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Palestinian Challenges to the Modern Sovereignty Concept as Forged by Hobbes and Rousseau

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Convention Date:
01-09-2017

Institute for Palestine Studies & Muwatin Institute for Democracy and Human Rights

Cordially Invite you to attend a seminar* on

Palestinian Challenges to the Modern Sovereignty Concept as Forged by Hobbes and Rousseau

Speaker: Dr. Khaled Furani

Time: Saturday, 16 September 2017, 14:00 - 16:00

Place: Seminar room (355) at the premises of Muwatin Institute for Democracy and Human Rights on Birzeit University Campus.

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Abstract

The speaker presents a Palestinian challenge to the concept of sovereignty as formulated by the founding celebrants Hobbes and Rousseau. Within a dissolving Middle East, it is imperative to critique the concept of sovereignty which dominates the modern political imagination. The proposed critique draws on resources from the Palestinian experience and from the past and present of the Arab-Muslim tradition. It endeavors to generate possibilities for restoring humility to governances and inducing a more genuine flourishing of persons, polities, and the planet.

The speaker’s point of departure is the hegemony of the modern concept of sovereignty which is dissociable from the molecular principle of indivisibility. He argues that in sovereignty regimes there is an inherent denial of the possibility of human self-oppression, a denial that attenuates ethical orientations to fragility, finitude, and revelation.

 

Speaker

Dr. Khaled Furani is an anthropologist. He is currently working on a book titled Unveiling Anthropology's Idols: Criteria and Critique for a Secular Discipline

Amongst his works:

  • Silencing the Sea: Secular Movements in Palestinian Poetry. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012.
  • “Is There a Postsecular?”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2015; 83 (1): 1-26.
  • “After Criticism: Mahmoud Darwish’s Mural for Enlightenment”, a forthcoming article in Boundary2.