Drawing on Professor Ismail’s book The Rule of Violence (CUP 2018), this talk will focus on violence as a modality of government under the Asad regime in Syria (1970 to present). Long before the 2011 Uprising, governing through violence in Syria took spectacular forms as exemplified by the detention camp and the massacre.  It also took more routine forms manifest in everyday practices and mundane interactions in sites like the school and the family.

The talk will discuss the rationalities, objectives and effects of governmental violence.  A key question in this discussion is how violence was constitutive of the Syrian polity and how it was formative of Syrians as political subjects.

You can access the webinar flyer here

Speaker bio:

Salwa Ismail is a Professor of Politics with reference to the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her research focuses on everyday forms of government, urban governance, and governmental violence.

She is the author of Rethinking Islamist Politics: Culture, the State and Islamism (I.B Tauris 2003 & 2006) and Political Life in Cairo’s New Quarters: Encountering the Everyday State (University of Minnesota Press 2006). Her most recent book is The Rule of Violence: Subjectivity, Memory and Government in Syria (Cambridge University Press 2018).

Details:

26 November 2020
Melbourne: 8:00 – 9:00pm GMT +11 hours
London: 9:00 – 10:00am GMT +0 hour
Please join us via Zoom*

Please RSVP to mesf@deakin.edu.au by 24 November 2020

*Attendees will be provided with a Zoom link and password to access the webinar via a calendar invite sent to the email address registered with on the 25 November 2020

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