Lecture by Aamer Ibraheem
Chaired by Karuna Mantena

This talk presents an ethnography of the contradictory and often brutal experience of the self under a political condition marked by the excess of state sovereignty. It is an ethnography that enters the inner worlds of those living on the mountains of the Golan Heights—a post-war landscape shaped by the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War. In this occupied zone, a population of over twenty-five thousand Druze sees its history claimed and interpellated by the Syrian state, past and present, while being saturated with Israeli rule and political logic. At the heart of this sovereign conjuncture stands the powerful and pervasive reincarnated figure: men and women who recall their vivid past-life memories, but whose memories belong to histories that contradict and often trouble the present in the here and now. This talk attends ethnographically to this figure and sets out to understand the notion of the “implicated subject,” exploring how people and communities find themselves folded into events and social dramas that are far larger than themselves.

Fall Thursday Lecture Series events are open to Columbia-affiliated faculty, students, and invited guests. All others interested in attending, please email the SOF/Heyman at [email protected].

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