About this Event
Focusing on the wave of hunger strikes that hit Israeli security prisons from early 2012, this paper explores the dynamics of Palestinian carceral resistance to the Israeli policy of administrative detention. This use of this policy and the resistance of those it is targeted against is situated in relation to Giorgio Agamben's (1998) theorization of the state of exception, 'bare life', and homo sacer. While the structure of administrative detention may resemble a state of exception, I interrogate Agamben in relation to two key elements that are largely absent in his work but fundamental to the Palestinian case - the role of colonialism and race in the production of 'bare life', and the resistance of those agents who are caught up in sites of exception. Drawing especially from Bargu's (2014) idea of the 'weaponization of life', I deploy Braun and Clarke's (2006, 2012) method of thematic analysis to investigate how Palestinian hunger-striking detainees understand their resistance in relation to their own lives as well as the broader national liberation movement. I find that the hunger striking detainees view their resistance as a refusal to be reduced to a state of 'bare life' as a practical and metaphysical weaponization of life, and as an individual act of collective resistance. Crucially, by 'weaponizing their lives', Palestinian detainees distinguish between their biological and political existence and sacrifice the former not only for their own individual political identity, but for the collective existence of the Palestinian people. I conclude by highlighting the relationship between the racialised nature of administrative detention and the resistance of those agents caught up in states of exception.
Speaker: James MacLennan (University College London)
Commentator: Ryosuke Kohatsu (University College London, The Diplomacy Review)
Chair: Oliver Hearn (University of Cambridge, King’s College)
Vice-Chair: Tabitha Smyth (University of Cambridge, Churchill College)
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Christ's College Cambridge, Saint Andrew's Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom
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