Ayça Çubukçu: How would you describe the field and the genre which The Black Hole of Empire fits, or else, wishes to inspire? What is the craft you practiced when writing The Black Hole? Is this a book in Anthropology and Asian Studies as the Princeton University Press catalogue claims?
Congratulations to Samera Esmeir, Humanity editorial board member, on the publication of her new book, Juridical Humanity: A Colonial History (Stanford University Press).
Here's the publisher's description:
When Siraj, the ruler of Bengal, overran the British settlement of Calcutta in 1756, he allegedly jailed 146 European prisoners overnight in a cramped prison. Of the group, 123 died of suffocation.
If you pass through Belgium this fall, stop by "Newtopia: The State of Human Rights," an ambitious new art exhibition staged by Katerina Gregos and others. (Here's an interview with Gregos.) Along with Ariella Azoulay, Stéphane Hessel, and Elena Sorokina, I've offerd a short text for the catalogue.
Any place on its way to hell or already there has been preceded by stories like this. Small things that insist on attention and remain in memory, because that is the world people spontaneously create and sustain all the time in their daily lives when they are free to do so, alongside whatever authorities and governments and media regimes they may live under. Violence disrupts this everyday freedom, as it has disrupted even my memories from a distance.
After several days of conferencing, our group of twenty or so takes a day-trip to the ruins of ancient Palmyra, over 200 kilometers northeast. The journey takes about two hours by bus. On the far outskirts as we leave the city before entering the desert, we drive through a monumental construction site covering an area of what looks to be several square miles, extending on either side of the highway. It is a housing project, a large-scale settlement clearly intended for and anticipating hundreds if not thousands of people.
I pay the bill and we head out walking for an hour or so in the neighborhood, which is outside the old city. With no particular place to go and the barest of maps, we circle the area of our hotel, sometimes retracing our steps but all in the process of orientation. It is not late when we start, maybe eight o’clock or so, but there are few people around and most of the businesses are closed. We pass pastry shops displaying pyramids of sweets, and several others that seem devoted entirely to wedding announcement cards, examples of which are exhibited in the windows.
From Nils Gilman's introduction: "This dossier explores some of the ways that contemporary practices of development and humanitarianism have recently come to interpenetrate with military activities.
“Is this your first visit?” asked the passport official.
“Yes.”
“Welcome to Syria.”
Just over two years ago, in March 2010, I was a tourist in Damascus: I ate things, I bought things, I danced around a tiled fountain with the cigar-wielding brother of a restaurant owner in the Christian Quarter. I walked through souks, madrassas, caravanserais and hammams; I was guided around the Umayyad Mosque by a young Arabic teacher who doubled as a guide for extra cash, as families sat around in the sunny inner courtyard passing the time, eating, watching their children play. I was on holiday in Syria. This hardly seems possible now.
