workshop is
from a series of-- this is
the multimedia installation--
and this is the
photograph I chose.
The photograph I chose
for this workshop
is from a series of portraits
that Larsen prepared
to document the marks and
cuts inflicted on sculptures
by the forceful crash.
I also found a very short
video to maybe introduce
the multimedia installation.
So I'm going to get out
of this quickly and try
to show you a brief clip
showing, introducing
the installation stuff, but now
I think I completely lost it.
OK.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[END PLAYBACK]
The key term I would
like to look into today
is accident, in two
senses of the term, which
can mean both an
unfortunate incident
and an inessential attribute.
Let me start with the first and
the more obvious meaning, which
is now the most common one,
accident as an unfortunate
event that is unexpected
and unintentional,
resulting in damage or injury.
This is the meaning
that is at work
in Larsen's description of
the collapse of the sculptures
caused by the storm.
And it is again
this meaning that we
see in the description of the
capsized boats as accidents.
And one of my propositions is
that Larsen's End of Dreams
can give rise to a questioning
of that description,
perhaps gesturing
to the possibility
that what is cast as accident
turns out to be a crime.
To move in this
direction, let me briefly
introduce a point made by Walter
Benjamin in his 1936 essay
The Work of Art in the Age
of Mechanical Reproduction.
Benjamin highlights the
crucial transformation
that photography undergoes
once its focal point shifts
from the portrait to
the streets, exemplified
for him by the photographs
of deserted Paris
that Eugene Atjet
took around 1900.
I'm going to show some
examples of those, two examples
of Atjet's photography.
And I'm quoting Benjamin here.
"It has been quite
justly been said of him
that he photographed them
like scenes of crime.
The scene of a crime
too is deserted.
It is photographed
for the purpose
of establishing evidence.
With Atjet, photographs
become standard evidence
for historical
occurrences, and acquire
a hidden, political
significance" unquote.
My goal here is not to draw an
exact parallel between Atjet
and Larsen's work,
but instead to think
about how visual media can be
used to set up a crime scene.
I would like to take what
Benjamin says about photography
as a starting point to think
about Larsen's End of Dreams
as a multimedia installation.
Now I'm going to fully go to
image of the installation.
The concrete canvas
sculptures, which strike us
with their marks and cuts
in the individual portraits,
are arranged here in a way not
unlike bodies in a crime scene.
In some respects, each one
turns into a "corpus delicti,"
or the body of a crime
figuratively serving evidence
of an injury resulting
from border policies that
push migrants to even
more dangerous routes.
But these canvas sculptures
also have an eerie quality.
If they are supposed to resemble
coffins or body bags containing
the dead bodies
of migrants, it's
also important to note
that they are empty.
There's nothing inside
the wire armature.
And as Thomas Laqueur puts it in
his book The Work of the Dead,
a purposefully empty tomb, a
cenotaph, or an empty coffin,
have power precisely
because they lack
what is universally expected.
I want to suggest that
what is gone missing,
along with corpus, or the
body, is also the person, which
is often understood
metaphysically
as an intrinsic
quality of human beings
which allows them to stand
as rights and duty bearing
subjects.
This is an idea that has
its origins in Christianity,
especially the debates on
trinity, which gave rise
to the notion of person as an
individual, intransmissible, or
incommunicable,
rational essence that
is inherent in the human being.
Even the secularized
understandings of the person
continue to take it as
an essential attribute
of human beings, one grounded
in their reason, sanctity,
dignity, et cetera.
But Larsen's portraits of
these canvas sculptures
resembling coffins challenge
such metaphysics of the person.
In their uncanny
emptiness, they perhaps
suggest that personhood is
not an essential substance
to be located within
the human, but instead,
an artificial, and accidental
attribute, an assembled
effect of legal,
political, narrative,
and visual practices.
And aside from those, there is
nothing but a hollow armature.
Here, we encounter
the second meaning
of accident, which
is much older,
but has become somewhat obscure.
This meaning goes
back to Aristotle,
his notion of
[? symbiticos ?] which
denotes a property, or quality,
not essential to a substance,
or object.
Accidents restaged as crimes
bring out the accidental nature
of personhood.
That which was thought to
be substantial, essential,
intrinsic turns out
to be accidental.
Larsen's portraits evolve
this possibility, I think,
by moving away from the
conventional focal point
of portrait photography,
which is human countenance.
To go back to Benjamin,
photography, a medium
he closely associates
with the loss
of the aura of
the artwork, still
held on to some kind of
cult value of the image
in its early stages.
To quote Benjamin,
"It's no accident
that the portrait was the focal
point of early photography.
The cult of remembrance of
loved ones, absent or dead,
offers a last refuge for the
cult value of the picture,
for the last time
the aura emanates
from the early photographs
in the fleeting expression
of the human face."
Portraits of human face continue
to occupy a central place
in the human rights photography,
including those that center
on migration and displacement.
By shifting away from the human
countenance that has often
been the bearer of an aura,
Larsen's portrait series
of canvas sculptures hint at
a desacralized understanding
of the human person, one
that breaks with the idea
that the human person
is that which carries
its inherent dignity within.
There is perhaps
still the suggestion
of an irreplaceable
distinctiveness,
if we attend to the marks and
cuts imprinted by the storm.
And some of the
sculptures have also
acquired water organisms during
their lifetime in the sea bed.
But a distinctiveness that
is not intrinsic or inherent,
instead accumulated and
assembled over time,
layer upon layer.
And once one removes
those layers,
there is nothing but hollowness.
[APPLAUSE]
So I certainly also
want to extend a thanks
to the organizer
and just say how
pleased I am to be
here with old friends,
but also to discover
new, exciting work.
So thanks, Ariella
and Gabriella.
So the material-- is it working?
So the material that we're
going to present today
comes from a collaborative
work, as Ariella
was saying, that Charles and me
started in 2011 as a response,
somehow, to the dramatic
events that were unfolding
in the Mediterranean
in those months, when
several hundreds of Tunisians,
and people coming from Libya,
were dying at sea with
what, at the time,
were record numbers of deaths.
And so we started this project
called "forensic oceanography,"
which has since attempted
to critically investigate
the Mediterranean space
as a border regime,
and understand somehow,
and analyze the spatial
and the static
conditions that have
led to this many deaths
that have been also invoked
in the previous presentation.
If, as we will try
to show, the very act
of exclusion that underpins
the European Union's
politics of migration
takes place as well within
and through its
various visualizations,
we argue that strugglings
for the right of migrants
then also means
claiming your right
to look that would be able to
challenge the borders of what
can be seen and heard.
However, we also argue
that these borders are not
clearly demarcated.
They are porous and
ambivalent, and thus demand
careful and tactical
positioning.
So to unfold this
argument, we would
like to share with
you a few images that
come from our archive.
Images, in a kind of extended
sense of the term, objects
ranging from photographs
to satellite imagery,
offer a kind of forensics
operating not only through,
but also of these very
images themselves.
And what I mean by that is the
tracing of their production
and circulation and
the way they have
come to be embedded
within the violence
they document, or, on the
contrary, they seek to contest.
A year ago or so, I
made a little experiment
and inserted the
words, "immigrants,"
"boats," "Mediterranean" into
the Google search engine.
The search produced
tens of thousands
of similar images, which, I
believe, you see on the screen.
Many of these images have
circulated for years,
drifting from
article to article,
losing any remnant of
photography's indexicality.
This is the case, for
example, in the case
of this particular image,
which I clicked on,
since it seemed to epitomize
"the" migrant's boat somehow,
right?
That particular image was here
connected to a Guardian article
dated 29th of March, 2012.
