Philosophical Responses to War and Genocide with Dalia Nassar and Peter Banki

Many people in the world experience death and dying today without funeral rites, hospitals, nursing homes, palliative care, professional and personal support or even a roof above their head. They are murdered, starved, left to die, at the mercy of decisions they have little or no control over. Through the news cycle and social media, the rest of “us” are bombarded daily with images and stories of war and genocide that distress us, that arguably even traumatise us collectively.

“One way of posing the question of who “we” are in these times of war is by asking whose lives are considered valuable, whose lives are mourned, and whose lives are considered ungrievable..” Judith Butler

From different philosophical traditions and ancestral heritages, Peter Banki and Dalia Nassar come together to consider how philosophical inquiry may give us some orientation with regard to what “we” as a collective are today experiencing. Of course, what “we” are today experiencing is unlikely to be for each of “us” the same. However, one of the enduring virtues of philosophical inquiry is that it invites us to sit with the unreadable, without good conscience and self-certainty, with languages and truths that are often irreconcilable.

There will be readings from philosophers such as Hegel, Simone Weil, Raphael Lemkin, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Judith Butler, Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida and others.