Last year, following the terrorist attack in Nice, I met a European friend and colleague at a conference in Milan. I asked him how his Palestinian boyfriend was, a lovely man I have grown to care about. My colleague visibly upset informed me that his boyfriend has had a series of mishaps: a few weeks…
Some people whose interest in the Middle East is recent think that Assad is a uniquely Syrian phenomenon. I think the excessively harsh despotism and the equally excessive ability to cruelly exterminate your own population while believing yourself to be setting your nation on the road to modernity are quite unique in terms of their…
Look at the swamps created by the differential of exterminability and mournability between Muslims and non-Muslims. It is in those and similar dips in the affective tectonic plates in which we are all embedded where some of the emotional propellors of Islamic terrorism grows. Those affects do not necessarily lead to terrorism but Islamic terrorism…
‘Ils sont tous Charlie,’ in all its colonial narcissistic splendour.There is a close relation between satire and secularism as the latter came to emerge in Europe. Secularism, as is well-known, gained strength historically as a reaction to an era of European inter-religious violence and massacres. It was not only a desire for the separation of…
Excessive legality can make the racialised live in a world that has been slowed down, made dysfunctional and even unbearable.We rightly celebrate that we live in a society where law and order prevail. The capacity to follow established rules allows for the smooth operation of the many necessary transactions that make up our everyday life.…
Exterminating people by ‘rubbishing them’ is always less dramatic than when it is done through massacres. As my facebook friends know, I take my status updates seriously. This does not mean that I only treat serious topics, or that I take myself overly seriously. Indeed I can be very frivolous and I always maintain a…
Keynote presented to the inaugural conference of the Arab Council of Social Sciences, Beirut, March 2013 What does being a critical social scientist mean in the Arab world today? Or to ask the question differently: How can social scientists think Arab societies critically following or amidst the upheavals of the last few years? Such questions…
It was lunchtime at Sydney’s David Jones, Australia’s up-market department store chain. So I headed down to the ‘food floor’. Whenever I have to shop at DJs I try to make sure I go there around midday, precisely so I can go down to the food floor and order the exceptionally succulent off the bone…