As I clicked on the
article, I found
that it was captioned
with the elusive,
"Many migrants and
refugees risk their lives
to cross the Mediterranean
from Africa to Europe."
As the elusive caption
should suffice to indicate,
this image no longer referred
to any specific event,
but had become kind of
generic image pointing
to the structural event of the
violation of Europe's borders
by overcrowded boats.
The image, in fact, had been
taken in September 2008,
by the French military, when
they intercepted this vessel.
This image continues
to be used today,
referring to Syrian migrants
crossing the sea, for example.
So this image has
become a floating image.
In the terms of Hito Steyerl,
"Unmoored, anonymous,
perpetually dispersed,
it echoes the condition
of the subject it depicts."
The constant appearance of
this, and similar images,
of intercepted slash rescued
boats in the mainstream media,
participate in the production
and reproduction of the border
spectacle which Nicholas de
Genova has incisively analyzed.
Through these images, the
threat of illegalized migration,
and the securitization
work of border control,
are simultaneously made
visible and naturalized.
And this, in a circular way, if
migrants are being intercepted,
it is because they are threats.
If they are threats, then
militarized means of policing
must be deployed to
neutralize this threat.
The circulation of these images
thus plays a crucial role
in producing the sense of
crisis and enabling, in turn,
exceptional responses to it.
However, when images documenting
the structural violations that
are the product of the
migration regime are produced,
the latter are rather
kept in the shadows.
This was the case in
what's came to be known
as the "left-to-die-boat" case
which we have investigated,
in which, at the height
of the 2011, NATO-led,
military intervention
against Libya,
72 migrants fleeing Libya were
left adrift in the central
Mediterranean for 15 days,
despite the stress signals sent
out to all vessels navigating
in this area and several
encounters with military
aircrafts and warships.
The reluctance of all actors to
rescue the drifting passengers
led to the slow
death of 63 people.
During these 15 days,
several photographs
were taken, only one of which
we have actually had access to.
This is the image you see here,
which is the first photograph,
and the first detection by an
external actor of the migrants'
vessel.
Here, the photograph was
taken by a French surveillance
aircraft, which sent this
photograph, and the position
of the migrants' boat,
to the Maritime Rescue
and Coordination Center in Rome.
But there were
several other images
which we have never accessed and
which have continued, somehow,
to haunt our investigation.
One particular image,
or series of images,
rather, was produced
at the moment when
the migrants' vessel drifted
near a large military ship
after almost 10 days of drift,
when half of the passengers
had already died.
Dan Haile Gebre, whom you see
here during our interview,
recalls this encounter as
follows, "We are watching them.
They are watching us.
We are showing them the
dead bodies, children.
We drank water from the sea.
We cried.
The people on the
boats took pictures.
Nothing else."
The conjunction between this
act of deadly non-assistance
and photography seems to recall
Susan's Sontag's argument
that photography, which
seeks to keep things
as they are for at least
as long as it takes
to take a good picture,
is fundamentally
an act of
non-intervention which is
complicit with the forms of
human suffering it documents.
And yet, this argument
cannot describe all acts
of photography, starting by that
of the migrants themselves who
were embarked on
this drifting boat,
who recounted to us
that they, themselves,
were photographing with their
mobile phones the successive
events during these 15 days.
The encounter between
these two boats,
then, one belonging to the
most powerful actors on Earth,
the other to the world's
undesirables, was also, then,
an encounter between
photographers,
with each photographing
each other.
So the images that
have been produced
by both parties
in this encounter
and remain hidden to this day,
except the one that Charles
showed just a minute
ago, they still exist,
probably stored on a flashcard
or on a computer hard drive.
And yet, today they
remain inaccessible
to our investigation, as well as
to many other's investigations
that have been
done on this case.
So in the absence of these
incriminating photographs
and of external weaknesses,
our investigation
on the left-to-die-boat case
attempted to reconstruct a kind
of composite image of the event
by piecing together several
other fragments of information
scattered across a vast
assemblage of human
and non-human feeds.
We mobilized, I guess,
a vast apparatus
of remote-sensing devices,
optical and thermal cameras,
radars, tracking devices, and
satellite-imaging technologies
which have transformed
a contemporary ocean
into a vast and technologically
mediated sensorium.
While these
technologies are often
used for the purpose of
policing illegalized migration,
they have been used
here to reconstruct
and map with precision what
happened to this vessel.
This synthetic
aperture radar image,
taken on the 29th of March
2011, during the drift
of the boat by European state
agencies embassy satellite
is a good example of that.
When combined with
the drift model--
you can go to the next
as well-- that maps
the trajectory of the migrants'
boat after they ran out of fuel
and indicates that the
boat's location at the time
of the picture was the
yellow hatches that you see
in the image here, it
allowed us to determine
that the bright pixels appearing
across the surface of the image
represent large ships
that were located
in the vicinity of
the migrants' boat
and could've easily rescued
them but chose not to intervene.
And if you go to the
previous one, in fact,
sorry, you see here,
zoom in and you
see these bright pixels that
represent these military ships.
At the same time,
though, this image
does not show any other
migrant boats that are possibly
to be found within its
frame, as they remain
below the threshold
of detectability
due to the [INAUDIBLE]
size and the low resolution
of the image.
So what we try to do,
instead of replicating
the technological
eye of policing
and its untenable promise
of full spectrum visibility,
what we try to do,
I was saying, was
exercising what we called a
"disobedient gaze," redirecting
the light shed by the
surveillance apparatus
away from illegalized
migration and back
towards the act of
policing itself.
So through these and
many other techniques,
we were able to
reconstruct and map,
as I was saying, what
happened to this vessel
across the complex and
fragmented geography
of the ocean, as you can
see in this map here.
However, it would
be probably too
simplistic to see a simple
binary between the state
produced spectacle of border
transgression and policing
and the hidden violence of the
border that is to remain hidden
in the shadows.
Large scale shipwrecks
are becoming less and less
the unavowable supplement of
the border regime, and rather,
to a certain extent at least,
what drives and justifies it.
Every tragedy, and in
the sense, of course,
we share the kind of unpacking
of the term "accident"
that you were doing
just a minute ago,
is not granted extraordinary
media attention and usually
followed by urgent calls
from EU politicians for more
surveillance, more control,
and more militarizations,
precisely some of the mechanisms
that we would argue have caused
death in the first place.
This became apparent in the
aftermath of the 3rd of October
shipwreck off Lampedusa--
maybe go back one--
when the hangar of
the Lampedusa airport
was transformed into something
in between an improvised media
center and a mortuary.
In the official speeches
that followed that event,
the very policies
of border control
that forecloses any possibility
of legal access to the EU
and forces hundreds of people
onto rickety boats vanished
from view and any
critical analysis.
And states, in that occasion,
have instead pledged to combat
the death of migrants at
sea by increasing the budget
of Frontex, the EU agency that
controls the external borders
of the union, and going after
the [? Enos ?] smugglers,
or even called traffickers, that
are now labelled as the slave
traders of the 21st century.
Somehow like making confusion
between cause and effect,
and not recognizing that effect
that smugglers exist only
insofar as people are
not granted legal access.
So paradoxically, in the context
of what William Walters has
called the
"humanitarian border,"
it is precisely the spectacular
visualization of death
that has fueled the
deployment of the exceptional
military humanitarian
and political solutions
that have defined
the current crisis
and contribute to the
continuation of deaths
of migrants at sea
on a large scale.
So this [INAUDIBLE] regime,
and I'm going to conclude here,
imposed by borders
in the Mediterranean,
thus cannot be captured
by any simple binary.
