Την Τετάρτη 29/5/2013 και ώρα 19:00 στο Αμφιθέατρο Σαράτση, θα δοθεί διάλεξη του Peter Geschiere (Professor of African Anthropology, University of Amsterdam), στα πλαίσια του προγράμματος "Ηράκλειτος", με θέμα Paradoxes of Autochthony, Belonging and Exclusion: The Promise of Primordial Security and a Practice of Haunting Insecurity.
Η διάλεξη θα δοθεί στα αγγλικά.
The "new world order" announced by Bush sr. in 1990 at the end of the Cold War appeared to be about global flows and cosmopolitanism. But subsequent decades brought a general obsession with belonging and cultural difference, with rising xenophobia and communal violence: "a global conjuncture of belonging." The notion of autochthony plays a special role in this obsession with belonging as some sort of primordial claim: how can one belong more than if one is born from the soil itself? Since the 1990s the notion has played a key role in politics in several parts of Africa. But its spread has now become truly global. Comparisons with elsewhere show that this notion retains its apparently "natural" self-evidence, and hence its mobilizing force, in very different contexts. In his presentation Prof. Geschiere will focus on the ambiguous implications of notions of autochthony and localist belonging for citizenship and exclusion. The notion's genealogy - it goes back to classical Athens of the fifth century BC - highlights the paradoxes behind its apparent self-evidence: the claim to be born from the soil, as the most natural form of belonging, seems to promise a basic security; yet, in practice it is haunted by deep uncertainties since history is always about movement. The claim to belong to the soil expresses a quest for purity that is impossible in a world that has always been marked by migration. No wonder autochthony - in the present-day world as much as in classical Athens - inspires a "nervous language" haunted by deep insecurity about one's identity.