Actes du colloque Syrie: reconstructions, immatérielles et matérielles?

[Couverture du livre, reprenant \"Alive\", une œuvre de Akram al Halabi, 2013.] [Couverture du livre, reprenant \"Alive\", une œuvre de Akram al Halabi, 2013.]

Actes du colloque Syrie: reconstructions, immatérielles et matérielles?

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Parution: Irène Labeyrie et Claude Yacoub (coord.), Actes du colloque Ila Souria 1.0, Syrie: reconstructions, immatérielles et matérielles? (Paris: Association Ila Souria, 2014).

L’association Ila Souria a publié en janvier 2014 les actes du colloque "Syrie: reconstructions, immatérielles et matérielles?", organisé les 9 et 10 octobre 2013 à Paris, à L’Institut du Monde arabe. L’association Ila Souria est une association de droit français sans but lucratif. Elle "est pour l’instant composée essentiellement de Syriens, de Franco-Syriens et de Français: universitaires, chercheurs, scientifiques et professionnels qui désirent œuvrer pour une Syrie libre, démocratique et laïque. Tous les membres d’Ila Souria et les conférenciers intervenants à ses colloques agissent à titre bénévole". Plusieurs de ses animateurs sont architectes. Ses financements sont d’origines diverses: outre du crowd funding, ils proviennent d’institutions universitaires françaises et canadiennes, mais aussi de la Région Ile-de-France, de l’Arab Reform Initiative et de l’Institut du Monde arabe. L’argumentaire du colloque était le suivant:

La Syrie vit des jours tragiques, dont l’issue est encore incertaine. Même s’il est probable qu’elle débouche sur une longue période de confusion et de désordres, il nous paraît nécessaire d’aborder dès maintenant la question de la reconstitution et de la reconstruction de ce pays millénaire. Il s’agit de réfléchir dans les meilleurs délais, sans a priori idéologique, communautaire et économique, mais en adoptant une posture théorique et scientifique, aux problèmes qui vont se poser.

Reconstituer pour reconstruire—Reconstruire pour reconstituer, à travers de nouvelles approches destinées autant aux nouvelles générations d’étudiants qu’aux professeurs et à la population civile, acteur essentiel, sans laquelle rien n’est possible. Résolus à surmonter le temps de l’effroi et de la consternation pour aborder cette question avec modestie et prudence, nous savons la difficulté de concilier la réflexion—lente, documentée, interrogative—avec l’urgence des mises en œuvre si l’on veut esquisser de nouvelles perspectives intégrant des changements de concepts radicaux. S’attacher autant à "réparer" les dégâts matériels qu’immatériels. Ceux d’aspect tangible, qui touchent aux nécessités de la vie quotidienne et aux moyens d’existence, et ceux, intangibles, comme la désagrégation des tissus sociaux et économiques, qu’il importe de traiter sur le long terme pour retisser des liens psychiques, physiques et sociaux.

Une tâche abyssale nous attend. Toutes les expériences, les pratiques et les recherches liées à ces questions de reconstitution et de reconstruction seront les bienvenues pour esquisser les fondations d’une Syrie à la fois nouvelle et éternelle: c’est l’objet de cette première édition de ILA.


Le colloque s’est composé de cinq sessions, dans lesquelles se sont exprimés vingt-trois intervenants:

  • Archéologie & patrimoine
  • Architecture & urbanisme
  • État, société civile : problématiques
  • Reconstructions intellectuelles
  • Quel avenir politique pour la Syrie de demain ?

L’ensemble des interventions et des débats est disponible en vidéo, en français et doublée en arabe (sans les débats). Les communications des quatre premières sessions, et une synthèse de la table-ronde finale, publiées dans les Actes, sont également disponibles en libre-accès sur le site de l’association, en français et en traduction arabe. A cela s’ajoute un texte du père jésuite Paolo Dall’Oglio, qui devrait intervenir au colloque mais qui a été kidnappé près de Raqqa et dont on reste sans nouvelle depuis.

Sommaire des actes et liens vers les communications:

Préface

Session 1: Archéologie & patrimoine
Le patrimoine archéologique syrien en otage: comment le protéger?
Cheikhmous ALI

Les enjeux de la territorialisation du patrimoine en Syrie
Mohamed AL DBIYAT

Alep: espoirs et désillusions
Thierry GRANDIN

Le patrimoine dans la reconstruction de la Syrie: entre identité et nécessité de développement
Sophie CLUZAN

Sauvegarder le patrimoine immatériel syrien
Jacques MONTLUCON

Session 2: Architecture et urbanisme
Les politiques de traitement des quartiers informels en Syrie, quelles perspectives pour une reconstruction?
Valérie CLERC

Planification urbaine et territoriale pour reconstruire Damas
Eric HUYBRECHTS

Quelles pratiques pour la reconstruction? La lenteur et l’urgence
Irène LABEYRIE

Architectures et utopies, pour une pédagogie libre et révoltée…
Claude YACOUB

Session 3: Société civile, État: problématiques
La mise en place en Syrie des organisations de la société civile
Ignace LEVERRIER

La Syrie: bâtir un État de droit
Seve AYDIN-IZOULI

Les minorités religieuses entre autoritarisme et islamisme: Statut actuel et perspectives d’avenir
Nael GEORGES

L’économie syrienne, un enjeu de la guerre et de la paix
Jihad YAZIGI

Session 4: Reconstructions intellectuelles
Intelligence collective pour une reconstruction éthique, morale et durable
Samuel SZONIECKY

Recomposer un paysage médiatique libre
Hala KODMANI

La littérature syrienne et le pouvoir: bilan et perspectives
Farouk MARDAM-BEY

Session 5: Quel avenir politique pour la Syrie de demain?
Compte-rendu de la session 5
Pierre-André HERVÉ

Pour une démocratie consensuelle
Paolo DALL’OGLIO

Notices biographiques

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412