Nation/Sectarianism/Place:MENA

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This seminar explores the production of the Minority as a category of analysis, practice, domination, and resistance. By delving into the historiography of the global production of the minority, this seminar will assess questions of biopolitics, eugenics, humanism, home, migration, and belonging to contextualize the emergence of Nationalism and Sectarianism in the SWANA region. We assess broader cultural and intellectual histories involved in shaping the concept of the minority: Our readings will begin by tracing the genealogies of the colonial formation of humanism and the civilizational narratives embedded within them to historicize the practices involved in generating the ‘minority’ in theory and practice. We then shift to the political developments of the 20th Century which see the emergence of minority rights, human rights, humanitarianism, humanism, and the international biopolitical system emerging from that era. We will explore the formation of institutions such as the League of Nations and the United Nations to understand how neoliberal humanism shapes the formation of nation-states through practices such as forced migration, border policing, occupations, settler colonialism, and the divvying of geographies to ensure the homogeneity of nation-states. Our case studies will focus on the SWANA region to study the relationship between colonial and imperial histories, the commodification of culture and difference, the biopoliticization of bodies, and the reconfiguration of geographies through spatial politics and policies. We will examine how the production of nation-states necessitated the homogenization of populations, thus further strengthening the concept of the minority. Our case studies offer an analysis of minority-making in places such as Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Morocco, Egypt, and Turkey. We will explore how the formation of the sectarian governmentality mobilizes different national identities and discourses and how their political implications on the region.