https://www.thanaticethics.com/
Thanatic Ethics Conference #4 “Death and migration in times of conflict: a forensic perspective”
Thanatic Ethics Conference #4 : “Death and migration in times of conflict: a forensic perspective”
Sciences Po, Paris in partnership with the Education University of Hong Kong and EMMA (Paul Valery University Montpellier 3)
Venue: Sciences Po, Paris
Dates: October 17-19, 2024
Language: English
Deadline for submitting proposals: May 1, 2024
Notification of acceptance: May 31, 2024
“Thanatic Ethics: The Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces” explores themes related to death in migration. After several series of webinars, online and on-site workshops, and three international conferences in Oxford, Kolkata and Hong Kong, between October 2020 and January 2024, this international, transdisciplinary project is now seeking proposals for Conference #4 to be held at Science Po in Paris titled “Death and migration in times of conflict: a forensic perspective”.
cfp_thanatic_ethics_conference4_oct2024.pdf
Thanatic Ethics Spring Webinar Series 2024
1. Dying Abroad: The Political Afterlives of Migration in Europe
Date: 9 February 2024 (Friday), 2 PM CET (9 PM HKT)
Speaker: Osman Balkan (Associate Director, University of Pennsylvania)
https://youtu.be/UwiZQBEDph8
2. Survival and Witness at Europe's Border: The Afterlives of a Disaster
Date: 15 March 2024 (Friday), 2 PM CET (9 PM HKT)
Speaker: Karina Horsti (Visiting Professor, University of Minnesota Twin Cities)
3. Border Deaths in Online Graphic Life Narrative: Graphic Thanatopoetics and the Carceral Spaces of Australian Asylum Detention
Date: 5 April 2024 (Friday), 3 PM CET (10 PM HKT)
Speaker: Olga Michael (Independent Scholar, Cyprus)
International Conference #3 : Death “Matters”: The (Im)material and the Sensory in Death in Migration
Venue: The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Dates: January 7-9, 2024
Language: English
This conference will be held in person and participants will be expected to travel to the venue at their own cost, obtaining their visa as applicable.
A few travel bursaries will be considered on a case by case basis for outstanding proposals.
Full description of the Thanatic Ethics Project: https://www.thanaticethics.com
Project Co-convenors:
Dr Bidisha Banerjee, International Research Centre for Cultural Studies, The Education University of Hong Kong
Dr Thomas Lacroix, Sciences Po-CERI / Maison Française d’Oxford
Dr Judith Misrahi-Barak, EMMA, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, France
Workshop #4 : In search of accountability
Thanatic Ethics: the Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces
Workshop #4: In search of accountability
A partnership between International Research Centre for Cultural Studies (The Education University of Hong Kong), EMMA (University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) and The American College of the Mediterranean (ACM, Aix-en-Provence)
Venue: University Paul Valery Montpellier 3, France
Dates: October 5-6, 2023
Language: English
Deadline for submitting proposals: 1 May 2023
Notification of acceptance: 1 June 2023
Thanatic Ethics: The Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces
Thanatic Ethics: The Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces
International Conference #2
Response, Repair, Transformation
Venue: Centre for the Study of Social Sciences (CSSSC)
Jadunath Bhavan Museum and Resource Centre, Kolkata, India
Dates: December 12-14, 2022
Language: English
kolkata_abstracts_and_bios.pdf
kolkata_conference_program.pdf
Deadline for submitting proposals: July 10, 2022
Notification of acceptance: August 10, 2022
● This conference will be held in person and participants will be expected to travel to the venue at their own cost, obtaining their visa as applicable.
Full description of the Thanatic Ethics Project: https://www.thanaticethics.com
Project Co-convenors:
Dr Bidisha Banerjee, Centre for Popular Culture in the Humanities, the Education U. of Hong Kong
Dr Thomas Lacroix, Sciences Po-CERI / Maison Française d’Oxford
Dr Judith Misrahi-Barak, EMMA, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, France
“Thanatic Ethics: The Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces” explores themes related to death in migration.
