Professor Ella Shohat’s public lecture

21 Sep 2016 - 16:00 / 21 Sep 2016 - 18:00

“Nation, Partition, and the Linguistic Imaginary: The Curious Case of Judeo-Arabic”
Time: Wednesday, September 21st at 4 p.m.
Location: Room 001, Emmanuel College,  75 Queens Park Crescent E, Toronto, ON M5S 1K7
This lecture examines linguistic belonging as invented within national and colonial itineraries. More specifically, it explores the genealogy of the concept of “Judeo-Arabic language” and its axiomatic definition as a cohesive (specifically Jewish) unit separate from Arabic, and classifiable under the historically novel rubric of isolatable “Jewish languages” severed from their neighboring dialect/languages. Does the notion of “Judeo-Arabic” correspond to the designation by the speakers of that language themselves or rather to a paradigm influenced by post-Enlightenment Judaic studies and Jewish nationalism? And in the wake of the colonial partition of Palestine and the displacement from Arabic-speaking cultural geographies, how should we regard the salvage project for an “endangered Judeo-Arabic?” What are the phantasmatic aspects of a conceptual framework that has left a linguistic practice both rejected and desired?

Ella Shohat is Professor of Cultural Studies at New York University. Her award-winning books include: Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices; Israeli Cinema: East/West and the Politics of Representation; Talking Visions; Unthinking Eurocentrism; and Race in Translation. Please click here for more info.