7th – 10th November 2012
Facultat de Geografia i Història - Universitat de Barcelona
Wednesday 7/11/2012
Thursday 8/11/2012
Friday 9/11/2012
Saturday 10/11/2012
Liminal Embodied Spaces, Precarious Lives and Creative Critique in the Megacity of Istanbul
Associate Professor of Social Anthropology
Abstract
NOTE: This talk could be held by videoconference
In this paper we try to understand how ambiguous spaces can host precarious lives. At the era of late capitalism and under the neolibreral agenda engendered migrant experiences would be examined through everyday practices of the lived space, embodied heterotopias and future expectations. Fieldwork data have being collected from the current megacity of Istanbul and particularly the neighborhood of Beyoglu.
Beyoglu constitutes a historical neighbourhood fool of minorities and different ambiguities. Beyoglu was the place chosen for the production of the glorious Turkish Modernity, inhabited by the minority of the Christian Rum, at first and other internal migrants following later. These people included different categories experiencing minority condition in reference to the state culture dominant standards: people with different ethnic, linguistic, gender and sexual practices, of different colour and coming from rural areas were usually urged to inhabit the marginal neighbourhood of Beyoglu. After the ‘80’s such practices have lead to the reproduction of this space as a “place” where Turkish citizens chose to contest the state culture dominant standards. Through furtive, passing-through and organized practices (see demonstrations) or everyday living experiences, artists and other contesters have inhabited the place. Esmeray is one of them. By focusing in her life, discourses and performances, as Kurdish feminist trans, we would try to understand the conditions, conceptualizations and political priorities under which marginal embodied and migrant experiences can be transformed into cultural creative critique for the majority of the Turkish society. Liminality seems to consist a prime trope and conditionality sine qua non empowering particular ambigious and precarious lives to subvert either the technologies of power and the majority’s hegemonic cosmologies.
