NGIZ Club Clingendael Event: Dictatorship and Exile Today: Imagination and Resistance

Fascism and dictatorship are back in our present – and so is political displacement, the condition called exile. The war in Syria and the recent rise of authoritarian rule in various regions of the world (perhaps Russia and Turkey most prominently) have created a new discourse of dissent and a new generation of exiles. At the same time, populism and the new right in Europe offer a powerfully revisionist view of the past, in which fascist rule and dictatorial figures (for instance in Spain and Italy, and in various countries in Latin America) seem no longer a priori discredited. What seemed to be shared memory now appears contested, perhaps irreconcilable history.

The Amsterdam School for Region, Transnational and European Studies (ARTES) and NGIZ Club Clingendael invite you for a meeting with three extraordinary authors: Palestinian poet Ghayath Almadhoun, NIAS writer-in-residence this semester, and Sana Valiulina, novelist who writes both in Dutch and in Russian. A cross-border conversation about the plight of the writer in exile, about estrangement, the continuous need for translation; but also about the uses of adversity, and the crucial role of the literary voice when looking for ways of resistance.

During this public session, the literary imagination will be center-stage. The prominent Syrian-Palestinian poet Ghayath Almadhoun, NIAS writer-in-residence this semester, and Sana Valiulina, Russian-Dutch novelist, will talk about forms of memory and resistance in their work

Ghayath Almadhoun is a Palestinian poet born in Damascus in 1979. He has lived in Stockholm since 2008. Almadhoun has published several collections of poetry, and his work has been widely translated. Together with Anne Vegter he published the collection of verse Ik hier jij daar (Jurgen Maas, 2018). He is writer in residence at NIAS in the first semester of 2019.

Sana Valiulina is a novelist and an essayist. Born in Tallinn, in Soviet Estonia, she studied Norwegian at Moscow State University before moving to Amsterdam in 1989. She received the Jan Hanlo Essay Price in 2017. Her latest novel, Not Afraid of Bluebeard (the Dutch title Children of Brezjnev), was published in Russia in 2017. She writes in Dutch and Russian.

Moderators:
Luiza Bialasiewicz, professor of European Governance, University of Amsterdam
Guido Snel, writer, translator, senior lecturer European Studies, University of Amsterdam
Jos Hummelen, chairman NGIZ Club Clingendael

Note: access free, but one needs to register through SPUI25