The Nikos Poulantzas Institute is organizing the 18th annual lecture in memory of Nikos Poulantzas on Friday, December 19, at 7:00 p.m., at the Goethe Institute Amphitheater (14-16 Omirou Street, Athens).

The keynote speaker is Eduardo Cadava, professor of American literature and holder of the Philip Mayhew Chair at Princeton University.

The lecture takes as its starting point Fazal Sheikh’s multi-volume photographic work, Erasure Trilogy (2015). It focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the ongoing attempt by the Israeli side to erase both the violence it perpetrates and the acts of erasure themselves.

Through his exploration of the legacy of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Eduardo Cadava highlights the mechanisms of this “double erasure” and the possibilities for resistance against it. Drawing on theoretical and literary texts by Walter Benjamin, Mahmoud Darwish, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, and Eyal Weizman, the speaker argues that the Erasure Trilogy functions as a training manual on how to read history in times of danger; a crucial tool for understanding, analyzing, and resisting the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Keynote speaker: Eduardo Cadava

Eduardo Cadava is a professor of American literature and holds the Philip Mayhew Chair at Princeton University. He collaborates with, among others, the Department of Comparative Literature, the School of Architecture, the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, and the Institute for International and Regional Studies at the University.

His work spans American literature and culture, the theory and history of photography, comparative literature, political theory and philosophy, media technologies, and translation theory. He has also written extensively on architecture, music, democracy, war, memory and forgetting, racial discrimination and slavery, human rights, and citizenship.

He is the author of, among other works:

• Emerson and the Climates of History
• Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History
• Paper Graveyards 
• Politically Red (in collaboration with Sara Nadal-Melsió).

He is currently completing two new books: Erasures, dedicated to Fazal Sheikh’s Erasure Trilogy, and “What Interests Me Has Always Had Its Place There“: Derrida on Palestine, in which he examines Jacques Derrida’s thinking in relation to Palestine.

Forwarded by Maria Repousi

The event will be introduced by Maria Repousi, historian, director, and scientific director of the Nikos Poulantzas Institute.

The speaker will be introduced by Mina Karavanta, Associate Professor of Literature and Culture at the Department of English Language and Literature, School of Philosophy, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Mina Karavanta-A short Bio

Mina Karavanta is an Associate Professor in the Department of Literature and Culture of the English Language and Literature Department of the Faculty of Philosophy at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her research and teaching focus on:

• postcolonial and decolonial studies,
• poststructuralist theory and comparative literature,
• contemporary and global English-language literature.

Information

• Date: Friday, 19 December
• Time: 19:00
• Venue: Goethe Institute Amphitheater, Omirou 14–16, Athens
• Entrance: Free
• Interpretation: Simultaneous interpretation will be provided during the lecture.

Contact

Nikos Poulantzas Institute

Tel: 2103217745
Email: [email protected]
Web:  https://poulantzas.gr/