KÄTE HAMBURGER LECTURE WITH HILAL ALKAN
WHEN
WHERE
Innovation Center A2 1, seminary room 0.01
Saarland University
LANGUAGE
ENGLISH
PROGRAMME
The Käte Hamburger Centre for Cultural Practices of Reparation (CURE) and the CEUS | Cluster for European Studies warmly invite you to attend the next Käte Hamburger Lecture at Saarland University. This series allows fellows from the centre to share their latest research perspectives on cultural practices of reparation. After the lectures, audience members will have the opportunity to engage with key topics in more detail during a public discussion session.
Hilal Alkan: Spectres of a Myth: The Afterlives of Displaced Olive Trees in the Mediterranean
Uprooted ancient olive trees have become a prized landscaping fixture in Turkey. They are called “macro-bonsais”, grown in steel pots, with pruned and maimed limbs, their foliage carefully razed to look like trays or balls. Ghostly remainders and reminders of the bearers of the “liquid gold”, with their evergreen foliage, statuesque form and embodied stories, they now serve the wealthy, not the peasants. The processes that have led to the emergence of these lively commodities are multifold, ranging from rural abandonment to extractivist projects. Yet they also relate to the cultural production fed by contemporary olive mythologies. In her lecture, CURE fellow Hilal Alkan looks at the myths surrounding the olive, which on the one hand increases its value, as a health enhancer, an immortal witness to history and an identity marker, and on the other hand creates the market for its circulation as a looted and displaced entity—a specter of itself. Alkan asks under which circumstances the olive tree, which characterizes the Mediterranean, a region disproportionately affected by the ecological crisis and raging wars, offers a phantasmagorical remedy to heal these wounds, while at the same time being subjected to an array of violent destructions and displacements itself.
The Käte Hamburger Lectures provide deeper insight into the centre’s ongoing research, convey these ideas to the wider university community, and invite the public to engage in meaningful discussions on cultural practices of reparation.
Live Lecture Broadcast
The lecture will be broadcast live via Microsoft Teams on 22 April starting at 6:00 p.m. with the lecture starting no later than 6:15 p.m. You can find the link for online participation here.
