Convener: Yaacov Yadgar
Speaker: Hagar Kotef (SOAS)
In this talk, based on her book, The Colonizing Self, Kotef explores the cultural, political, and theoretical apparatuses that enable people and nations to construct a home on the ruins of other people’s homes or to feel that they belong to spaces of dispossession. Moving from analysis of contemporary Israeli TV shows to theorizations of settlers’ violence in the West Bank, Kotef examines the affectual conditions of settler colonialism. She tries to understand how, in conditions of systematic, prolonged violence, people develop attachment to the violence they inflict on others.
Hagar Kotef is a Professor of Political Theory at SOAS, University of London. Her research interests are Political Theory, Israel/Palestine, Settler Colonialism, Feminist Theory, and Liberalism and its critiques (specifically poststructural and postcolonial). Her most recent book, The Colonizing Self (Or: Home and Homelessness in Israel/Palestine), examines the construction of political belonging in settler colonies. It investigates how people develop attachment to space not despite violence, or by denying it, but rather through violence. The book was published in 2020 by Duke University Press. Her previous book, Movement and the Ordering of Freedom (Duke University Press, 2015) charts the conceptual history of mobility and immobility in the history of political thought and the structuring of political spaces: from the writings of Locke, Hobbes, and Mill to the sophisticated technologies of control that circumscribe the lives of Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank.
Please note that capacity is limited in the venue. As pre-booking arrangements have proved ineffective, we now intend to offer the 10 available seats on a first come, first served basis. Once capacity is reached, additional people will be turned away. Please arrive early to secure your place.
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