DÁ FALA

[CAPSAHARA Lecture Series ] CNRS, Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale (CNRS-EHESS-Collège de France, Université PSL)
4 February 2019, 4pm > 6pm Room Multiusos 2, ID Building, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas - NOVA FCSH
Until recently, scholarship on Arab-islamic countries had largely neglected love and sexuality as topics of inquiry. For a long time, the study of kinship systems and Islamic law overshadowed interest in personal sentiment and sexuality. Moments of closeness between men and women have always been possible, perhaps even more so today, thanks to the spread of mixed-gender social spaces (universities, mixed-gender coffee-shops, etc.) and new communication technologies (the Internet, cell phones, etc.). These discrete dynamics shaping the experience of love deserve attention. Love can be thought of as a sentiment that young people can cultivate before marriage, during marriage or as a feeling typical of extramarital relationships as it is the case in Mauritania. Among saharian Moors the sphere of seduction and passion, very often poetized, coexists in parallel with the marital sphere governed by Muslim jurisprudence (fiqh). Courtship in many societies has commonly been a male prerogative, with women generally supposed to manifest their desires only indirectly. The fact that men are considered the subjects of desire and women its object is a major cross-cultural element which ensures men’s appropriation of women’s bodies and structures relations between people of the opposite sex.
Bionote
Corinne Fortier is a cultural anthropologist and a researcher at the French National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS). She is also a member of the Social Anthropology Lab (LAS) (CNRS-EHESS-Collège de France-Universités PSL, Paris). Bronze Medal 2005 of the French National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS). She conducted research in Mauritania and in Egypt as well as on Islamic scriptural sources related to gender, body, love, and family law.
http://las.ehess.fr/index.php?1916,
https://cnrs-gif.academia.edu/CorinneFortier
Organisation
Francisco Freire (CAPSAHARA PI)
AZIMUT - Studies in Arab and Islamic Contexts
CRIA-Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia

07 MAY 2014 - 18 JULY 2014 (Opening: Tuesday 6 May, 6:30–8:30pm)

Raw Material Company, Dakar, Senegal

This act is set within the Dakar Biennale OFF program. In 38 out of 54 African countries homosexuality is illegal. The exhibition, curated by Ato Malinda and Koyo Kouoh, will explore this reality in the work of artists from Algeria, Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt and Kenya respectively: Kader Attia, Andrew Esiebo, Zanele Muholi, Amanda Kerdahi M. and Jim Chuchu.

Except for South Africa all countries have stringent laws against homosexuality, in which same-sex intercourse leads to incarceration. It is the history of activism that with visibility come human rights. But what is to be done when visibility incites violence against the minority? The shared condition of precariousness implies that there will be casualties. There has been evidence of pre-colonial homosexuality, although this is not the primary focus of this exhibition, it is no doubt of interest to many. The exhibition includes photography, video, installation and performance.

Seminar – “Our Bodies: Loving Self, Identity & Personal Liberties”  12–14 May

“Today I believe in the possibility of love; that is why I endeavour to trace its imperfections, its perversions.”   Frantz Fanon

Fanon, the father of what is considered postcolonial studies, traces the affects of colonialism not just on the mere physical geography of land and territory but rather, what is considered more damaging, the scares, traces and imprints of colonialism on the geographies of the physical body. Fanon’s statement about love is an invitation to embark on a journey of true liberation from the chains of colonialism to attain personal liberties. True liberation is embracing and loving our bodies and ourselves. “Our Bodies: Loving Self, Identity & Personal Liberties” is a three-day seminar of personal development and enrichment. Building on the primary subject of the exhibition Precarious Imaging through communal dialogue, personal narrative, and interpersonal exercises, we will engage with Fanon’s possibility of love.