At work, I would say, is a
complex and conflictual field,
where visibility and
invisibility do not designate
two discrete and autonomous
realms, but rather,
a topological
continuum within which
any practice that seeks to
contest the daily border regime
must position itself carefully.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
OK.
So thank you for
wonderful presentations
and I'll open the
floor for questions.
Yes?
Front.
Thank you all for these
wonderful presentations.
I think most of us are struck
by the commonality of this idea
of reproduction, even
kind of the reproduction
of disciplinary power
in the schools, I think.
And I want to actually direct
this question more to Ariella,
but also break it
back to everybody.
Of thinking of reproduction
in what you just
mentioned to us about
museums and items,
I was struck by this project.
I'm sure you're
probably aware of this,
but there's this project
that happened recently,
"The Other Nefertiti," where
two German artists went
into the museum in Berlin
that houses the Nefertiti
statue, right?
This very contested object.
This very contested treasure.
And they brought in this really
high resolution 3D scanner
to it, and they scanned this,
a museum quality scanner,
and uploaded the code to
Torrent websites, where people
can actually use 3D printers to
print out the Nefertiti statue.
And people have actually put
the reproduction of the statute
in museums in Egypt
as a sign of protest.
So and you can think of
this, to tie it in again,
these printed statues
as poor images.
It shows a power in the
fact that they're not
perfect reproductions.
And tying this back to Benjamin
and notions of the aura,
and how we think of the art, not
necessarily saying that perhaps
with new technology we'll
have a different relation
to the art in these museums.
But perhaps it highlights
different values that
can arise or live together.
So I'm just wondering,
perhaps Ariella,
if you could say a little
more, or what could point you
to the fact what you can
see piracy and its relation,
or complication, of ideas of
the law of legality, which
are, again, tied to the state.
I'd be very interested in your
thoughts of how reproduction,
or imperfect
reproduction, could fit
in to what you brought to us.
Thank you.
I remember a few years
ago I was in Berlin.
And I went to see
the Pergamon museum.
And I saw Nefertiti.
But before I saw
Nefertiti, I saw, you know,
billboards all around the city,
the most fashionable Berlin
woman, which is, of course,
part of the reproduction.
I think that this procedure of
entering, or using illegally,
these kind of high resolution
scanners in the museum
should be reformulated as not
an illegal act, but as a claim
to share the millions of objects
that are all around the world.
And in the last couple of
years, there was a, I think,
very problematic focus
on claims of restitution
of discrete objects, rather
than speaking about the regime,
or rather than speaking
about more general claims
about looting and how we
can redistribute wealth
that is related to art objects.
And I think that this action,
even the fact that they cannot
scan this object, is symptomatic
of the way that museums reject
these kind of discrete
claims to restitute objects.
Nefertiti is a very
symbolic object.
And I think that,
you know, after years
that these kind of
claims were rejected,
I think that, at the
end, it's maybe not bad.
Because these objects
stayed in the West.
And now, I think,
when the media create
the migration of
refugees as a crisis,
it's an opportunity to
mobilize on the participation
of citizens in some
European countries
to address, to act
against their governments,
and to endorse these
kind of illegal acts,
and to make them as part
of a citizenship act.
So rather than speaking
about these as illegal acts,
this, I think, is the way
to redefine citizenship
that is against nation
state and to give refugees
priority as the
first legal citizens
in this newly imagined citizenry
that is based around objects
that are already in the West.
And people have claim to them.
And they can be there
and not just have
to be satisfied with the
return of one or two Nefertiti.
Thank you
Thank you for the
fascinating panel.
My question is to Mezna.
So this is just a
historical question.
I'm very interested, very
curious about the chapter
that you're talking about
and describing to us.
So I wanted to invite you
to expand a little bit.
The three kind of
accepted solutions
in the post-war, refugee law
world, especially after 1951,
are return, integration,
or resettlement.
And return is considered,
theoretically, at least,
to be the preferred one.
And resettlement is considered
to be a kind of last resort,
if you will.
So as I understand you,
the latter maybe, you know,
is arguable.
But I understand
you to be saying
that the UNRWA actors
in the refugee camps
were actually kind
of using education
in a way that would
facilitate resettlement,
and that the people
in the refugee camps
were largely rejecting
that and were finding ways
to use education in
order to generate
this futurity of return.
So first, is that a fair
account of what you were saying?
And then, I'm wondering
if integration
was at all an option on
the table at that time?
Who are the actors that were
pushing for or against it?
And also, to ask about
this resettlement idea,
you know, I'm not
familiar with this,
but were there
countries on board
that were actually going to
resettle Palestinian refugees?
And was there a kind of concrete
UN plan for resettlement
that this education system
was part of as an instrument?
Yeah, that's a lot.
So I'll try to be
a little concise.
So yes, those are
certainly the three kind
of options placed in
front of refugees.
The educational
system began, really,
as an autonomous project
of the refugees themselves.
The idea was, OK, all these
kids are running around.
Let's, you know, collect them.
Put them under one tent, an old
British military barrack tent.
And we'll do the ABCs,
Koran, whatever it is.
Oh, sorry.
The project of education
quickly transformed
into a question of containment,
particularly in anxiety
of the Jordanian
state, which insisted,
as all Arab regimes insisted,
that all Palestinian refugees
must study the curriculum
of their country.
So essentially what
happened was Palestinians
were being told to teach other
Palestinians to be Jordanian.
That is integration.
That is what the integration
process looked like.
What you do in
those circumstances,
as a teacher and student,
is what I'm interested in.
What you do in the
classroom, what
you do around the classroom,
because what happens is
is very often the
language around this is,
well, they rejected it.
There was resistance.
There was survival.
No.
They went through
education, around education,
under education.
But education was something
that was kind of seen
as a site for the
politics and the refusal
of the political simultaneously.
So that goes as well to
this question of return.
So Palestinian
refugees were debating
intensely during this
period about what
the stakes were for education.
So on the one hand, education
provided a retrieval
of a certain kind
of social capital
that is mobile that was lost
as a result of dispossession.
And this meant, for
example, that you
could be educated in a
particular kind of skill that
would allow you to
find a job in the Gulf
that was growing in
terms of development.
But simultaneously, there
was this understanding
that education meant that
you were further away
from the promise of return.
You were leaving the frontier.
You were leaving the longest
border with the enemy state,
as it were.
And these kinds of tensions
maintain themselves
all throughout.
And this is why, I mean, there's
an interesting way in which
the 1950s is often
regarded as this period
of outward migration
of Palestinians
and also a kind of the '50s
is a moment of waiting,
a pre-history to the revolution.
And what I'm trying to
retrieve is actually
what it means to
unpack that and think
about how the deliberations
around broader
political questions
were being embodied
in the very spaces that
consolidated in 1950s, namely
education.
And that goes to this
question of return.
So what you had in
this period, as well,
is that there's a transformation
throughout the decade
from a demand for
return, because we just
left last week, to an
anxiety around permanence.
So when you're in a tent, a
burlap tent, for four winters,
a problem starts.
An infrastructural,
material, fleshness
of being a refugee for four
years starts to compound.
And that is when you
see, kind of in 1954,
'55, a beginning of a real
deliberation around, OK,
we should start building
mud, brick dwellings.
The ZinCo roof starts coming up.
So that is the kind of
deliberation around return
that emerges.
In terms of UN
policy, absolutely.
So what I found
through archival work
was that UNRWA, in particular,
was absolutely adamant
about resettlement,
whereas UNESCO was not.
So you'll see in
the documentation
that UNESCO constantly
talks about rights.