A transdisciplinary series of webinars, on-site workshops at University Paul Valery, and a first international conference held at the Maison Française d’Oxford, explored themes such as the longing to be buried at ‘home’ for diasporic people, body repatriation in the context of migration, the difficult identification of bodily remains in the context of the current migrant crisis and its political and personal stakes, death under surveillance and the necropolitics of invisibility vs visibility, migration at the border, narratives of death, the politics of grievability and spectrality, the liminalities of life, death and dying in migration, etc.
The migration crisis in recent years has modified our perspective on death in migration, at sea or on land. Recent works have sought to quantify the number of casualties (Heller and Pécoud 2017; Sapkota et al. 2006). Others strive to retrieve the identity of the dead in the thin traces they left behind (Kobelinsky and Le Courant 2017; Cattaneo 2018). And when nothing material is left, what endures is the memory of tragic wrecking, commemorated by plaques, monuments or art pieces, in the wake of earlier dumping of bodies overboard in colonial and slavery contexts.
The inverted torch in the Thanatic Ethics logo is one of the symbols of Thanatos, it can be flaming or extinguished, symbolizing the flame of life or the extinction of life and mourning. But it also brings to mind the Hippocratic oath and the caduceus, referring to the dimension of care, which is one of the directions the Thanatic Ethics Project means to take eventually.
This call for papers is for a second international conference entitled “Thanatic Ethics: Response, Repair, Transformation”. After having explored the various facets of the question of death in migration, we wish to examine the responses that are articulated in such contexts of death in migration, with a specific focus on the modalities of hospitality, care and repair.
How might we respond to migrant deaths? How can literature, film, theatre and the arts respond to these tragedies? What literary modes, if any, are best suited to writing about migrant deaths? What role can academics and scholars play in going beyond increasing the critical attention to these deaths? How might we navigate the border between scholarship and activism? Between the arts and activism (Sievers 2021)? Can commemorative practices result in change-making activism? How can the arts offer a mode of “counter forensics” or “thanatopoetics”? What are the conjunctions between the responses offered by social and political organisations, and those offered by artists, writers and poets? What lessons has the Covid-19 pandemic taught us about death in migration? What role might sanctuary cities or humanitarian corridors play in preventing migrant deaths (Gois and Falchi 2017, Lippert and Rehaag 2013)?
We welcome contributions from the Humanities, Social Sciences and related disciplines (multi and transdisciplinary perspectives will be favoured) on the following themes in the context of death in migration (though not exclusively):
- Responses to death in migration (aesthetics, activism, social, political and associative mobilization, individual and collective modalities, etc.)
- Politics of rescue vs ‘death by rescue’ (different policies in different nation states, politics of deterrence and state violence vs politics of rescue…)
- Welcoming and hospitality vs left-to-die migrants (solidarity movements at the local, national and international levels)
- Emergence of empathy vs the end of empathy, and what comes after empathy
- Mourning as care and repair, as transformative process (individual and collective practices)
- What can literature and the arts do that scholarship and activism cannot? What common ground can be created and with what modalities?
- Mourning, grief, consolation, commemoration
- Case studies of instances when collaboration between rescue organisations and artists was particularly fruitful.
We invite contributors to send their proposals (a 250-word abstract, title, author’s name, a 150-word bio, and contact information) to the Thanatic Ethics email address: thanaticethics@gmail.com.
Being focused on such an emotionally challenging topic as “Thanatic Ethics”, it would also be possible for the speakers to explore alternative ways of presenting their work and / or research that would be more sharing than presenting, adopting non-traditional modes of involving the participants. It may include open mic interventions, open discussions, group panels with participants coming from different disciplines who plan to prepare their panel collectively, artistic or staged presentations, creative workshops, performed talks, interactive and / or multilingual conversations, etc. Through these alternative modalities we hope to reflect the theme of care and repair in the organisation of the conference itself. In this case, a time requirement for consideration should be included in the proposal. Conventional 20-minute papers, followed by discussion time, are of course very welcome too, as are combinations of both.
