Do24.10.2418:00
Vortrag Uferstudios

Body Concepts

Political Bodies

The Body Concepts series is based on the principle of transdisciplinary encounters. The session begins with a lecture by Neve Gordon followed by a dialogue with artist Aernout Mik.

LECTURE BY NEVE GORDON: In this talk, I analyse how Israel has reimagined human shields during its genocidal war on Gaza. I begin by providing an overview of Nicola Perugini and my previous work on the embodiment of human shields, highlighting the distinction between animate and inanimate shields as well as the idea that human shielding operates through a politics of vulnerability, whereby the vulnerable human body functions as a tool of moral deterrence. I then turn to describe how Israel introduced in Gaza three major changes to our understanding of shields, using human shields and the charge of shielding to extend the application of lethal violence. 

First, in its own use of Palestinians as human shields, Israel inversed the logic of shielding from trying to deter an attack to inciting an attack. Israel did so by dressing abducted Palestinian civilians in IDF military garb and forcing them into Hamas tunnels where they were used as fodder.

Second, Israel extended the legal clauses relating to shielding beyond vulnerable animate bodies to all legally protected inanimate structures in the Gaza Strip such as hospitals, schools, mosques and apartment buildings, using the shielding clauses as a built-in legal exception that legitimises striking against protected sites and infrastructures.

Finally, I show how the scale of shielding is modified to include practically every civilian and civilian infrastructure within the Gaza Strip, which, in effect, undoes the foundational legal distinction between civilian and combatant and the notion of vulnerability that informs it. This reveals, in turn, how the legal provisions relating to shielding can be used to provide legal justifications to genocidal warfare.

 

Link for livestream. Free admission. In English.

After teaching for seventeen years at Ben-Gurion University in Israel, NEVE GORDON joined the School of Law at Queen Mary University of London. His research focuses on international humanitarian law, human rights, the ethics of violence, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is the author of Israel’s Occupation (University of California Press, 2008) and co-author of The Human Right to Dominate (Oxford University Press, 2015), and Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire (University of California Press, 2020). Gordon is the former Chair of BRISMES’s Committee on Academic Freedom, and writes regularly for the popular press.

AERNOUT MIK lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin. His spatial video installations combine video, performance and architecture. His works reflect the psycho-social state of our society and our times, often by referring to current political and social situations and their coverage in the media. Mik represented the Netherlands in the Dutch Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale. He had solo exhibitions at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Art Sonje Center, Seoul; MoMA, New York; BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam; Jeu de Paume, Paris; Museum Folkwang, Essen; and CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid. He participated in numerous international biennials, including the Sao Paulo Biennial, Tirana Biennale, Istanbul Biennial, and the Berlin Biennale.

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