UNRWA does not.
UNRWA had a strong
relationship with Gulf states.
And Gulf states,
more or less, would
send requests for
certain kind of training
based upon the Gulf economy.
So you had a rise in
sort of oil refinery
kind of skill
training, carpentry,
and the most important was
teacher training colleges.
So several refugee camps start
having these institutions where
secondary school students
could come in, be trained
for two years as teachers, and
then get shipped out to Kuwait,
to Saudi Arabia, et cetera.
And that, yeah, so there
was absolutely a connection
between policy and education.
Thank you.
Good afternoon.
My name is Sean Anderson.
I think I have a question
somewhere in my mind.
So I apologize in advance
if I am too wordy, perhaps.
What strikes me about
this panel, as well as,
perhaps, the first
panel of the day,
is that we're all,
in essence, trying
to question, or determine,
what limits are,
or what boundaries might be.
And for me, I'm interested
in boundaries as spaces.
And in the case, I think, in
all of your cases just now,
these limits, or these
boundaries, are processes.
So in the case of
Palestinian camps,
those spaces are educational.
They're classrooms.
And also, like you
said quite eloquently,
they're about
subversion, as well.
In the case of Charles
and Lorenzo's project,
limits are to be circumscribed.
They are, at one hand,
geographical, geospatial.
And the boat transgresses
that boundary
and yet, is then left to die.
And in Ayten's
project, human rights,
or the question of the
right, is, in a way,
determined by the
limits of the body.
But that body is empty.
It's like you showed
in the artwork.
So I think my question might
be a blanket one for all of you
in a way is to perhaps
ask, what is a limit?
And perhaps, what the
problematics of boundaries
are in a world in
which we can access
any other part of the world?
Say if you had the
internet, or if you've
got Skype on one
hand, and on the other
be witness to troubling
images on almost
a daily basis in
the Mediterranean
and elsewhere in the world,
where we are anticipating
this kind of, again, this
transgression of boundaries,
or of limits, that are
not only self-imposed,
but imposed by nation states.
So I don't know if that's
a question, necessarily,
but I'm curious what you
might think in terms of, say,
how humanitarianism,
how a crisis can
be spatialized, and yet,
also be located at the body
and what that body might be?
And just start?
My response will be short.
And maybe this is simply
what-- when I hear limits,
I can't not think of a
wonderful, short text
by Foucault called,
Preface to Transgression,
if I'm not mistaken, which
was the preface to a book
by Georges Bataille.
And in this very short, early
text, I forget the exact date,
he argues that limits and
transgression are simply
the other side of the same
coin in a sense, right?
There is no limit
without transgression
and no transgression
without limit.
And limit and transgression
also are constantly
engaged in a
hand-to-hand struggle
and are constantly
transforming each other.
So that's what comes
to mind for me when
you evoke the idea of limits.
And in this sense, maybe
to emphasize something
that we've touched
upon briefly, again,
we rather speak of illegalized
migration, for example.
So underlying the state
production of illegality
through policies
of illegalization.
And, as Lorenzo
underlined as well,
the fact that should there not
be policies of illegalization,
there would be no
limits that migrants
would have to transgress through
precarious means of transport.
I mean, we sometimes
forget that until the end
of the '80s, many migrants from
various North African countries
could still travel to southern
Europe using banal ferries.
Right?
I guess, in relation
to personhood,
I want to think about the limits
of personhood in the sense
that I want to think about
personhood at the border.
And precisely at
those moments, I
think, we see that this category
that we take to be universal,
in the sense that it is supposed
to include all human beings.
Right?
We basically see that it's
a historically conditioned
category.
Its universality,
in other words,
is historically conditioned.
And it includes a
variety of subjects
that challenge our understanding
of the human person,
in the sense that we
encounter precisely
those kinds of subjects that we
might call semi-persons, or non
persons, in the sense that
they do not necessarily
have all the rights
that we have come
to associate with personhood.
So I think thinking
about the limit
is important, in terms
of basically seeing
the borders, or hierarchies,
or stratifications
of what we take to be
universal and all inclusive.
Thank you.
Do you want [INAUDIBLE]?
Yeah.
I just going to say, actually,
what I think striking
is about the word "limits"
is how refugees often
articulate it themselves.
So when you're talking to
them along the journey,
and they say, you know, what
is the thing that I cannot move
beyond?
There's a fleshness to it.
You know, my feet
hurt, calluses.
I think we need to gender this
conversation a little bit,
like sanitation napkins.
When they can't, when
they have their period.
All of these moments through
the journey where somebody says,
that's it.
I've had enough.
And then, what decisions
they make at that point.
I think that extraordinary break
in their conceptualization,
their moment of limitness
is also-- you know,
it comes in very often when
I think about the flesh.
Yes, Bonnie.
I don't.
I'm just going to think a
little bit with your categories.
I don't know exactly what my
question is, but, well, I'll
start with what I
think my question is.
There's something about
photography itself
that is accidental.
So I'm wondering--
A bit louder, Bonnie.
I'm wondering if we
could use Benjamin
to think a little bit about
the accident of photography,
its accidental traits.
So the kind of
photography that he
was thinking about that
produces images of empty streets
is long-exposure photography.
I was just reading an essay
by Agamben the other day
where he discusses
one of the photographs
that Benjamin talks about,
which is of an empty street.
But there is one sort
of pair, a human pair
in this empty street, a
boot black and a client
who stopped to have
his shoes polished.
And the reason
that they appear is
because in long-exposure
photography,
anything that's
mobile and moving
isn't captured by
the photograph.
But these two stop
for a moment to have
their commercial encounter.
And so they are captured in
what otherwise would have
been an empty street picture.
So it's an accident of
photography, as it were.
It's an accident
of the technology
that you get only empty
streets in the images
in the early period,
that you don't
have people in those images.
And I'm thinking
that somehow, that's
why I'm not exactly sure
what my question is.
This could be a useful trait
of the technology for someone
who's interested in the
disappearance and reappearance
of the category of person in a
different technological moment
right now and also in the impact
on that category of movement.
So there's something
going on in Benjamin
that might be available
to you about connections
between movement, disappearance,
and representation.
That's why it's not more
of a question than that.
It's just a thought that
there's something there for you.
I don't know if
you agree or not.
But that long-exposure
photography
is an accidental trait
of the technology which
I think might be rich for you.
I will say thank you.
Thank you so much
for the comment.
But I don't know how to
respond to it right now.
So I'm going to write
it down and think
about it if that's OK.
More questions?
Comments?
Can I ask a question?
Yeah, sure.
So I had a question, actually.
So this image of the
museum and the refugees.
It struck me because I was
thinking of the juxtaposition
of this to another image.
I don't know if you're familiar
with it, of the [? Idocle ?]
National Director of,
I think, archeology
at the British Museum looking
at a sarcophagus of some sort
and covering his mouth in
terror, or in pain, crying.
And he's a refugee
now in the UK.
And I also thought about
archives, and, in particular,
the Ba'ath party
archive in Stanford
that was seized by the
Kurds, given to whatever.
It ended up in Stanford.
And the [? Idocle ?] people
demanding its return.
And Stanford saying, well,
you're not ready to take it,
have it.
Right?
So again, a kind of question
of retrieval of objects.
But here, the problem is
a refusal to digitize.
And also this idea that
we cannot give it to you
because it would potentially
destabilize conditions in Iraq,
like determining a kind of
future for Iraq based upon
a kind of archival hold.
So I'm just curious as
to kind of the limits
of the idea of a universality
of objects in that sense,
in the distribution.
