Taboo and Trauma: Palestinians in Germany and Switzerland

Speaker’s Abstract:

Although the Nakba is interwoven with the history of National Socialism, it is not treated as part of German/Swiss history and is therefore excluded from the collective memory. Furthermore, the public discussion of Israeli state violence is a taboo subject in Switzerland and Germany, where the largest Palestinian community in Europe lives. The lecture, which is based on the dissertation “Taboo, Trauma and Identity: Subject Constructions of Palestinians in Germany and Switzerland, 1960-2015”, shows how Palestinians in Germany and Switzerland deal with the fact that the societies they live in taboo their systematic experience of violence and how this has affected their lives, their selves and intergenerational relations. The article is based on (auto-)ethnographic research, interviews and life stories of Palestinian first and second generation migrants in Germany and Switzerland.

• Referentin:
  Sarah El Bulbeisi, Research Fellow, Orient-Institute, Beirut
• Moderator: Prof. Dr. Andrea Behrends, Head of the Institute for Social an Cultural Anthropology, Leipzig University

• The event is part of the series The Middle East conflict in the context of changing global dynamics.
  This lecture series analyzes the historical contexts of October 7, sheds light on the complexity as well as contrasting perspectives on the roots and causes of the conflict, and places developments in the Middle East in larger regional contexts.