Fall Webinar Series 2022-2023
Date: 29 November 2022 (Tuesday), 6-7PM CET
Speakers: Syd Bolton (Children’s Human Rights Lawyer (non-practising)) & Catriona Jarvis (Former Judge of the United Kingdom Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber))
Registration: https://bit.ly/3RlkD7j
The Zoom details will be will be sent to you in due course.
Abstract: As more States adopt increasingly restrictive border security, third country gatekeeping and processing arrangements, refugees and migrants face more dangerous journeys and punitive incarceration. Consequently, death tolls and serious harm rise as ‘collateral damage’ of migration deterrence policies and lack of adequate enforcement measures to ensure states’ compliance with international treaty obligations. Families of those who go missing or die on migration journeys suffer additional indignity of not knowing the fate of their loved ones; experience multiple failures of bureaucracy in denial of access to justice; culturally respectful and timely burial and mourning practices; psycho-social support, rehabilitation and reparations. This presentation examines how existing human rights norms can provide a new framework to address these and other issues facing bereaved migrant families and discusses the 2018 ‘Mytilini Declaration’ a tool to improve states’ practices and help create a mechanism to restore dignity, accountability and justice for victims and their families.
The Last Rights Project Website: http://www.lastrights.net
About the speaker: Syd Bolton is a Children’s Human Rights Lawyer (non-practising), former legal and policy officer including for Coram Children’s Legal Centre; The Children’s Legal Centre; Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture; Islington Law Centre, Wilford Monro Solicitors.
Catriona Jarvis is a former Judge of the United Kingdom Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber), former children’s lawyer and former teacher. She has worked on refugee rights, especially concerning women and children.
Date: 25 October 2022 (Tuesday)
Time: 10 -11 AM CET (4 -5 PM HKT)
Title: Political Conflict and Social Critique: The Role of the Dead in Contemporary Adaptations of Sophocles' Antigone
Speaker: Katja Sarkowsky (Professor of American Studies at Augsburg University, Germany)
Registration: https://bit.ly/3yit50P
The Zoom details will be will be sent to you in due course.
Abstract: Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone (ca. 442 BCE) and its central conflict between Antigone and her uncle Creon, ruler of Thebes, over the burial of Antigone’s brother Polynices has been widely adapted in various cultural contexts. These adaptions tend to be highly political, translating the tragedy’s conflictual constellations and its centrality of the dead into effective political and social critique. But the function of the dead in and for this critique and the concrete forms they take vary significantly: While for most of the 20th century, they tended to represent the dead and disappeared in the context of authoritarian, fascist, or colonial regimes, adaptions in the past 30 years, by contrast, tend to deploy the dead as part of a critique of the democratic nation state and its institutions, regarding, for instance, contemporary migration policies, the treatment of refugees at Europe’s borders, or the position of ethnic minorities. Thus, they seek to highlight some of the prominent conflict lines of liberal democracies and thereby significantly complicate the resistance narrative that has been so important to the reception of the play (Llanque/ Sarkowsky, 2023).
This webinar will discuss the different functions of the dead in select contemporary adaptations of Sophocles' Antigone. While the presentation will focus on recent examples from the US, Canada, Germany, and Austria, participants are invited to consider a broader spectrum of examples in the discussion.
About the speaker: Katja Sarkowsky is professor of American Studies at Augsburg University, Germany. She has published widely on contemporary Canadian and US American literatures, life writing, and literary citizenship.
Winter Webinar Series 2021-2022
The Art of Confession: ethnographic reflections on responsibility and doubt at the borderland of Lampedusa
Date: 14 January 2022 (Friday), 10-11AM CET
Speaker: Alessandro Corso (Department of International Development, University of Oxford)
Death here and now: Intimacy and politics in an ethnobiographical and photographic film
(In French and English) and Includes film clips from ‘Quel côté de l’absence?’ (with subtitles in English)
Date: 4 February 2022 (Friday), 10-11AM CET
Speakers: Valérie Cuzol (Max Weber Centre, France) & Frédéric Lecloux (Photographer and documentary maker)
Migration, Life Writing, and the Spectacle of the Migrant Body in Distress
Date: 4 March 2022 (Friday), 10-11AM CET
Speaker: Professor Mita Banerjee (Chair of American Studies, Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies, Department of English and Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany)
For more details, click here
Bodies on the Edge: Life and Death in Migration
Bodies on the Edge: Life and Death in Migration.
