Hauptinhalt

Dislocation and Heritage: on Radical Hope and Experiences of Loss in Aleppo/Syria

Zoya Masoud (BEYONDREST / Forum Transregionale Studien), chaired by Çiçek İlengiz (BEYONDREST / Forum Transregionale Studien)

Veranstaltungsdaten

Centered on individuals from Aleppo, this seminar explores how the extensive destruction of urban heritage affects the sense of belonging and self-identification(s) with urban or built heritage. The old city of Aleppo, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986, became a focal burning point during the war between 2012 and 2016. In this period, the inhabitants of Aleppo were dislocated from the center by military interests of the warring parties who regarded them as dispensable. For the local population, the experience of loss became a daily routine, manifesting in the loss of friends, family members, property, and cultural heritage. Throughout these years, individuals found themselves in a perpetual state of exception and vulnerability. Through my research, I identified various patterns of belonging and self-identification tied to built heritage, which emerged in response to the experience of loss and the processes of understanding that loss. These patterns indicate my interviewees’ attempts to reach an understanding of their reality during the war, particularly as their state of exception became normalized, while standing continuously on the brink of the abyss of many discourses they adopted. The fugitivity of their own agency became evident and influenced their interaction with their (host) communities. 

Zoya Masoud is a scholar who works at the intersection of postcolonial studies, urban theory, and critical heritage studies. Using qualitative research methods, her research concerns marginalized individuals within the dominant discourses around heritage and identity. She received her PhD titled “Dislocated. Heritage Construction through Experience of Loss in Aleppo” from the Technical University Berlin. Before joining the ERC-funded Project BEYONDREST, she worked at the TU Berlin, the German Archaeological Institute, the Berlin Museum of Islamic Art, the BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg and Agha Khan Trust for Culture. She studied architecture and urban planning in Damascus, Hamburg, and Dar Es Salaam. 

Çiçek İlengiz works at the intersection of memory studies, politics of emotions and critical heritage studies. In 2019, she completed her PhD at the Research Center for History of Emotions, hosted by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin. Before joining the research project BEYONDREST, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Empires of Memory Research Group, hosted by the Max Planck Research Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen. Her recent publications have engaged with the conceptual discussions on inheritance, temporality and mourning in the fields of memory and heritage. She is currently revising her book manuscript for publication, tentatively titled The Healing-Injury: Revolutionary Mourning in Post Genocidal Turkey. Combining ethnographic research with oral histories and archival documentation the book offers a critical assessment of the logics of rational politics, the framework of which has been drawn by military, racial, and secular regimes of power. 

This event will be held in a hybrid format. For in-person attendance, please register in via eume(at)trafo-berlin.de (address: Forum Transregionale Studien, Wallotstr. 14, 14193 Berlin). For online participation, please note the login details for Zoom: 

https://zoom.us/j/92051698864?pwd=hDOGnuFakrwioajLYkw5vkEb2JtQsR.1 
Meeting ID: 920 5169 8864 
Passcode: 849220