Resistant Ecologies in a Landscape of War: Lessons from South Lebanon

Speaker: Munira Khayyat, New York University. 

Abstract: What worlds take root in war? This talk takes us to the southern border of Lebanon where resistant ecologies thrive amid perennial gusts of war. In frontline villages, armed invasions, indiscriminate bombings, and scattered landmines have become the conditions within which everyday life is waged. Here, multi-species partnerships such as tobacco-farming and goat-herding carry life through seasons of destruction. Neither green-tinged utopia nor total devastation, these survival collectives make life possible within an insistently deadly region. Sourcing an anthropology of war from where it is lived decolonizes distant theories of war and brings to light creative practices forged in the midst of ongoing devastation. Like other unlivable worlds of the Anthropocene, war is a place where life must go on. 

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