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8 March 2023

Palestine and the Culture of Denial

Palestine and the Culture of Denial

A series on courageous writing and public commentary amid settler colonialism

Despite well-documented evidence of racism and human rights abuse, Israel has long been embraced by many as a manifestation of progressive liberal values. Key to this miraculous act of political alchemy is a very specific form of denial of Palestine.

How can a violent project of dispossession and discrimination be imagined, felt, and profoundly believed in as though it were the exact opposite–as an embodiment of sustainability, multicultural tolerance, and democratic idealism? Despite well-documented evidence of racism and human rights abuse, Israel has long been embraced by many as a manifestation of progressive values. Key to this miraculous act of political alchemy is a very specific form of denial. 

Join Saree Makdisi and Jordy Silverstein as we unearth the underside of the liberal settler imagination.

This discussion is part of a series on Palestine, anticolonial solidarity and public critique at the Institute of Postcolonial Studies in collaboration with the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network and Free Palestine Melbourne. 

  • Wednesday 8 march, 6.00 pm, Saree Makdisi & Jordy Silverstein: Palestine & the Culture of Denial
  • Saturday 11 March, 5.30 pm, Ramzy Baroud, Jeanine Leane &Tasnim Sammak: On Courageous Writing for Palestine
  • Saturday 11 March, Writing Against Workshop (by invitation)

Livestream

The event will take place in the Ashis Nandy Room at IPCS. We will also livestream via Zoom – please register to join us in person at IPCS or online.

The Institute of Postcolonial Studies

The Institute of Postcolonial Studies (IPCS) is an independent public educational project – we interrogate colonial relations.

We’re a membership-based organisation, a community of academics, scholar-activists and artists. Become a member.

IPCS is easily reached by tram 57 from the CBD or a short walk from North Melbourne train station or the University of Melbourne’s Parkville campus. There is no parking onsite, though some parking is available on Curzon St and streets close by. If you have any questions about the event or accessibility, please contact us.

Thanks

The panel event is held in collaboration with the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network and Free Palestine Melbourne.

We acknowledge the Wurundjeri owners and custodians of the Eastern Kulin nation. IPCS stands in solidarity with Indigenous struggles for social justice and decolonisation in so called Australia and globally.

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Details

Date: 8 March 2023
Time: 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm Location: Ashis Nandy Room, IPCS

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Tags

anticolonial Black-Palestinian Solidarity decolonisation Palestine settler-colonialism

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Speakers

Saree Makdisi

is Professor of English & Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. His recent books include Tolerance is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial (2022); Making England Western: Occidentalism, Race & Imperial Culture, and Reading William Blake. 

Jordana Silverstein

is a Senior Research Fellow in the Melbourne Law School at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of Anxious Histories: Narrating the Holocaust in Jewish Communities at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century (2015) and co-editor of In the Shadows of Memory: The Holocaust and the Third Generation (2016) and Refugee Journeys: Histories of Resettlement, Representation and Resistance (2021). Her second book, Cruel Care: A History of Children at our Borders, is forthcoming in May 2023 with Monash University Publishing. A cultural historian, she researches histories of statelessness, Australian child refugee policies, and Australian Jewish history, focusing on questions of belonging, nationalism, identity, historiography, emotions, sexuality and memory.