Western (and particularly Israeli) rationalizations of the Gaza genocide as self defense can be read as a symptom of the transformation and eventual collapse of the “Human Rights Discourse” (Robert Meister).

This talk asks about the internal limits and breaking points of these rationalizations: what is the hyperreal dystopia genocidal (un)reason belongs to? How has the Palestinian struggle become the name of a universal cause and movement exposing, criticizing and undoing the material base of genocidal (un)reason? The unstable concept of (un)reason radicalizes conclusions that Dialectic of Enlightenment (Horkheimer & Adorno) already implicitly addressed without having come to terms with the ongoing history of (settler) colonial violence.

Sami Khatib is Professor of Political and Social Aesthetics at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG). He is also a founding member of the Beirut Institute for Critical Analysis and Research (BICAR).

Sami will also give a (different) talk at 5pm in Utrecht.