And what it actually-- that
there's a politics to sharing.
Yeah, but I think that before
the politics of sharing,
we have to reconstruct
the policies of looting.
Because the question now is how
to share, or how to re-share,
or how to redistribute wealth.
But we have to
reconstruct what we
enjoy when we go into
museums, to reconstruct
it as illegally acquired,
as looted, plundered.
And all these terms that we
can really accumulate also
to describe these really
huge waves of migration,
forced migration of objects
from Africa, from Asia,
from Palestine, from all
over the world that are--
By the way, in
most of the places,
they are showcased as
if nothing happened.
In Israel, by the way,
they are not accessible,
what was plundered
from Palestinians.
And I think, that this is
part of what makes Palestine
not exceptional,
maybe, but symptomatic,
and a kind of locus of hope that
through this some claims can
affect other places.
So I think that all
these claims to share,
all these claims to restitution,
I don't think that should
end up in one good claim.
There is this very successful
project of Native American,
the NAGPRA project, that
they arrived to define,
to formulate, incredibly
interesting documents where
they arrived, they
achieved, some agreements
with museums that, at least,
what was looted from cemeteries
will not be shown.
So we have to
understand that there
are endless procedures
of professionalism,
how to handle objects, these
objects that were looted,
but were looted as
we rescued them.
This is not only that
the Iraqi people are not
ready to acquire, to
receive, now these objects.
But they were not
ready at the time
where these objects were still
part of the cultural fabrics.
They were not recognized as
capable of taking care of.
And this is why
all these objects
went to France, Switzerland, US,
England, et cetera, et cetera.
So I think that the polyphony
of our claims today, how
to redistribute this,
or redistribute access,
it's not only-- I
don't think we have
to think of, again,
in terminology
of the authentic object.
This is why I think
that Nefertiti is really
a wonderful process.
Because it's not about
the Nefertiti object,
to have it back in Egypt
Because there are
so many things that
were destroyed when these
objects were extracted
from cultures and
when these cultures
were deprived of the
infrastructure of continuing
to produce culture.
So I think that the
restitution of discrete objects
is, again, problematic.
And I think that the
more structural claims
are more interesting.
And what I'm trying
to do in my work,
to reimagine art from
non-imperial perspective,
is to re-anchor these objects in
the discourse of human rights.
Because when we speak
about human rights,
there is, of course,
the discourse
that reduces people
to their needs,
to the basic rights,
et cetera, et cetera.
And, I think, that all
these discourse reproduces
the understanding
that people can really
be provided with
some basic needs,
while the objects from which
they were deprived centuries
ago are what can now be the
basis out of which they can
claim their right to be
reintegrated, or integrated,
in different social fabrics,
and not necessarily to be
repatriated, or not necessarily
just to have their right
to return to an original place.
And I think that the
dissemination of objects
all around the globe that are
coming from different places
is a kind of infrastructure
that should help us to reimagine
differently human rights
as living in communities,
and not only having
rights, to have rights
as Hannah Arendt
spoke about, but also
as having rights to have rights
to live with the objects that
are part of our cultures.
And our culture is not
in an authentic way.
But our culture is because
once upon a time we
had certain relation with them.
And they meant something else,
rather than just being objects
to be scrutinized and
studied critically
by another tiny, tiny
elite of professionals that
know how to interpret objects.
Objects have different lives,
different modes of life.
And I think that when we
see this kind of project
in the Pergamon museum of
hiring some 20 or 30 refugees
from Iraq and Iran to serve
as guides in the museum,
you can see in it really
a kind of vicious act.
But you conceive it more
than what the museum is
able to do now as a basis
to think about objects,
the looting, the 500
years of looting,
as an open debt that should
allow us to think differently
about asylum seekers
and right to have
a place nearby your objects.
Sure.
Can I?
Just wanted to make a quick
comment on Ayten's presentation
because I mean, it was very
inspiring in many respects.
Of course, there are many
overlaps with our work.
And, I think, one aspect that I
found particularly interesting
was this idea that
when we start to look
at personhood as a
kind of accident,
then we can also somehow--
It's a good place to look back
at a certain discourse which
is, I would say, quite
prominent in public discourse,
in the media, et cetera,
which would say migrants are
mistreated because they
are treated as a flow,
as a massive flow of people.
Their individuality is
not considered, right?
And, of course, there is
a degree of truth to that.
I mean, that, in part,
has also to do somehow
with the kind of
technological way
in which migration is
controlled, especially at sea.
I mean, if you if you are on
a border patrol on the sea,
a migrant boat starts to
appear as a dot on the ocean.
Right?
And so, you have a boatload
of migrants, let's say, right?
And then the processes of
identification starts later.
But precisely this
identification, it's
what underpins control itself.
It means fingerprinting people.
It means giving them an
identity is the means itself
through which control
is exercised, right?
So in that sense,
I think, starting
from what you are saying,
it's also a good point
to criticize this idea.
And to see also how, in
fact, this kind of extension
of identification, et cetera,
is problematic in itself,
or can be problematic, at least.
And maybe just to conclude on
another short anecdote that
comes from our research.
When we first went to southern
Italy in the summer of 2011
to interview migrants that
had just done their crossing,
and to ask them
about the conditions,
and what they had
seen, and if there
had been cases of pushbacks,
or deaths at sea, et cetera,
I think one thing
that struck both of us
was the fact that many of them
came to speak to us as a boat,
in a sense.
You know, all the people
that were on the same boat
came and gave us a kind
of collective narrative,
a collective account,
of what had happened.
Right?
So in that sense, let's say to
the boat as a unit of control
also corresponds a kind of a
boat as a kind of community
in the process of becoming
together in a sense.
Right?
If you see what I mean.
Should we take more questions?
I think we have time.
You can reply, yeah.
One of the-- there were
several other photos
I actually thought of when I was
thinking about this workshop.
And one of them, I can't
remember the photographer,
but he works with the UNHCR now.
He's a war zone photographer.
If you can speak to the mic.
OK.
So he wrote this
piece in the Guardian
with some of his
photographs that
basically were showing people
just coming out of the boats.
And it was ending
with a quotation
from one of the
people on the boats.
And that was the
only thing, actually,
only statement that was
included from a migrant.
But it basically said,
can you just not see
that we are-- touch me.
Can you not feel that
I'm a human being?
And it was that kind
of basically idea
that we will immediately
recognize the human
once we see one that basically
gave rise to my interest
in Larsen's work.
This idea that, yes,
we will immediately
recognize the human
once we see one
and treat it accordingly,
with its inherent dignity.
That's precisely the assumption.
And, I think, what is
happening right now,
there are just different
ways of seeing, representing.
And one of them is basically
this kind of visual technology
that is being used on
behalf of border technology.
And a boat becomes
a dot on a huge map.
And maybe that relates
to Bonnie's question
about how these new
technologies can give rise
to new accidents for
personhood in the sense
that it becomes impossible
to actually recognize.
That image is a boat, right?
It becomes difficult to
establish that this is a boat.
Your work is interesting
in that regard.
But also that this is
a boat with people,
and there are
human beings there.
It becomes difficult.
They seem to escape us
in certain ways with these
new technologies too.
Yes.
So.
I had a question for Lorenzo--
But if you can take
the mic, please,
because we won't hear you.
She has it.
Oh, she has it.
Sorry.
I had a question for Lorenzo
and Charles about, well,
and also maybe taking up
on the previous question
about limits and borders.
So you're looking
also at what defines
the human in the space
of the Mediterranean.
It was just, is your project
partly about legal innovation?
