EUME Workshop
Thu 11 Dec 2008 – Sat 13 Dec 2008

Cultural Voices of a Fragmented Nation: War, Trauma and Remembrance in Contemporary Iraq

Friederike Pannewick and Stephan Milich (CNMS, Marburg). Part of the research field 'Travelling Traditions. Comparative Perspectives on Near Eastern Literatures', organised in cooperation with the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Philipps-Universität Marburg (CNMS).

Philipps-Universität Marburg, Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Deutschhausstraße 12, 35032 Marburg

Conference Program

Conference Program (updated version)

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The images and news reaching us ever since the invasion and occupation of Iraq generally represent a simplified or reductionist take on the highly complex political, cultural and social situation in that country. But even if the past few decades have been marked by revolution, political violence and dictatorship, one should not forget that Baghdad, the birthplace of modern Arabic poetry, has been a major and vibrant center of dynamic cultural developments ever since the 1950s.

Due to the dramatic events that have shaken Iraq over the past half century, the country's literati have been forced to work under problematic conditions or even go into exile — a worldwide Iraqi Diaspora being the consequence. For several decades the Iraqi cultural scene was driven by the ideological gap that existed between those who stayed and those who emigrated; since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003 it has been replaced by other antagonisms and dividing lines. 

The aim of this symposium was to critically re-examine the complex networks and discourses of the diverse intellectual and literary positions within the country itself and in its manifold places of exile and Diaspora. To what extent did Iraqi intellectuals and artists themselves contribute to those dramatic political developments that helped shape the latter half of the twentieth century? 

During this symposium our main question was: What kind of intellectual, literary and artistic means did contemporary Iraqi authors employ in dealing with the ongoing fragmentation and destruction of their country and society? If "trauma is the impossibility of narration," as Aleida Assmann says, then what is the role of literature and arts in a daily life shaped by mortal danger, political persecution and ethnic religious expulsion? How can art cope with war, violence, trauma and the absence of "normality"? Is Iraqi literature — as is the case for many texts of Holocaust literature — a literature of testimonies? 

To be traumatized means loss of control over the body and mind. It means that memory has gained complete ascendancy over the life of an individual, usurping his past and present and rendering his future impossible. In what ways are literary language, form, and content shaped by those traumatizing experiences? How do authors react to this "crisis of representation"? Or, to put it more generally: Considering the ongoing traumatisation in Iraq, might one indeed conceive of "trauma" as a veritable prerequisite for the writings of many Iraqi and other Arab authors? 

The overall aim of the panels of this symposium was to confront the diverse positions and discourses developed in Iraq and in Diaspora societies so as to outline the characteristic tensions and antagonisms that have emerged from the special circumstances of recent Iraqi history. 

The international symposium is part of the research field 'Travelling Traditions. Comparative Perspectives on Near Eastern Literatures' within 'Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe', a research program of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung and the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. The symposium is funded by the Center for for Near and Middle Eastern Studies and the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung. It was convened by Professor Dr. Friederike Pannewick and Stephan Milich (CNMS, Marburg). 

 

Schedule:

Thursday, December 11
8 pm 
Keynote speech
Nadje al-Ali / SOAS London, "Narrating the Nation, Trauma & War: Representing Iraqi Women's Memories" 

Friday, December 12
9.30 am — 10 am 
Opening address

PANEL 1: The Art of Surviving
Chair: Sinan Antoon

10 am — 10.45 am 
Haytham Bahoora / New York University, "Writing Women's Bodies: Space, Gender, and the Production of Literary Modernism in 1950s Baghdad"

10.45 am — 11.30 am
Fakhri Khalik / Frankfurt, "Trauma, Affect, and Changing Family Structures in Iraq"

12.00 — 12.45 pm 
Leslie Tramontini / CNMS Marburg, "Trauma and Violence in Iraqi War Poetry of the 1980s" 

PANEL 2: The Poetics of Trauma
Chair: Friederike Pannewick

3 pm — 3.45 pm
Sinan Antoon / New York University, Fellow of EUME 2008/09, "Echoes of Future Nightmares: On the Late Poems of Sargon Boulos"

3.45 pm — 4.30 pm
Stephan Milich / CNMS Marburg, "Haunting Memories and the Poetics of Trauma in Contemporary Iraqi Exile Poetry"

5 pm — 6.15 pm
Rashad Salim / London, "Greater and Lesser Trauma; Iraq: History, Art and the Cognition/Denial of the Obvious"

8.15 pm
Reading of Ijaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody Arabic-English, discussion with Sinan Antoon 

Saturday, December 13
PANEL 3: Trauma, Memory, and Modernity
Chair: Leslie Tramontini
10.15 am — 11 am
Hartmut Fähndrich / Universität Zürich, "Coming to Grips with Wounds. Some Recent Iraqi Novels"

11.30 am — 12.15 pm
Amel Mahmoud / Universität Bayreuth, "Stream of Consciousness and the Ceaseless Visit of a Traumatic Past: An Exploration of this Theme in Love Poem with Rhyme Letter Zed by Abd A. al-Rawdan and Leaves of Eggplants by Abdul Sattar Nassir"

PANEL 4: Iraqi Culture(s) between Exile and Home
Chair: Stephan Milich
2.15 pm — 3 pm
Christiane Schlote / Universität Bern, "Theatre in Times of War: Iraq and Political Drama"

3.30 pm — 4.15 pm
Andreas Pflitsch / Otto-Friedrich Universität Bamberg, "Violence from a Distance. Trauma in Iraqi-German Literature" 

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