Wednesday, December 13, 12:00 PM EDT
“Palestine, Ukraine and other wars of extermination: the local and the global”
A Bisan Lecture Series event - Sponsored by the Bisan Center and Scientists for Palestine
You can register for the webinar by clicking here!
Prof. Etienne Balibar (Paris-Ouest University)
Abstract: The war in Ukraine and the war in Palestine are certainly not the only cases of “hot” wars in our present or recent past, and they are likely not to remain the only ones in a predictable future. However, they confront us immediately with equally dramatic interpellations. And, with all their differences, which cannot be neglected, tracing back in each case to a long, complex, tragic history, and referring to the circumstances of their beginning (or new beginning), they raise certain common problems.
Some are essentially linked to their “local” determinations, such as the highly conflictual issues of appropriation and expropriation which govern the articulation of population and territory, and above all the moral and juridical issues of justice which arise from relations of domination, aggression, destruction, extermination. Others involve a “global” perspective, which however can be inscribed in very different analytical frames of interpretation: international law and the resolution of conflicts, imperialist and anti-imperialist strategies, nationalist policies of militarisation and cosmopolitan forces of demilitarisation.
The lecture has no pretention to cover all these dimensions of the situation, not to mention offering “solutions” to bring about a “just peace” in each case. It will try and reflect on this articulation of the two levels and submit provisional lessons of the comparison for discussion. Never forgetting that – as citizens of the world with more or less direct personal ties to the peoples and places currently under destruction and massacre – our principal duty is to act, not to talk. But acting, where and when possible, also requires thinking in common.
You can register for the webinar by clicking here!