Daphne Fietz, "Decentering modern hope: Hope as virtue in the climate crisis"
Hope is generally regarded as a critical motivation for individuals to pursue change, while the 'decline of hope' and the concept of 'utopia' are identified as significant social problems. Although these themes are not new, the catastrophic consequences of climate change have intensified hope as a problem.
Drawing on interviews and ethnographic observations with climate activists from Germany and Britain, this presentation explores how hope is cultivated among those confronting the climate crisis in the Global North. I will argue that hope manifests in various forms, each reflecting distinct relationships with the future.
‘Modern hope’, a hope that is tied to the outcomes of one’s action and directed towards the broader future, becomes problematic but retains a hold on activists’ imaginary. Hope in this sense does not emerge as a key motivation but as a source of despair. In contrast, hope as virtue shifts the possibility of change into capacities of human beings and resistance itself. Because virtue is tied to the temporality of the self and to praxis, the catastrophic future loses its paralyzing effect.
I propose a more nuanced theory of hope that considers its various modalities, enabling us to comprehend both its demotivating and motivating aspects. In the modern temporal landscape, humans are seen to have the agency to transform the sociopolitical structures through praxis to approximate a better future. However, with the advent of the Anthropocene and the irreversible damage to the planet—foundational to any action—this model has become problematic, yet many narratives of hope continue to rely on it. I would like to use this presentation to instigate a discussion on the various modalities of hope, their temporal structures, and their historicity.
Asher Firestone, "The Hermeneutics of Love in Mizrahi Diaspora"
This paper will investigate the often-overlooked racial dynamic of Arab Jews’ (Mizrahi) presence in Palestine, to envision the concretized call for decolonization of Palestine. To invite Mizrahi Jews into an anti-Zionist diaspora outside of the state of Israel, we must use the praxis stage of the hermeneutics of love to investigate how we confront decolonizing worlds, when marginalized subgroups replicate the violence initially used against them.
Using the scholarship of Ella Shohat, I will unpack the violent history of Ashkenazi Jews baiting Arab Jews from SWANA to immigrate to 1950’s “Israel” and creating a secondary class of citizens who would serve as cheap labor for the newly established state. Zionism necessitates a deep dissociation with Arabness to produce a pure Israeli identity, and yet Israel has relied on Mizrahi people’s Arabness precisely to delineate a settling buffer between elite Israelis and Palestinians fighting to return to their land. As Israeli society subsumed Mizrahi history in propagandized hyper-memory of the Holocaust, the space to remember and mourn their Arab nations of origin withered. Frantz Fanon’s theory of double consciousness will reveal this to be a peak cognitive dissonance, where Israeli refusal of Arabness has constructed Mizrahi self-hatred and racism towards Palestinians.
Love is the only thing that can break through this dissociation, as Chela Sandoval’s work reveals. But it will not likely be the morally implored love towards Palestinians, that so many peace processes have attempted (and failed) to negotiate. Instead, love must be part of a larger abolitionist project-- one where, as Daniel Boyarin articulates, a global Jewry turns back to 2000 years of diasporic tradition. Jewish communities must reengage Mizrahi leadership to call for Israelis to mournfully and lovingly leave the homes that were stolen from Palestinians, and join a liberatory Jewish diaspora.
Nourhane Kazak, "Grievability and Resistance: Feminist Witnessing in Fatima Joumaa’s Photography of South Lebanon"
"What is the space between collective grief and love?"
— Sarah Ihmoud
Through obfuscation of history, linguistic gymnastics, regurgitation of Orientalist tropes, and appealing to a selective white morality, Empire works hard to render Lebanese lives, especially those from the South, "ungrievable." This research explores "feminist witnessing" as a method of resistance through visual documentation, focusing on Lebanese photographer Fatima Joumaa's portrayal of the lives and losses in South Lebanon amidst ongoing Israeli aggression. The term "feminist witnessing" is underexplored in the literature, and this study seeks to address this gap by examining Joumaa's documentation of funerals and commemorations of martyrs, particularly highlighting women's participation in these public ceremonies. Joumaa's work makes visible the grievability of Southern lives that traditional media often marginalizes, erases, or even demonizes. Drawing on Judith Butler's theories of ungrievability, Marianne Hirsch's feminist cultural memory, and Sarah Ihmoud's concept of "decolonial love," I argue that Joumaa's images serve as a form of feminist witnessing. Through her photographs and videos shared on social media, Joumaa documents collective grief and solidarity, challenging Empire's convoluted framing of war and violence. This study examines how visual storytelling from South Lebanon constructs an archive of resilience and resistance akin to Ihmoud's decolonial letters. By synthesizing these frameworks, I seek to think through what feminist witnessing could look like, examining how it confronts the disposability of lives deemed ungrievable and asserts their intrinsic value and purpose in the greater struggle for liberation from imperialistic occupation and injustice.
