The conference is in English with simultaneous translation.
Presentation
Two years after the start of the war waged by Israel against the Palestinians following the murderous attack on its territory on October 7, 2023, with most of Gaza's buildings and infrastructure destroyed, educational and health institutions devastated, tens of thousands of civilians killed or maimed, and an entire population reduced to starvation, it is necessary to reflect on what was played out during this period. This is all the more necessary given that most Western governments not only lent their diplomatic and sometimes military support to these reprisals, but also prevented any public debate on the meaning of the tragedy in progress. The language and thought police have generated censorship and self-censorship. Talking about the history of Palestine over the past century, about the experience of its people faced with the dispossession of their land and the deprivation of their rights, or about the policy of erasing its presence, its memory and its culture - in short, anything that might help to grasp what is at stake in the current situation - had become suspect.
The symposium will attempt to apprehend the spectres that haunt the mass crimes perpetrated on the face of the world. It will do so from multiple perspectives, based on a dual reading—political and poetic. On the one hand, we need to take stock of the political upheaval at work, far beyond the Middle East, as a result of consent to the crushing of a territory and the sacrifice of its inhabitants. On the other hand, we must listen to the voice of the Palestinians through their poetry, which has long been their most creative way of expressing their suffering, their resistance and their hopes. "Here, we have a past and a future", wrote Taoufik Ziyad, himself both politician and poet. Understanding the present implies recognizing the weight of the past, and enables us to take a lucid look at the future.
This symposium is an extension of the lecture "Forms of violence" given by Didier Fassin at the Collège de France in the spring of 2025.