What can war teach all of us about how to think, act, and feel when our worlds are devastated? As people from all walks of life are considering how to survive ecological disaster, what routes to repair are really possible? Perhaps one of the best places to ask these questions is in Anbar, Iraq. Here, decades of military violence have completely transformed the possibilities for plants, people, animals, and landscapes to coexist as they have before. It is here that Kali Rubaii situates three main arguments based on her ethnographic research, conducted in 2014-2015: First, counterterrorism is not
just about military strategy, but also a set of environmental conditions that kill relations among beings. Second, political violence is an assault on
multispecies survival, and therefore social and environmental justice are inseparable. Third, repair might not be about peaceable restoration, but instead reorientation to the future that makes room for antagonism as a prevailing mode of relationality.
Dr. Kali Rubaii, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Pudue University, will present a talk entitled "Today is Better than Tomorrow: Antagnostic Repair in Iraq" Tuesday, October 13 at 12:00 pm via Zoom.