In terms of what
happens, do the people
that you interview,
do they identify
as migrants or refugees?
And I, myself, I'm
not a legal scholar.
I have no idea of
the difference.
Is that a distinction
that they make?
Or that they would claim?
Or is that something
that is placed upon them?
And then, a really
ignorant question just
about maritime rescue.
I thought that that was,
I mean, me, as a layman,
I just thought that a
boat, a ship, is required,
a vessel is required to assist
another vessel in distress.
But clearly, that wasn't
the case of the example
that you've been speaking about.
And what is the
figure of the human
in that border space which
clearly is the Mediterranean?
Thank you.
If I can just piggyback
on this question
and ask you,
Lorenzo and Charles,
you presented your work
as an academic paper.
But it has also kind of
implications in the real world.
If you can say something
about how did you
work with it vis-a-vis
international organizations?
I think it will be
complementary to what you asked.
I hope so.
Sure.
Maybe to start with what
you were saying, Ariella,
and what's connected also
to what you were saying
about the legal innovation,
I mean, indeed, this work was
carried out, and thought,
let's say, from the beginning,
in conjunction with
a coalition of NGOs
that had started to
demand accountability
for the massive death
of migrants at sea
in the summer of 2011.
And, you know,
the argument there
was precisely something we
didn't mention in detail.
But this was a time of the NATO
intervention in Libya, 2011.
So there were tens
of military ships
that were deployed off the
coast of Libya tasked precisely
with controlling whoever was
going in and out of the country
by boat.
Right?
So that the claim of these
NGOs, basically, was that,
given the technological
means that were deployed,
the militaries
could have not not
have seen the many people
who were dying at sea.
Right?
And for that reason,
precisely, they
could be accused
of non-assistance
of people in distress at
sea, which, as you say,
is a crime in
international maritime law.
So what we produced--
I mean, the images
and the work that you have seen
basically comes from a report
that we produced
together with these NGOs.
And that then became the basis
for a series of legal cases
that were initiated in various
European and international
courts.
And they are still
undergoing, precisely
for the crime of non-assistance
of people at sea.
Of course, I mean, let's say
that our aim, as well as that
of the NGOs, was
somehow to address
the kind of larger, structural
violence of the EU border
regime.
But, of course, we had
to translate that claim
into a legal context, which
meant going against people
involved in a particular case.
Right?
Of course, this one case,
the left-to-die-boat,
was particularly heinous
and tragic and, having also
received quite a lot
of media coverage,
was instrumental
to that process.
You want to?
Yeah.
What function has
the form of refugee--
Mic.
As a space of the boat, as
a space that has a similar,
analogous [INAUDIBLE]
to a refugee--
Maybe.
I'm not sure.
I mean, the boat definitely
becomes many things.
Right?
At the moment in which
you start the crossing,
it's basically
caught up in a series
of very different,
legal regimes which
are not very clearly defined.
You know, the very distinction
between migrants and refugees
that you were
pointing at, I mean,
it has legally
quite tenuous basis.
Of course, you know, if
you ask a legal scholar,
well, it will tell
you very simply,
the refugee is
somebody who, defined
by the Convention
of Human Rights,
so somebody who flees
war, et cetera, et cetera.
So there is a
definition of refugees.
Right?
And migrant usually is a
term used more generally
to define anyone who is
moving and recently has also
become increasingly
useful for them to define
so-called economic migrants.
So people who, according
to international law,
do not rightfully leave
their country, but they
do so only to seek better
economic opportunities,
in a sense.
Right?
But certainly, as I was saying,
the boat starts its travel
and is caught up in
this multiplication
of legal regimes.
And in a sense, I
think part of our work
is also to say that this
is not a malfunction
of international law, but
rather one of the ways
in which it structurally
produces some of its effects.
And in which this boat
really becomes a kind
of contested site, right?
So I don't know if
it's a refugee site.
But certainly, it becomes a kind
of forum for certain politics
to happen, or not
happen, perhaps.
Yeah, a short one.
Yeah.
I mean, as Lorenzo
was mentioning before,
at sea, somehow the unit
of control is the boat.
Right?
The process at sea, the
unit of control is the boat.
So the process of properly
biopolitical control
really starts from the moment
migrants set foot on firm land.
That's the moment when
their bodies start being
counted as they disembark.
Their fingerprints start
being taken, et cetera.
But this changed temporarily
during Mare Nostrum,
the Italian military,
humanitarian operation that
lasted between
October 2013 and 2014,
during which there were
large, military ships
deployed very close
to the Libyan shores
which were intercepting
migrants as they arrived.
In these cases,
those large ships
became, in effect,
floating detention centers
in which the biopolitical
process of identification
and control was beginning on
board those ships themselves.
But I just would like to
come back on two questions.
I mean, one is
migrants, refugees,
a debate which has been
incredibly prominent
as well in the mainstream
media over the last year.
And certainly, within
debates and also migrant
struggles, for a
long time, I would
say that the progressive
stance has usually
been to refuse the
assignments of refugees
as a kind of
predetermined category
that would be distinct, and
supposedly more legitimate,
than migrants, which
are then supposed
to be sorted out as "bogus"
economic migrants and soon
to be deported.
Right?
So the demand has
rather been within more
progressive positions to demand
rights for migrants to cool.
However, things are a bit
more complicated these days,
when we're really
facing the biggest
exodus of politically
persecuted people
since the Second World War.
Now, personally, rather
than choosing either,
or, generally, we still refer
to migrants generically.
I would rather want to question
the way those very categories
came into existence.
And in this sense, I find really
crucial the historical framing
and the long
[FRENCH] that Ariella
proposes as well, where you
denaturalize both categories.
Right?
Both, in fact,
presuppose the existence
of states, which, you
know-- and the long [FRENCH]
is only a relatively
recent phenomena.
Right?
But maybe just to come back to
the other question, innovation.
I think that this case demanded
a number of legal innovations
which were not the
product of our own work,
but a legal team that
assembled around the case.
Because the case poses a
number of legal difficulties
on which actually Itamar
has also been writing.
First of all, it's a
form of violence which
is exercised without touching.
Secondly, it's a
form of violence
which is exercised by
many actors at once.
Third, it's a form
of violence which
is exercised in the in-between
space of the sea, where
the question of jurisdiction,
as you were saying,
becomes crucial.
Finally, and also,
it was exercised
by states that were partly
under the command of NATO, which
has immunity within
international law.
So I wouldn't want
to go here in detail
into the legal strategies
that were used.
But I think it's
really a case that
forced lawyers and legal
experts in many ways
to go beyond the
conventional boundaries
of their own discipline
and practice.
But beyond that, I think that
our aim has been, basically,
to politicize the sea.
To come back to Shawn's
question, the limit of the sea
is a thick and large
space which is usually
only thought as the in-between
space of flow and passage.
Right?
But here, what we've been trying
to do is, on the one hand,
analyze the political
geography of the sea,
and on the other hand, target
the sea for a space of politics
in its own right, either
through strategic litigation,
but also through Watch the
Med and the project that
emerged from this, which
is called the Alarm
Phone, in which
activists located
on both sides of the
sea have used some
of the tools of
geospatial mapping
that we began to create
to support migrants
in distress while they are
at sea and force states
to comply with their obligation
to operate rescue swiftly.
So the tools that we
started to develop
have become tools to contest
the deadly border regime
at sea in many different ways.
Thank you.
We have 15 minutes.
So we are moving to what Bonnie
called the "accelerated phase"
of our panel.
So we will just take
a few questions.
Yeah?
This is on-
We have Itamar, Tom,
[? Abby ?], Amanda.
Yeah.