Venue: Maison Française of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Dates: April 28 to 30, 2022
Language: English
oxford_conference_program_v4.pdf
Full description of the Thanatic Ethics Project: https://www.thanaticethics.com
Project Co-convenors:
Dr Bidisha Banerjee, Centre for Popular Culture in the Humanities, the Education U. of Hong Kong
Dr Thomas Lacroix, Sciences Po-CERI / Maison Française d’Oxford
Dr Judith Misrahi-Barak, EMMA, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, France
Organisation Committee:
Dr. Justine Feyereisen, Ghent University/Maison Française d’Oxford
Dr. Marie Godin, COMPAS-RSC, U. of Oxford
Dr. Alessandro Corso, ODID, U. of Oxford
Prof. Judith Rainhorn, Maison Française d’Oxford
cfp_oxford_april2022_final.pdf
Constantly surveilled yet paradoxically unseen, the bodies of dead migrants follow the tracks of the living on migratory routes. On their perilous journey to foreign lands, migrants come close to death or encounter it. Once settled, some of them yearn to be buried with their ancestors in their homeland, a few prefer the soil where their children grew up. The Thanatic Ethics project explores the social implications and aesthetic representations of the circulation of bodies in migratory spaces. After a series of Webinars and two Workshops (October 2020 to September 2021), the Oxford Thanatic Ethics conference seeks to address the liminalities of life and death in migratory spaces.
While recurring images of mass arrivals have fostered representations of migrants as disposable subhumans, selective migration policies blur the limits between the living and the dead. In 2011, the left-to-die-boat (Heller, Pezzani, Studio 2012) drifting for 14 days under the constant scrutiny of coast guards and war boats, exemplifies the necropolitics of migration management (Mbembe 2019) that distinguishes between those who live and deserve to remain alive, and those who don’t. These deaths are no longer just deaths in migration but “deaths of migration” (Babels 2017, Kobelinsky 2017), i.e. deaths that are a product of violent migration policies. The becoming-dead of migrants, or the humanitarian spectacle following migrant deaths at sea (Tazzioli and Stierl 2021), is also a policy tool: it is used as a deterring argument in anti-emigration campaigns in sending areas or as a justification for so called ‘anti-smuggling policies’ and border control that cause systematic human rights violations. Treating migrants as vulnerable subjects to be protected, migration policies are increasingly imbued with the rhetoric of humanitarian reason (Fassin 2011). The protection of the migrant body has ironically become a tool for confinement, bordering.
Death is not the end as the presence of those who passed away continue to haunt the existence of the living. Their absence and the emptiness they have left, imbue the social ties of those who mourn them. Body repatriation and associated migratory rituals are a way of filling this void. But what if the body has never been found? What if it has been lost in the depth of seas or in the midst of deserts? “Unritual” (Loichot 2020) art as well as online and offline acts of mourning have flourished so that those lost would not fall into oblivion: multivarious art performance, art exhibitions and literary production, but also memorials and public events set up by families of missing migrants, diasporic communities, as well as pro-migrant organisations, attempt to make the disappearance of migrants visible to the public.
Circulating bodies become part and parcel of their biosphere, enmeshed in an organic and inorganic continuum with other living organisms, a wider relational cosmology of life forms (Kodjo-Granvaux 2021), from the smallest viruses (COVID 19) to complex plants and animals, but also material objects and raw matter. This is not only the case for migrants’ bodies but also for migrating bodies, their commodified body parts circulating on the market for organ trafficking.
