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To engage with the autonomy of migration thus requires a ‘different sensibility’, a different gaze, I would say. It means looking at migratory movements and conflicts in terms that prioritize the subjective practices, the desires, the expectations, and the behaviours of migrants themselves. This does not imply a romanticization of migration, since the ambivalence of these subjective practices and behaviours is always kept in mind. New dispositifs of domination and exploitation are forged within migration considered as a social movement, as well as new practices of liberty and equality. The autonomy of migration approach in this regard needs to be understood as a distinct perspective from which to view the ‘politics of mobility’ – one that emphasizes the subjective stakes within the struggles and clashes that materially constitute the field of such a politics. It shows, to employ the terms proposed by Vicki Squire in the introduction to this book, how the ‘politics of control’ itself is compelled to come to terms with a ‘politics of migration’ that structurally exceeds its (re)bordering practices. Indeed, it allows for an analysis of the production of irregularity not as a unilateral process of exclusion and domination managed by state and law, but as a tense and conflict-driven process, in which subjective movements and struggles of migration are an active and fundamental factor.

Sadro Mezzadra: The Gaze of Autonomy. Capitalism, Migration and Social Struggles

October 11th. Venue: no.w.here 3rd Floor £5 /£3 students and no.w.here members. 7pm.

A screening and discussion of new work by Hiwa K, Reben Majeed and Rozghar Mahmood Mustafa, curated by Jason Waite, looking at the various aesthetic strategies employed during the protests in the north of Iraq, how they obscure the distinction between art and activism, as well as form a critical position within the space of dissent.

State of Unrest:  Northern Iraq
Less than a week after President Mubarak of Egypt fell from power, the shockwaves of the Arab Spring swept across the levant and fomented what would become a tumultuous 60 days of continuous protest in Iraq. While endless news cycles were devoted to the uprisings in Egypt, Syria and Libya, those facing the security forces in the mainly Kurdish region in the north of Iraq were largely invisible. Mainly self-organized, these protests included a diversity of individuals that cut across social and religious divisions. Among those in the street were a number of artists contributing both body and voice as citizens and artistic practice to the heterogenous movement.

This screening and discussion of new work Hiwa K, Reben Majeed and Rozghar Mahmood Mustafa, curated by Jason Waite, looks at the various aesthetic strategies employed during the protests in the north of Iraq, how they obscure the distinction between art and activism, as well as form a critical position within the space of dissent.

more info at: http://www.no-w-here.org.uk/

Among the many astonishing claims that Barack Obama made in his recent speech opposing the Palestinian bid for statehood was that ‘peace will not come through statements and resolutions.’ This is, at best, an odd thing to say for a president whose ascendancy to power itself depended on the compelling use of rhetoric. Indeed, his argument against the power of statements and resolutions at the United Nations to achieve peace was a rhetorical ploy that sought to minimise the power of rhetorical ploys. More important, it was an effort to make sure that the United States government remains the custodian and broker of any peace negotiation, so his speech was effectively a way of trying to reassert that position of custodial power in response to the greatest challenge it has received in decades. And most important, his speech was an effort to counter and drain the rhetorical force of the very public statements that are seeking to expose the sham of the peace negotiations, to break with the Oslo framework, and to internationalise the political process to facilitate Palestinian statehood.

There are reasons to question whether the Palestinian bid for statehood at this time and on these terms is the right thing to do, but they are not the ones that Netanyahu put forward in his blustery and arrogant remarks. Within the Palestinian debates, many have questioned whether the present bid for statehood effectively abandons the right of return for diasporic Palestinians, leaves unaddressed the structural discrimination against Palestinians within the current borders of Israel, potentially abandons Gaza, delegitimises the Palestinian Liberation Organisation by elevating the Palestinian Authority into a state structure, takes off the table the one-state solution, and mistakenly relies on the UN as an arbiter rather than insisting that Palestinian self-determination form the basis of any future state. Critics like Ali Abunimah, the editor of the Electronic Intifada, argue that the UN has proven itself time and again to be a venue for paralysis, given the veto rules that govern the Security Council and secure the hegemony of major powers, making it likely that the present bid for statehood will be defeated by a US veto.

And yet, one effect that is already felt as a consequence of these ‘resolutions and statements’ is that the 1993 Oslo Accords can no longer be presumed to be the framework for future negotiations – indeed, we may see that framework crumble definitively in the coming days. Oslo not only gave the US a privileged position as broker of all ‘peace’ negotiations, but effectively sponsored the massive growth of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land by refusing to recognise their illegal status according to international law. In fact, the Oslo years have seen the number of settlers grow from 241,500 in 1992 to 490,000 in 2010 (including East Jerusalem), and the indefinite deferral of all ‘permanent status issues’ – effectively establishing the occupation as a regime without foreseeable end. The Oslo Accords also implemented the principle that any change of status of Occupied Palestine would depend on the ‘consent’ of Israel. Thus, the power of Israel to decide the future of Palestine pre-empted the international right of Palestinians to self-determination.