OK.
Five questions.
This is on a previous thread
of the conversation concerning
your paper, Ariella.
To the mic.
This on a previous thread of
the conversation concerning
your paper, Ariella.
So I was wondering,
and this may not
be something that you can say
anything about at this point.
But I'm wondering what is
the relationship between what
you're discussing and describing
and the recent kind of turn
to a discourse of saving
architectural treasures
in Middle Eastern and
West African countries?
I'm thinking of the destruction
of remains by ISIS and the fact
that the International
Criminal Court has recently
decided to launch an
investigation with regard
to Timbuktu, in Mali, in
order to prosecute whoever
might be responsible
for the destruction
of cultural heritage in
Timbuktu, based on the fact
that this is a war crime.
So the politics around
this have been debated.
They're controversial.
And I'm wondering if you
have any thoughts about that?
Thank you.
I just have two quick thoughts.
On Ayten's example
of the person who
asks for verification
of their human identity
coming off the
ship, I'm not sure
that that implies some notion
of immediate recognition.
It seems like it might go
exactly in the opposite way
and be a request for kind
of a countersignature.
Like, I know I'm human.
But obviously, you
can't see that I am.
So won't you make some
effort to countersign this?
So it feels more like
an evidentiary plea
taken than a notion of,
it's obvious who I am.
Anyway, simple question
for you two guys.
I've heard you talk about
this project many times.
But I've never heard
you discuss photographs
taken by migrants on the ships.
So either you've been
keeping this secret.
Or--
I support whom?
I never saw it either.
Or you've developed
some new information.
So I'll just compress my
question really simply.
And I don't mean
this flippantly.
But based on your research,
why is that happening?
Why are migrants taking
photographs on these ships?
Well, I think my question has
already been partly answered
and was anticipated
by Ariella when
she asked for more explicit
discussion of the real world
implications of your project
in forensic oceanography.
But I will just say
that it seems to me
that simply the naming of
it as forensic oceanography
is significant.
It's already a kind
of significant claim
to be entering into a
certain kind of field that
involves the legal, the
scientific, the legal
and the scientific,
I guess I would say.
And I know there's
a body of work
in forensic humanitarianism
that extends
beyond your own project.
But I'm struck by simply the
name of it as a strong claim.
And what I was thinking before
Ariella asked her question was
how striking it
was that your paper
ended on a kind of a
problematic, which is to say,
a hesitancy, about reproducing
the very forms of power
that you're trying
to intervene upon.
And this is more just
a comment, but why that
would be the telos of a paper?
Is it venue specific?
Is it context specific?
Do you speak differently
elsewhere in different spheres?
Because there's a way in
which a number of the papers
end on a question.
And of course, the
title of the conference
invites you to
end on a question.
But I'm just struck
by that and what
I would see as a certain
kind of, I want to say,
normative hesitancy
in that moment.
But it's also kind of a field
condition, which is to say,
this is sort of what we do.
And it's both motivated by
political anxiety, I would say,
but also a kind of investment in
uncertainty and undecidability.
So that's sort of
more a comment.
But I also see it in
the human accident,
in the person project.
And I would just contrast
it a little bit--
and I'm not trying to say
anything absolute here--
to Ariella's more strong
claim for new citizenship,
which is a more kind
of reconstructed norm.
And you're talking more
about political tactics,
as far as I understand
you, and a kind
of genealogical stringency
on the question of-- right?
I mean, when you talked
about refugee, migrant.
So anyway.
It's sort of half
comment, half question.
[INAUDIBLE]
Thank you.
A question for Mezna.
I wonder if you would
elaborate on the miserable
failure of Sands of Sorrow
to raise funds or acquire
an audience, and also
the chilling effect
it had on the
journalist's career?
Those were the questions, right?
Oh, yeah, Peter.
I think I might be
repeating a bit.
But for Charles and Lorenzo,
this is sort of the same
question I had for [? A.L. ?]
[? Wiseman ?] when he came
a few months ago, which is,
I'm curious as to the status
of your strategy of taking
up international law
as your chosen
political strategy.
Specifically, what's the
sort of movement or dialogue
you see between the particular
focus of cases and the more
structural problem?
And the reason I'm
bringing that up
is because with something like
forensic oceanography, forensic
architecture, whatever it
may be, how do you see--
If we're aware of
the structural issue,
why do we need, then,
the sort of proving
of these specific things?
Why do we need to know that
the NATO ships ignored?
We know via NATO's
very existence.
But in any case, I
guess I'll stop there.
Because the rest has been asked.
This speaks to some of the
same legal question, I think.
I had thought that the idea
a migrant consideration as
per refugee had long
been established
in that that actually was
a viable, legal definition.
I remember the
Universal Declaration
of Human Rights in 1948
seemed to establish
what a refugee was.
The Refugee Convention
of 1951 reiterated.
That's, of course, after
World War II and the big push
to come to understand
the refugee status.
And then, the European
Convention on Human Rights
in 1953.
It seems that case by
case decisions about who
is a migrant and
who is a refugee
are bound to be arbitrary now,
that Afghans, Libyans, Somalis
will also claim that they
are fleeing violent death.
And it may prove impossible
to send them back.
The Refugee Convention regime
of 1951 is no longer adequate.
But it seems that
the legal basis
of the separation
between refugee
status and migrant
status is pretty clear.
I mean, it was, they don't
just have a well-founded fear
of persecution.
It was, now they're effectively
fleeing violent death.
That they're now actually,
actively fleeing violent death.
Before, the question was
a much more simpler one.
I mean, if they were
just being persecuted,
then they were here.
And their status
was refugee status.
Now, it's much more
complicated, not because there's
just so many of them,
as per the Syrians,
but also because the separation
of that classification, where
Afghans, Libyans, and
Somalis, their attempting
to return them that's been
terribly unsuccessful.
Even if they've isolated that,
the number is less than 40%
that they've succeeded in
actually being able to work
out, as per the EU.
But it does seem that the legal
question of migrant status,
as opposed to refugee
status, is there.
Doesn't that seem to be true
for a legal perspective?
Thank you.
So I think we will take, each
of us, two or three minutes.
And we'll end a little bit late.
It means that the next
panel that Lynne is chairing
will start five minutes late.
So we'll still have
10 minutes break.
So just very quickly, Itamar,
in relation to your question,
I think that when
historically, when
we speak about
historical heritage,
this was the term that was
the umbrella under which
the big lootings of Africa,
Asia, India, whatever,
was conducted.
So speaking about
cultural heritage,
we have, first of all, to
question this policy that
focused on objects
and was authorized
by these rare objects
that they had to rescue,
authorized to destroy
fabrics of life all over.
So when there is a new
campaign to rescue objects
that ISIS is
threatening to destroy,
I think that we
have, first of all,
to foreground fabrics of
life, rather than objects,
and to re-contextualize it.
And I think that what is
really important, in relation
to what Amanda said, you know,
this in between the question
mark and the exclamation
mark, I think
that this is a matter of
fact that millions of objects
are all over the world.
And the question is
how we relate to them,
not as precious objects to be
just interpreted and displayed
to audiences, but
as one of the layers
out of which a new
polity can be imagined.
Yes, so just really quickly.
There's two separate
sides to this.
First is that--
--to the mic.
Oh, yeah.
Sorry.
So Dorothy Thompson was
very heavily involved
in reporting on the
Second World War
and was influential
in the sense that she
was anti-Nazi journalist who
was reporting on Nazi activities
and reported also
on the Holocaust.
Her coverage of this,
her introduction to it,
was a result of a
visit, a delegation
visit that she did to the
region, and comes back
and says, listen, there
are refugees here.