From the becoming-dead of the living on migration routes and in (necro-) policies, to the ongoing traces left by the dead among the living, this conference addresses the manifold liminalities between what is alive and what is not, in all its materiality and immateriality.
We welcome contributions from the Humanities, Social Sciences and related disciplines (multi and transdisciplinary perspectives will be favoured) on the following themes (though not exclusively):
- Methodologies addressing the relation between life and death: life writing, digital humanities, migration death databases, etc.
- Policy narratives and measures of migrant death in anti-emigration campaigns and migrant death counting;
- The humanitarian reason and migrant vulnerability in migration management;
- Necropolitical ecologies: the relation between migrants and their environment on migration routes;
- International organ trafficking; the integrity of the human body, dead or alive;
- Liminalities between organic and non-organic matter, human and non-human; - Contemporary rituality (body repatriation, burial committees), its economics, its administration and politics (insurance schemes, debts to be paid, death certificate to be issued etc.);
- Contemporary unrituality: collective, militant and artistic projects meant to dignify the disappearance of those left with no trace; - Spectrality: ghosts, spectres and zombification in the postcolonial perspective on migration;
- Living-dead identities: usurpation of the identities of the dead. - Migrant deaths in times of Covid-19: Migrants have been over-represented in Covid-19 hospitalisations and deaths; at the same time, migrants have also been portrayed as threats (as ‘corona spreaders’) potentially causing the death of ‘others’. How are colonial legacies being reproduced with the bodies, lives and deaths of migrants within and outside the borders?
We invite contributors to send their proposals (a 250-word abstract, title, author’s name, a 150-word bio, and contact information) to the conference email address: thanaticethics@gmail.com.
Each presentation should be 20 minutes (followed by discussion time). A selection of papers will be considered for publication.
Thanatic Ethics Workshop #3 3-6 December 2021 : Necropolis: Entering the city of the Dead. Performing a ritual for deceased migrants
Thanatic Ethics Workshop #3
3-6 December 2021
Necropolis: Entering the city of the Dead. Performing a ritual for deceased migrants
Alix de Morant (RIRRA 21/UPVM), Marianne Drugeon EMMA/UPVM), Judith Misrahi -Barak (EMMA/UPVM), CCU, La Vignette, Université Paul Valéry Montpellier3
programme_w3_thanatic_ethics_dec_2021.pdf
About NECROPOLIS (2020):
For over a quarter of a century, "UNITED for Intercultural Action", a network of hundreds of anti-racist organizations from all around Europe, has been compiling a list registering 40,555 deaths of refugees and migrants who have attempted to reach Europe since 1993. Such disasters are usually handled with a standardized almost automatic institutional response: pathologists and forensic experts are deployed to collect medical and biological data from bodies and from living relatives in order to enable identification. However, this procedure has not been followed for most of the victims of the current migration crisis at the gates of Europe. At the bottom of the sea, on the shores, and inland, a mass of decomposed bodies and body parts tells the story of a collective whose ghost hovers over European territory. For their research, Arkadi Zaides and his team delve into the practice of forensics to conceive a new virtual database documenting the remains of those whose death is to this day mostly unacknowledged. This growing archive, this map, this site named NECROPOLIS is stretching in all directions across space and time, interrelating the mythologies, histories, geographies, movements, and anatomies of those who have been granted entrance to the city of the dead.
A short interview with Arkadi Zaides is available on: https://vimeo.com/429213412
For further details: https://arkadizaides.com/necropolis
Workshop #2 Thanatic Ethics: The Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces
Thanatic Ethics: The Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces
Workshop #2
A partnership between The Centre for Popular Culture in the Humanities (The Education University of Hong Kong), EMMA (University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3)
and La Maison Française d’Oxford
Venue: University Paul Valery Montpellier 3, France
Dates: September 29 to October 1, 2021
Language: English
Deadline for submitting proposals: 15 June 2021
Notification of acceptance: 15 July 2021
Project co-convenors:
Dr Bidisha Banerjee, Centre for Popular Culture in the Humanities, the Education U. of Hong Kong
Dr Thomas Lacroix, La Maison Française d’Oxford
Dr Judith Misrahi-Barak, EMMA, University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3
workshop2_thanatic_ethics_bios_abstracts_230921.pdf
Thanatic Ethics: The Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces, began with a single question: What happens to the bodies of migrants who perish on foreign shores, often while making perilous journeys across land and sea in search of better lives?
