Gaza as a Compass for Thinking

The Quebec Public Interest Research Group at McGill is a non-profit, student-run organization that conducts research, education, and action on environmental and social justice issues at McGill University and in the Montreal community. With such a broad mandate, QPIRG brings together a wide range of activists interested in many different issues.

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A decolonial philosophy of debilitation and resistance in colonial duration

1400 Blvd. De Maisonneuve Ouest

Spring into Action 2025

Spring into Action 2025 will be taking place from March 11-25! Join us for a series of free workshops and events related to environmental and social justice.

Gaza as a Compass for Thinking: A decolonial philosophy of debilitation and resistance in colonial durationKeynote lecture with Prof. Alia Al-Saji Seventeen months into the genocide in Gaza, our philosophies remain for the most part either silent or complaisant, seemingly unable to think with a contemporaneous reality that would shake many of its presuppositions and theoretical tools. This is a colonial duration in which genocide continues to snowball—during the current ceasefire—through disease, cold, exposure, starvation, untreated injury, and the debilitation of the infrastructure for healthcare. Refusing the application of pregiven frameworks, I ask what an anticolonial/decolonial and feminist philosophy that accompanies and affectively registers this reality may be. What is it to take Gaza as the compass for thinking. What might it mean to resist and refuse the inevitability of this colonial duration. Drawing on concepts of qahr (suffering, oppression), ashla’a dismemberment), shaheed (martyr, witness) and sumud (steadfastness), found in Palestinian, Arab and Muslim thinking—and on thinkers from Fanon to Shariati, Azoulay, and Meari—I reconfigure an approach to philosophy that might begin to do justice to Palestine. Alia Al-Saji is Professor of Philosophy at McGill University. Al-Saji’s work brings together phenomenology, critical philosophy of race, and feminist theory, with an abiding interest in questions of time and affect. She has published extensively in critical phenomenology and on the philosophies of Henri Bergson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Frantz Fanon, most recently: “Touching the Wounds of Colonial Duration: Fanon’s anticolonial critical phenomenology” (Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2024). Her recent work extends Critical Disability Studies in colonial contexts, notably in: “A Debilitating Colonial Duration: Reconfiguring Fanon” (Research in Phenomenology, 2023). Friday, March 21, 5:30-8 PMSHIFT Concordia (LB-145, 1400 rue Maisonneuve)Masking is strongly recommended. N95 masks will be distributed at the door.A free vegan dinner will be served at the end of the event!

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Gaza as a Compass for Thinking

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Gaza as a Compass for Thinking

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