The demise of Oslo as an obligatory framework may well be the most powerful immediate effect of the Palestinian bid for statehood. And yet, a serious debate remains about whether the present bid undermines the broader political right of Palestinian self-determination. Those who oppose the internationalisation of the process underscore that half of all Palestinians may well be disenfranchised if this bid is successful. Can the brokering of statehood through an international body such as the UN confirm the rights of Palestinians to self-determination without external interference? If the Palestinian Authority becomes synonymous with statehood, does that imply a sacrifice of the right of return for millions of Palestinians outside the region? And does it also abandon Gaza and minority rights within Israel? If the rights of self-determination are a collective right of all Palestinians, Omar Barghouti argues, then the UN must preserve the status of the PLO as the rightful representative of the Palestinian people. Perhaps the most devastating criticism has been levelled by Joseph Massad, who understands the present bid for statehood to efface the historic claims of the Palestinian people. On the al-Jazeera website, he writes:

The question… is not whether the UN should recognise the right of the Palestinian people to a state in accordance with the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which would grant them 45 per cent of historic Palestine, nor of a Palestinian state within the June 5, 1967 borders along the Green Line, which would grant them 22 per cent of historic Palestine. A UN recognition ultimately means the negation of the rights of the majority of the Palestinian people in Israel, in the diaspora, in East Jerusalem, and even in Gaza, and the recognition of the rights of some West Bank Palestinians to a Bantustan on a fraction of West Bank territory amounting to less than 10 per cent of historic Palestine. Israel will be celebrating either outcome.

Perhaps this explains why more than 60 per cent of Israelis are reported to affirm the present bid for statehood, and why their position is decidedly left of Obama’s. But however the struggle turns out between the advocates for a Palestinian political demand that emerges from a movement for inclusive self-determination and those who seek the internationalisation of the process by displacing Oslo with the UN, we are in the middle of a historic shift that will lessen the power of the US, Oslo, and the self-appointed Quartet, which appears set to break up as the UN potentially separates itself from the European Union, the US and Russia. Nothing in Obama’s rhetoric will limit these effects. If nothing else, a new set of dynamics will be inaugurated through the statehood bid, and they may prove at the present conjuncture to be more important, and more valuable, than any of us can foresee at this time. Even if a state does not immediately appear (and there are reasons to hope for an initiative that emerges directly out of a more inclusive Palestinian movement for self-determination), at least we may see an end to a ‘peace’ process that has become an excuse for Israeli territorial expansion and the permanent deferral of Palestinian aspirations. Something Obama once called ‘hope’ may well break through the temporal standstill of the occupation, expulsion, confiscation and disenfranchisement.

crosspost from LRB Blog

The Archipelago of Extra-territoriality: A seminar with Michel Agier
Respondents Thomas Keenan & John Palmesino

In the present moment of history, when the process of human globalization seems to have just begun, the politics of fear expressed by the richest nations especially in Europe has lead to the end of the universal promise of hospitality and the right to asylum. Affluent countries wall themselves in, keeping out undesirable foreigners whom they consider as enemies, culprits or victims. Consequently refugee and IDP camps, clandestine encampments, urban invasions, that is to say, all places of refuge, become a part of habitat and living.

The day’s seminar will be structured in three parts; each session beginning with a 20-30 minute intervention by Michel Agier followed by responses from members of the Centre for Research Architecture as well as general discussion.

http://ceaf.ehess.fr/document.php?id=36

Intervention One - The Aid Archipelago: Refugee camps and humanitarian government

In this presentation Michel Agier will discuss the condition of “inhabiting and dwelling in precarity”, -- what are the force fields and modes of operation of camps and other humanitarian spaces and how are precarious places inhabited. Refugee camps are "out-places (hors-lieux) of a large proportion of the world’s population. The presentation will be accompanied by images from fieldwork in African camps.

Required readings:
1) Agier, Michel. “Humanity as an Identity and Its Political Effects (A Note on Camps and Humanitarian Government)” in Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 2010, pp. 29-45. http://roundtable.kein.org/node/1245

2) Agier, Michel. “From Refuge the Ghetto is Born: Contemporary Figures of Heterotopias, pp. 265-292. http://roundtable.kein.org/node/1246

Supplementary reading: je me suis réfugié là ! Michel Agier Entretien avec Christine Delory-Momberger http://roundtable.kein.org/node/1247

Intervention Two - Agier on Philosophy and its Fieldwork

"Has philosophy a fieldwork?" Methodological notes and a reading of a text by Michel Foucault. Michel Agier will present a short paper discussing Foucault and Agamben's biopolitic, and introducing the ethnography of theses forms: Le biopouvoir à l’épreuve de ses formes sensibles

Background readings:

1) Agier, Michel. The Undesirables of the World and How Universality Changed Camp.

http://www.mara-stream.org/think-tank/michel-agier-the-undesirables-of-the-world-and-how-universality-changed-camp/

2) Foucault, Michel. Chp. 11. “Society Must Be Defended” Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76 link: http://roundtable.kein.org/files/roundtable/Foucault_Soc_Defended.pdf

3) Bussolini, Jeffrey. "What Is a Dispositive?" Foucault Studies 10 Special Issue: Foucault and Agamben (2010): 85-107. http://roundtable.kein.org/node/1244 or http://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/foucault-studies/article/viewFile/3120/3294

Intervention Three - Agier on Mediterranean Migration, Refuges and Detention Centres

Presentation of fieldwork and notations from the Agier-Prestianni co-authored book “Je me suis refugié la! Bors de routes en exil” followed by the presentation of a photo essay on the same fieldwork by Sara Prestianni.

http://editions-donner-lieu.com/editions/nos-livres/je-me-suis-refugie-la

Background readings/links:

http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745640518

http://www.librairiedumoniteur.com/boutique/fiche_produit.cfm?ref=9782953209358&type=241&code_lg=lg_fr&num=4

http://www.metropolitiques.eu/Corridors-of-exile-A-worldwide-web.html

Additional Responses: Eyal weizman, Manuel Herz, Karen Mirza

Centre for Research Architecture
Roundtable – Friday, October 7th 2011
Goldsmiths RHB 312 (10:30 - 4:30)