Nadeem Karkabi

Much like 1948 and 1967, October 7, 2023 ushered in visible scenes of erasure and elimination of Palestinians as an indigenous population. While uncertainty, fear and anguish have been features of Palestinian daily life for decades, at this time of high-flame violence, with their habitat becoming spaces of non-life, questions of the meaning and practice of remaining present, of existence itself, have never been more urgent. These extreme times require a bold agenda for critical inquiry. How can anthropology make sense of contemporary mass killing, large scale physical destruction, genocidal rhetoric and transfer plans as Israel seeks to destroy and empty Gaza while silencing dissent around the world? Can the tools of anthropology respond to these violences in all their forms? In turn, what can Palestine, as one of the most protracted examples of occupation and settler colonial erasure, offer to the anthropology of genocide, settler-colonialism, and de-colonization? This Conference will explore these questions through a focus on 3 interconnected themes: processes/ dynamics of elimination; forms of praxis and resistance; and “convergences” between Palestine and experiences of the structural violence of Western colonial modernity elsewhere.