In migratory and diasporic contexts, one often witnesses the desire to be buried in the home country. A home burial encapsulates a widely shared perception of home shared among emigrants, immigrants and migrants. Death imbues the meaning of home and therefore the meaning of what it is to live away from the native country. The place of departure is often erected as a place of moral centrality (Lacroix 2018). It underpins the relations with those who stayed and who hide their fascination for foreign lands behind their accusations of selfishness, oblivion and the moral dubiousness of emigrants imbued with western values (Carling 2008). And yet, despite this willingness to be buried in the homeland, the life course of immigrants can take unanticipated trajectories. As emigrants grow old, the links with the left-behind dwindle. For various reasons, burial in the place of settlement becomes an option and then a reality (see the Muslim quarters in European cemeteries for instance, Lestage 2012).
The migration crisis in the recent years has modified our perspective on the deaths in migration, at sea or on land. Recent works have sought to quantify the number of casualties (Heller and Pécoud 2017; Sapkota et al. 2006). Others strive to retrieve the identity of these people in the thin traces they left behind (Kobelinsky and Le Courant 2017; Cattaneo 2018). And when nothing material is left, what endures is the memory of tragic wrecking, commemorated by plaques, monuments or art pieces, in the wake of earlier dumping of bodies overboard in colonial and slavery contexts.
The current Covid-19 pandemic has added another dimension to the question of migrant deaths and repatriation with the disastrous prospect of outbreaks in overcrowded refugee camps and detention centres. The pandemic has also resulted in massive internal migrations and the current global crisis caused by Covid-19 makes the thanatic approach in migration studies a particularly timely one.
Literature, film and visual art is replete with discussions of thanatic themes, raising questions about the political, social and emotional impacts of such acts on communities as well as individuals. Though questions of the circulation and repatriation of migrant bodies can be found as far back as oral literature and folktales, “Thanatic Ethics” hopes to fill a lacuna and seeks to increase the critical attention to this aspect of migration across the disciplines.
The description of the Project can be found online:
https://www.thanaticethics.com
https://emma.www.univ-montp3.fr/fr/valorisation-partenariats/programmes-européens-et-internationaux/thanatic-ethics
After several Webinars and a Workshop online (October 2020 to April 2021), this transnational and transdisciplinary project is now seeking papers for Workshop #2, aiming at increasing the focus on specific themes.
Proposals should be related though not limited to the following themes:
Questions of body repatriation / Practices and representations
The politics and aesthetics of the representation of deaths in migration
Making visible the invisible / the role of art(s) and literature
Thanatic ethics and gender
Funereal and mourning practices / the (im-)materiality of the body and its politics
The temporality of death vs the temporality of repatriation / the double journey
Bodies (dead and alive) migrating through spaces
The Nation, citizenship and the return of remains in migratory contexts
The impact of the sanitary crisis
Questions related to the integrity of the body / organ trafficking for instance
The individual and collective economics of repatriation
The impact of colonial history on repatriation
Grammar of thanatic spaces / the dead, the living and the survivors
Human rights, social justice and migrant deaths
Necropolitical ecologies
Necropolitical divide between the dead and the living / the segregation of space
Questions of the common space for everyone to share
Migrant deaths, humanitarianism and the politics of care
Comparative thanatics from a ‘multidirectional’ perspective / the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans
We invite contributors to send their proposals (a 250-word abstract, title, author’s name, a 150-word bio, and contact information) to the conference email address: thanaticethics@gmail.com.
Each presentation will be 20 minutes (followed by discussion time). A selection of papers will be considered for publication.
