THIS DEATH IS NOT ONE - Jasbir K. Puar, in conversation with Maya El Helou

This Death is Not One, published by Bilna’es, marks the first translation into Arabic of the chapter “Will Not Let Die”: Debilitation and Inhuman Biopolitics in Palestine, alongside the postscript of The Right to Maim. Not simply a reissue of previously published work or a translation, This Death is Not One includes a new preface from Jasbir K. Puar revisiting the right to maim from within this moment of genocide in Gaza that interrogates the new vectors of living and dying under settler-colonialism, and how maiming, in fact, speaks of extermination; an introduction by Nasser Abourahme reflecting on the book’s stakes in the present and its reception in the past, alongside searing analysis of genocide in excess of the law, and what this reveals and forecloses in how we understand the juridical body and militancy in the wake of Zionism; and original drawings by Xaytun Ennasr that inscribe a relation between land and body mapped through cosmological patterns tracing the relation between martyrs, who are referred to as moons, and the moon, a symbol for martyrdom in Palestine.

Jasbir K. Puar is Distinguished Faculty of Arts Professor in the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia, Extraordinary Professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa, and Professor Emerita at Rutgers University where she was faculty in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department for 23 years. Puar is the author of the award-winning books: The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability (2017), which has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese, and Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (2007), available in French, Spanish, Portuguese, forthcoming in Japanese, and re-issued as an expanded version for its 10th anniversary (2017). Her articles have been published in journals such as Social Text and South Atlantic Quarterly, mainstream venues such as Al-Jazeera and The Guardian, and translated into more than 20 languages.

Dr. Puar is also co-author of exhibitions for the Sharjah Architecture Triennial (2019) and the Sharjah Art Biennial (2023). In 2019 she received the Kessler Award from the Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies (CLAGS) at CUNY, which recognizes lifetime achievement in and impact on queer research and organizing.

Maya El Helou is an anthropologist, comic and visual artist, and writer whose multimodal ethnography explores queer and trans life, affect, state violence and necropolitics in Beirut. She holds a PhD in Anthropology and Sexual Diversity Studies from the University of Toronto, where she has also taught courses in anthropology, gender, and sexuality studies, as well as at OCAD University. Her dissertation and forthcoming graphic ethnography, Queer and Trans Antagonism Against the Consortium of Let Die in Beirut, is a combination of visual storytelling and ethnographic theory. El Helou’s research and teaching center on collaborative and creative pedagogy that makes scholarship both critical and accessible.

is an a-disciplinary platform that seeks to find new models for artists to redistribute resources and support one another in the production and circulation of work—functioning as a publishing space with releases ranging from music, multi-media artworks, publications, performances, installations, and other yet-to-be-developed forms.

Bilna’es initially emerged from the urgency to support artists and cultural workers in Palestine, and has since expanded its scope to working with artists living and working internationally. Our working economic model is the redistribution of resources that more established artists have access to in support of artists/musicians/writers who are practicing with nearly no support systems. We commission and publish works by musicians, artists, curators, scholars, and writers who are developing new conceptual and formal language around the relation between aesthetics (visual, sonic, and textual) and strategies of political and social activation within the cultural domain.

"بالناقص" هي منصّة غير تخصّصيّة تسعى إلى إيجاد نماذج جديدة للفنّانين لإنتاج ونشر أعمالهم الفنيّة من خلال إعادة توزيع الموارد والدعم المتبادل، بحيث تعمل كفضاءٍ للنشر يصدر أعمالاً متنوّعة، تضمُّ الموسيقى، والأعمال الفنّية متعدّدة الوسائط، والمنشورات، والعروض الأدائيّة، والتركيبات الفنية، وأيّ أشكال أخرى قد تظهر لاحقاً.

نشأت "بالناقص" بدافع الحاجة الملحة لدعم الفنّانين والعاملين في المجال الثقافي في فلسطين، ومنذ ذلك الحين اتّسع نطاق عملها ليشمل فنّانين يعيشون ويعملون في بلدان أخرى في العالم. يقوم نموذجنا الاقتصادي على إعادة توزيع الموارد التي يتمكّن الفنّانون الأكثر رسوخاً من الوصول إليها، لدعم فنّانين/موسيقيّين/كتّاب يمارسون عملهم في ظلِّ غيابٍ شبه كامل لأنظمةِ الدعم. تقوم "بالناقص" بالتكليف المباشر والنشر لأعمال الموسيقيّين، والفنّانين، ومنظّمي الأنشطة الفنّية، والأكاديميّين، والكتّاب، ممّن يعملون على تطوير لغة مفاهيميّة وشكليّة جديدة تدور حول العلاقة بين الجماليّات (البصريّة، والصوتيّة والنصّية) وبين استراتيجيّات العمل السياسي والاجتماعي في الحقل الثقافي.

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