Displacement, Resistance, Representation - Queen Mary University of London 28-29 June 2012

 

Please join us at the conference Displacement, Resistance and Representation organized by the Centre for the Study of Migration (Queen Mary University of London). I'll be there presenting a paper on "Bodies of Lampedusa. Migration, Law and the Image".
All details (including the programme) of the conference can be found here.There is also a dedicated facebook page!

This is the abstract of my paper:

Lampedusa, a tiny island that belongs politically to Italy and geographically to Africa, is today the most controversial place within the Mediterranean. It lives off tourism for nearly eight months a year but it is forced to deal almost daily with what is commonly perceived, in public opinion, as an ‘invasion of Europe’ by migrants from the African continent. This paper aims at analysing on the one hand, the legal, political and mass-media discourses, with their related construction of normative practices, that influence the public imagery of the ‘others’; and on the other, the representation of these subjects in visual discourses, from mass media to cinema and visual art.

For a variety of reasons that this paper intends to explore, migrants are most commonly considered and represented as ‘bodies without words’ (Agamben 2005). The paper will show how the aesthetics of the migrant body can lend a ‘voice’ to alternative ways in which we may imagine and reconsider the conditions under which contemporary migration challenges Italian and European politics, ethics and aesthetics. In particular, the focus of the paper will be the representation of migrant bodies of Lampedusa under three specific forms: compressed bodies in containers and boats, floating or drowned corpses and clandestine bodies within Italy and Europe.

Looking forward to seeing you there!