The Political studies group in networks was created in 2016 as a meeting of researchers, young researchers, artists, writers, at the crossings of individual and collective research, and social movements and studies and the research.
In 2017, within the framework of an international training-research agreement of the University of Paris 8, it initiated a series of meetings of teachers, researchers and young researchers from Kurdish, Iranian, Palestinian, French, North and South American universities and research organizations brought together by the motive of an epistemological and political questioning of geographical and disciplinary borders.
The steps of the process can be summarized as 1. a reflection on emancipation and the politics of knowledges and translation, which finds its source and expressions in the co-presence of the research process across geographical and disciplinary boundaries, and the appropriations of the modern project of emancipation and its displacements; 2. a study of the colonial genealogies of the nation-state and contemporary forms of violence from inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives oriented by feminist and gender, subaltern, and decolonial thinkings; 3. a poïetic research that ranges from a reflection on temporalities and political subjectivities to a production of utterances of memory open to the present.
1. A reflection on emancipation and the politics of knowledges and translation:
This reflection unfolds in the time of the process punctuated by the contributions of theorists, translators, philosophers and sociologists M. Farhadpour (“Translation-thinking”, 2016 and “Emancipation with and without Marx”, 2020), R. Ivéković (“National sovereignties and translation. Towards a cognitive justice. Decenterings in intersectionality”, 2017), P. Bacchetta (“Intersectionalities: state of the research”, 2018), R. Abdulhadi (“Whose narratives? Situated knowledges and critical inquiry”, 2021).
The commitment to this step is accompanied by various translation works, such as of M. Darwich’s Discourse of the Red Indian, C. Beradt’s The Third Reich of Dreams, J. Rancière’s The Ignorant Master, L.-A. Blanqui’s Eternity by the Stars (in progress), and meetings about the movements of alternative pedagogies, socio-analysis and institutional analysis with the socio-analysts V. Schaepelynck and N. El Khatib (“What is a group, an organization, an institution?”, 2018), the art sociologist E. Sustam (“New spaces of emancipation”, 2018), the poet and translator G. Sido (“Knowledges and languages in the alternative project of Rojava”, 2019).
2. A study of the colonial genealogies of the nation-state and contemporary forms of violence:
This process, which we refer primarily to the work of sociologist S. Dayan-Herzbrun is developed in a seminar inviting researchers and young researchers of kurdish and palestinian studies (“Political studies in Palestine and Kurdistan”, 2016-2018), and several studies days organized between the LLCP and Experice (“1st Transdisciplinary day: Violence and narrative”, 2016; “2nd Transdisciplinary day: Exiles, displaced, refugees, and political prisoners”, 2017 and “3rd Transdisciplinary day: Violence and narrative II”, 2018), then in a questioning of the notions of people, state, nation, localities and diasporas in Palestine, Kurdistan and Kashmir (“Stateless peoples” Studies days I and II, 2021), as well as several conferences that reopen them beyond these regions with the contributions of philosophers and sociologists S. Dayan-Herzbrun, N. El Khatib, E. Mezra, E. Bronstein Aparicio, R. Abdulhadi, A. Stoler, N. Shalhoub-Kevorkian, N. Guénif-Souilamas, S. Saleh, H. Bozarslan, E. Sustam, M. Tayfuri, S. Ay, R. Alaç, S. Saeed, S. Saadi, H. Dar, S. Rabinovich, M. Farhadpour, P. Bacchetta, C. Rial, M. Grossi. These studies pursue a critique of the state, nationalism and colonialism by investing standpoint theories in philosophy and political theory, sociological analysis and history, but also in literary languages and art.
3. A poïetic research of remembrance and creation:
They open to explorations of memory and the archive, relaying on creation approaches with two public workshops, one in Paris at the end of a year of radio production sessions (“Vivid voices, or the history of the now”, 2018), and the other in Venice prefiguring a cartographic project of the memory of places in Palestine (“Talking stones: for an anti-colonial architecture”, 2018), as well as a studies day on art as an utopia (“4th Transdisciplinary day: art, philosophy, politics across borders”, 2019).
This poïetic research between remembrance and creation is found in the contributions of sociologist and theorist P. Bacchetta (“Re-presences of Gloria Anzaldúa”, 2018 and “Re-presences. Three moments of reflection”, 2021), the activist O. Scalzone (“The archive and the question of parresia”, 2018; “Returns of history”, 2019; “Narrative socioanalysis”, 2020), the writer N. Valentino around Il sogni di Palmi (Sensibili alle foglie, 2011), of the philosopher and translator S. Rabinovich with Retornos del Discurso del indio (para Mahmoud Darwich) (IIF-UNAM/Apofis, 2017), and sociologist R. Abdulhadi in the constant reminding of dates and places of the history of international solidarities.
It also gives rise to two consecutive seminars in four years (“Temporalities, subjectivities, politics” 2018-2020, and “Dreams” 2020-2022) as well as a studies day (“Beyond the archive”, 2021) supported by the LLCP and the University research school (EUR) ArTeC.
Expressions, inscriptions and continuities of the training-research:
The process is accompanied by the edition of an online journal, with the creation of a webradio server for live and recorded archive diffusion.
It gives rise to continuities and invitations within the initiatives of the program “Teaching Palestine: pedagogical praxis and the indivisibility of justice in Palestine” in 2018 and cycle of open online classes led by sociologist R. Abdulhadi between the Universities of San Francisco and Birzeit; the “2nd Colloquio internacional Heteronomías de la justicia. Territorialidades y palabras nòmadas” coordinated by philosopher S. Rabinovich at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 2019; the cycle of meetings “People coming from nowhere” impulsed at the University of Rojava by the writer M. Tayfuri and the artist M. Ivanović in 2020-2021 ; the collective project of the exhibition “Bê Welat” carried on by the art sociologist E. Sustam at the nGbK in Berlin in 2021 ; the “international conference in support to the Universities of Rojava” chaired by sociologists E. Sustam and H. Baghali in Paris in 2022; the online seminar of anthropology of dreams “Red de la vida onírica” animated by the anthropologist G. Orobitg Canal at the University of Barcelona in 2022.