We have to deal
with this question.
Now, in terms of why she gets
blacklisted, it's a long story.
It's kind of well-documented.
But essentially,
what happened is
that there was a lot of
heavy pressure on these film
houses from various
sectors in the US
not to film this,
not to screen this.
So there's that.
Part of the failure was
nobody saw this film.
I think what's more interesting
is how this film has
had an afterlife
since then, where it's
become an artifact of
Palestinian refugees
as an actual, one of
the first moving images
that fourth generation
Palestinians see
their grandparents, or
their great-grandparents,
in this film.
And that afterlife
is also now being
documented in various places.
So it's had an
iteration of many forms.
From the other
side, as well, it's
that the declaration of
Palestinians as refugees
was not normative.
There was a contested battle.
And so the Arab League
offices in New York and DC
also were unhappy with
this film because it
declared Palestinians refugees.
So they didn't support
its dissemination either.
And just to address Tom's
question very briefly,
so basically, the statement
that's quoted from the migrant,
if I remember correctly, it's,
touch me, am I not a human?
And I think you're right.
It can be read in
a different way,
that it might be an evidentiary
plea instead of just one,
basically, that's saying
that, look, demand
for immediate recognition.
I agree with that.
But for me, what was interesting
in that how it was received,
or how it was interpreted within
the context of that Guardian
article, right?
And basically, it was
coming immediately.
It was, first,
the only statement
that we hear from a migrant.
Two, it was immediately
following this discussion that
look, we might
have disagreements
about whether they are
migrants or refugees,
but at least we might
agree on this one thing,
that they are human beings.
And what I'm trying
to do is basically
that actually we don't have
a consensus either about what
it means to recognize
someone as a human being,
or what that kind of recognition
would entail or require.
Is it just simply a
minimal recognition
in the sense of biological needs
and basically just throwing
down sandwiches, as we
saw in those images?
Or does it require
more than that?
And then, how does that
relate to personhood?
So I think, it
basically gives rise
to a controversy and dispute
where people actually
see that, no, it's just obvious
that they are human beings.
On the question,
maybe to start with,
on the question of the naming.
Clearly, I think that
naming this project
forensic oceanography
is also a kind of part
of the tactical move
to try to somehow enter
a specific space that
you were describing,
a space of law and
science, et cetera.
And I guess this move was not
probably entirely our choice,
but was kind of determined
by a sort of shift
that we have registered
in investigations
about human rights and crimes
against humanity, where,
basically, forensic
science has come to occupy
a very prominent space.
And this space has
been, so far, largely
occupied by what the
[INAUDIBLE] laws would
call the tyranny of the truth
of states and corporations.
Right?
Basically it has become, or
it has been, traditionally,
in fact, since many years,
the techniques by which
states police
individuals, and by which
they claim a certain
scientific superiority that
allows them to silence the
victims of that violence,
right?
So we wanted to contest that.
But at the same
time, I guess, we
didn't want that
critique to happen only
at the kind of
theoretical level,
but really enter the
very space, and enter
a kind of bodily struggle
almost with those claims.
Right?
And in order to
do that, well, you
have to make certain
claims that put us
in a kind of
schizophrenic position
where we argue for a certain
truthfulness of a certain kind
of scientific reconstruction.
And then, the
following day we write
a paper about how this is
all just a narrative that
is constructed, et cetera.
Right?
On the other question, which
is somehow, I see, connected,
why do we need these
specific cases if we know
about the structural violence?
I guess there my reply
would be in the sense
that there's almost a
kind of paralyzing effect
in thinking about this violence
as structural, as something
which escapes representation,
which is just out there.
And we cannot visualize.
We cannot grasp.
It escapes any attempt
to pin it down.
Right?
Of course, that is partly true.
And this is what
we argue, as well.
So the next question would
be, so what do we do?
I mean, we can either
sit in the university
and continuously propose a
kind of critique of that,
which, of course,
it's necessary.
But on the other hand,
our attempt, in a sense,
was, and is, to also
try to go beyond that.
Right?
And in order to
do that, well, you
have to position
yourself tactically,
and to try to find ways
in which you can somehow
insert grains of sand into
these larger mechanisms.
Of course, we're very well aware
that even if the people that
have not rescued the migrants
on the left-to-die-boat would be
found, this is not going to
radically change the violence
of the border regime.
And yet, I think it would.
You know, as the
Hirsi and Jamaa case,
it did produce effects
which were progressive,
to a certain extent, and somehow
forced this structural violence
to manifest itself
in different ways.
I mean, it doesn't
completely eliminate it.
But it's a kind of end-to-end
struggle with that.
And in order to do
that, you need some kind
of tactics that in this
present kind of legal discourse
are articulated through specific
legal, individual, legal cases.
Very briefly.
So very briefly,
to add a few words
and respond to the
still open questions,
I just want to
contribute as well
to this question of our
own kind of self-critique
at the end of the presentation.
And I liked a lot
your description
as this is part of
our field condition.
And I think this is absolutely
correct in the sense
that operating in
the field, we're
operating in an imminent field.
We are seizing the tools of
our enemies, if you will,
trying to redirect
them to another use.
But certainly, our
enemies are also
seizing our own
tools, and the images,
and discourses that we produce.
So it's a hand-to-hand
struggle which demands
constant re-positioning.
And I think, crucial for us
as a compass, if you will,
is, the rule of the axiom of
the disobedient gaze, which is,
do not seek to show what
the state is already
spectacularizing, but show
what the state is seeking
to keep hidden at all costs.
So states maybe used to keep
hidden at all costs deaths.
Now, they are spectacularizing
as well those deaths.
But what they're hiding is
their own responsibility
in the production
of those tests.
And that's what we, as a
result, need to foreground.
The mobile phone images, I
think this is interesting also.
Because, essentially,
there are two reasons why
we didn't, or only fleetingly
mentioned them in our reports
before.
First, because
there's no evidence.
Those images don't exist.
And in that sense, they
have a very limited role
to play in a report that
is geared at reproducing
an account of events.
But secondly, I would say,
because this whole encounter
between photographers
partly resisted
our own interpretation.
I mean, simply, the
survivors explained to us
that, at least at the
beginning of their journey,
they're photographing,
at the beginning,
the best time of their lives.
They think, you know,
they're going to make it.
This is fabulous.
I'm going to a new life.
Right?
And that there are many mobile
phone videos which circulate
today online, et cetera.
Subsequently, they continue
to photograph those events
for different reasons
which, I think,
Dan Haile, in particular, never
entirely explicited to us.
And in that sense,
academic context,
and contexts where theoretical
questions about image
production as well are
foregrounded instead
of human rights
and factual ones,
are also spaces that
we need to think
some of the dimensions of the
events that resist simple,
factual reconstruction.
And then, I think the last
question that I can only
answer to briefly is the
question again of the refugee,
migrant distinction.
Certainly, we certainly
are for defending
the rights of refugees.
The Geneva Convention
is one of the tools
that we have to defend the
rights of people on the move.
Right?
But we also have to be wary of
the way those categorizations
become a tool within
a regime of sorting
and a justification
to exercise violence
on those who do not fit
those neat, legal categories.
And maybe, I would suggest that
we need to focus at least as
much on the violence that
states of the global North
are perpetuating onto
populations of the global South
as we do need to focus on
the conditions of violence
that they're fleeing initially.
Thank you.
Thank you for the participants.
We are going to start
the next panel at 4:10.
And we'll end it
with 10 minutes late.
So we'll start 4:10.
We'll end 6:10.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