Workshop #1 Thanatic Ethics: the Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces
Thanatic Ethics: the Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces
Workshop #1 – Online – April 1-2, 2021
Workshop #1 : Abstracts and Bios
Date: April 1-2, 2021
Time: 9AM - 2:30PM CET (Central European Time)
Eventbrite : https://www.eventbrite.hk/e/thanatic-ethics-workshop-1-tickets-142478636437
Project website : http://www.cpch.hk/workshop-1-thanatic-ethics/
WEBINAR SERIES WINTER 2021
Friday 29 January 2021, 9:30GMT
‘Taking Care of the Dead: Experiences from Tajiks in Russia’
Juliette Cleuziou (University Lumières-Lyon 2)
poster_thanatic_ethics_webinar_series_juliette_cleuziou_29jan2021.pdf
Friday 12 February 2021, 14:30GMT
'Words Sculpted Out of Grief: Unritual in Édouard Glissant,
M. Nourbese Philip, and Jason deCaires Taylor'
Valérie Loichot (Emory University)
Friday 12 March 2021, 9:30GMT
'Transnational Engagements Around Senegalese
Migrant Deaths'
Félicien de Heusch (University of Liège)
To attend one of the online events, or to be added to the seminar’s mailing list, please contact Thomas Lacroix thomas.lacroix@cnrs.fr
Convened by Bidisha Banerjee (CPCH, The Education University of Hong Kong), Judith Misrahi-Barak (EMMA, Montpellier 3) and Thomas Lacroix (MFO)
WEBINAR SERIES FALL 2020
THANATIC ETHICS: THE CIRCULATION OF BODIES IN MIGRATORY SPACES
WEBINAR SERIES
Friday 23 October 2020, 9:30-10:30 GMT
‘The politics of counting migrant deaths in times of crisis’
Antoine Pecoud (Paris 13 University)
https://mfo.web.ox.ac.uk/event/webinar-thanatic-ethics-circulation-bodies-migratory-spaces
poster_webinar1_thanatic_ethics_23oct2020.pdf
Friday 20 November 2020, 13:30-14:30 GMT
‘Invisible Bodies: Refugees, Undocumented Migrants and Asylum Seekers in Canadian Literature’
Srilata Ravi (University of Alberta)
poster_thanatic_ethics_webinar_series_srilata_ravi_20nov2020.pdf
To attend one of the online events, or to be added to the seminar’s mailing list, please contact Thomas Lacroix thomas.lacroix@cnrs.fr
Convened by Bidisha Banerjee (CPCH, The Education University of Hong Kong), Judith Misrahi-Barak (EMMA, Montpellier 3) and Thomas Lacroix (MFO)
Shocking images of migrant bodies washed ashore, epitomized in Ai Wei Wei’s re-enactment of the Syrian infant Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body on a beach in Lesbos, have almost become a macabre shorthand for migrant deaths on foreign shores as more and more refugees undertake perilous sea crossings and other hazardous inland journeys, in search of a better life. We may wonder what happens to these bodies, what happens to these bones; are they repatriated back to the homeland? If not, are they in a cruel twist of fate, simply buried in mass graves on the foreign shores they tragically failed to reach while alive? How are the victims memorialized, if at all? This also raises related questions about the immigrant’s desire for a home burial. How is the longing for home manifested as a longing to die in the homeland? What about those who are criminalized and refused a burial? How is the right to die linked to citizenship and human rights in the context of migration and diaspora? “Thanatic Ethics: The Circulation of Bodies in Migratory Spaces” seeks to explore these questions as they are articulated in literary and visual culture, and across disciplines.
