Humanitarian Time and Refugee Presence: On Palestinian Lives in Extended Displacement
Jul 04, 2023 | 12pm ET
Keynote Lecture (Virtual) at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg / Centre for Global Cooperation Research | Speaker: Ilana Feldman (George Washington University)
This keynote lecture is part of the Second Annual International Seminar in Historical Refugee Studies "Historicizing the Refugee Experience, 17th–21st Centuries" taking place at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research in Duisburg July 4–7, 2023. The lecture is open to the public (in person) and will also be streamed via Zoom for non-conference participants who are interested in joining.
Humanitarian assistance regimes, displacement experiences, and life in refugee camps create disruptions in temporality. The repetitive aspects of humanitarian assistance, the monotony of life in a refugee camp, and the ways that displacement cuts people off from the experiences of their past and denies them opportunities to imagine their futures, all seem to reduce life to an unending present. But, even as disruptions in time are real, humanitarian temporalities are quite variegated. Life in humanitarianism is not a singular present, but layers of multiple, often quite different presents. Considering the case of Palestinian refugees, who have been displaced for more than seventy years, this talk explores the varieties of humanitarian times. Particularly, it takes up how people have lived in, and sometimes against, humanitarian time. It investigates how refugees make claims, take action, and get-by over years and decades of displacement.
To participate in-person, please write to events@gcr21.uni-due.de.
About the Speaker
Ilana Feldman is Professor of Anthropology, History, and International Affairs at George Washington University. Her research focuses on the Palestinian experience, both inside and outside of historic Palestine, examining practices of government, humanitarianism, policing, displacement, and citizenship. She is the author of Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule, 1917-67, Police Encounters: Security and Surveillance in Gaza under Egyptian Rule, Life Lived in Relief: Humanitarian Predicaments and Palestinian Refugee Politics; and co-editor (with Miriam Ticktin) of In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care.