Stream #2 - Against Innocence: Arab masculinities, dehumanization, and respectability politics
followed by a conversation with artist Tala Abdalhadi moderated by Hilda Moucharrafieh
On June 23rd 2023, Nahel Merzouk, a 17 year old Franco-Algerian boy was executed by one single bullet at a roadside police check in the Parisian suburb of Nanterre. He was underage, driving a car that wasn’t his, tried to escape from the police and got finally stopped. The police immediately stated that the officer had reacted in self-defense, but a video of the incident quickly contradicted the official version. The damage was done and the media discourse, led by the right, revolved around one argument: Nahel was a delinquent, had crossed the law, and thus deserved to die. The youth revolts that followed around France only seemed to confirm that assessment.
Five months later, 3000 km from Nanterre, children in Gaza held a press conference. The still unfolding genocide had been going for a month, they were asking for the interruption of Israeli bombardment. That same week, in France, one of the main daily newspapers in the country featured a story empathizing with Israeli settlers in the West Bank, quoting them saying: "We just want to live in peace and cultivate our land."
This lecture will propose to explore how guilty bodies are constructed by Western media discourse, how a discourse on innocence is built and weaponized to enforce the status quo or justify the elimination of said bodies, specifically in the case of WANA masculinities.
On the other hand, it will discuss how we use a discourse of innocence in our own activist responses. Why does it matter if Nahel broke the law? Why should cases such as this one be treated as exceptional and not the most visible part of the state’s control over minorized bodies? Should we resolve to highlight someone’s innocence as an appeal for empathy and desire for recognition in the eyes of the State?
Stemming from an apparently specific case (the political representation of Arab masculinities in France and its central role in the formation of the French penal state) this lecture will attempt to identify the structural continuum linking Nanterre, Palestine, and the many spaces where innocence and guilt are defined by a colonial State.