Full description of the Thanatic Ethics Project and past events: https://www.thanaticethics.com
Feel free to contact us at:
Dr Bidisha Banerjee (banerjee"at"eduhk.hk)
Dr Judith Misrahi-Barak (judith.misrahi-barak"at"univ-montp3.fr)
Dr Thomas Lacroix (thomas.lacroix"at"cnrs.fr)
The American ship the Sunny South carried “a freight of seventy dead Chinamen” from San Francisco to Hong Kong on May 15th 1855. It was a part of the large scale repatriation of human remains common throughout the nineteenth century, fuelled by the desire of Chinese emigrants to be buried in their native village. The unacceptable alternative was to be a lonely ghost wandering in limbo in a foreign land (Sinn, 265-6). This paramount desire to be buried in the home country is not unique to the Chinese. A home burial encapsulates a widely shared perception of home among emigrants. Death imbues the meaning of home and therefore the meaning of what it is to be an emigrant. The being-towards-death of those who left, erects the place of departure as a place of moral centrality (Lacroix 2018). It underpins the relations with those who stayed and who hide their fascination for foreign lands behind their accusations of selfishness, oblivion and the moral dubiousness of emigrants imbued with western values (Carling 2008). And yet, despite this willingness to be buried in the homeland, the life course of immigrants can take unanticipated trajectories. As emigrants grow old, the links with the left-behind dwindle. For want of money (body repatriation remains expensive) or of reason to get back, burial in the place of settlement becomes first an option and then a reality. The multiplication of Muslim quarters in European cemeteries is a silent testimony of the disbanding of longdistance ties for those who die too late (Lestage 2012).
In recent years, Western cemeteries accommodate a new population of those who die too early, in their attempt to cross deadly borders: the Mediterranean Sea, the Southern US desert, the Caribbean Sea, the Northern Australian shores, etc. Recent works have sought to quantify the number of casualties (Heller and Pécoud 2017; Sapkota et al. 2006). An estimated 40,000 people have perished in the Mediterranean since 2000, which makes the area the deadliest migration route in the world. Others strive to retrieve the identity of these people in the thin traces they left behind (Kobelinsky and Le Courant 2017). And when nothing material is left, what endures is the memory of tragic wrecking, commemorated by plaques, monuments or art pieces, such as the SIEV X memorial commemorating the sinking of the Tampa during which 431 people drowned trying to reach Australia (Kleist 2013). The current Covid-19 pandemic has added another dimension to the question of migrant deaths and repatriation with the disastrous prospect of outbreaks in overcrowded refugee camps and detention centres. In addition, immigrants from all walks of life are meeting untimely deaths as the pandemic takes its toll in Europe and the US. The pandemic has also resulted in massive internal migrations in countries like India of rural populations who had migrated to the urban centres for employment. With the country going in to complete lockdown, they now sought to return home sometimes by walking hundreds of kilometres across several states, resulting in several migrant deaths. The current global crisis caused by Covid-19 makes the thanatic approach in migration studies a particularly timely one.
Literature, film and visual art is replete with discussions of thanatic themes ranging from Ai Wei Wei’s art installations capturing the perilous journeys undertaken by refugees to Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s 2010 film Biutiful, from Edwidge Danticat’s depiction of migrating living bodies that are neither dead nor alive but remain in oceanic limbo in her short story « Children of the Sea » to Michael Ondaatje’s forensic fiction Anil’s Ghost (2000). What happens when bodies are refused repatriation? The concluding scenes of Kamila Shamsie’s novel Home Fire (2017) depicts the intersections of belonging and citizenship in death when her heroine Aneeka sits in a park in Karachi defying the gendered norms of Muslim burial, demanding her brother Parvez’s remains be repatriated to the UK for a proper burial in defiance of his characterisation as a terrorist by the British government. Similarly, the dumping of bodies overboard in neo slave narratives like Fred D’Aguiar’s Feeding the Ghosts (1997), or the Franco-Senegalese supernatural drama Atlantique (2019) by Mati Diop where the refugee crisis is symbolized by the spirits of the migrants lost at sea which return to take possession of the inhabitants in the African homeland, raise questions about the political, social and emotional impacts of such acts on communities as well as individuals. Though questions of the circulation and repatriation of migrant bodies can be found as far back as oral literature and folktales, little critical attention has been paid to this aspect of migration. « Thanatic Ethics » hopes to fill this lacuna.
