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UID:35358@arabamerica.com
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20251121T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20251121T210000
DTSTAMP:20251104T154438Z
URL:https://www.arabamerica.com/events/book-talk-master-peace-with-nikolas
 -kosmatopoulos-yasmine-khayyat/
SUMMARY:BOOK TALK | Master Peace with Nikolas Kosmatopoulos & Yasmine Khayy
 at
DESCRIPTION:\nNEW YORK\, NY\n\nLearn how social and structural inequalities
  in Lebanon are naturalized by the NGOs and think tanks who are supposed t
 o be tackling them.\n\n\n\n\nJoin us for a book talk with author Nikolas K
 osmatopoulos on his latest book\, Master Peace\, which examines the politi
 cs of expertise in the application of metropolitan theories of violence an
 d practices of peacemaking in post–civil war Lebanon. Through ethnograph
 ic encounters\, archival research\, and interviews that shed light on the 
 worlds of academic research\, UN agencies\, NGOs\, and think tanks\, Nikol
 as Kosmatopoulos argues that so-called experts\, from violence researchers
  to peace professionals\, have often misrepresented and exacerbated the vi
 olence they claim to be tackling\, through their deployment of racialized 
 tropes of conflict and communalizing peace practices.\n\nThe assemblage of
  these tropes and practices\, which Kosmatopoulos calls “master peace\,
 ” naturalizes social and structural inequalities by collapsing them into
  supposedly innate cultural and sectarian divisions. Master peace installs
  unequal relations of domination through the work of metropolitan theories
 \, as in “ethnic conflict” and “failed state\,” and practices\, su
 ch as conflict resolution workshops and crisis reports\, converting the ra
 dical demand for just peace into a postcolonial regime of dependence on te
 chnocratic tools\, unaccountable experts\, and external donors.\n\nKosmato
 poulos shows how master peace has been framing debates\, designing interve
 ntions of peace and war\, and defining the problem of violence in Lebanon 
 and the Middle East for decades\, to deleterious effect. As the supposed m
 oral high ground that justifies external intervention and precludes politi
 cal solutions or democratic forms of action\, master peace has obscured th
 e geopolitical and ideological nature of violence in the region\, substitu
 ting democratic notions of peace for an elitist antipolitics of expertise 
 characterized by dependence\, domination\, and epistemic violence.\n\n___\
 n\nNikolas Kosmatopoulos is Associate Professor in the Department of Polit
 ical Studies and the Department of Anthropology\, Sociology\, and Media St
 udies at the American University of Beirut. He is co-founder of the resear
 ch collectives Floating Laboratory of Action and Theory at Sea and Decolon
 ize Hellas. His research and teaching fields of interest include political
  anthropology\, policy expertise and global institutions\, and in particul
 ar peacemaking\, statebuilding and crisis resolution in the Middle East\, 
 and as of late\, the politics of solidarity and resistance at sea and the 
 political economies of ships. His research has been published in Peacebuil
 ding\, Social Anthropology / Anthropologie Sociale\, International Journal
  of Middle East Studies\, Public Culture\, Third World Quarterly\, Social 
 Analysis\, Millenium\, and Anthropology Today\, among others.\n\nYasmine K
 hayyat is Associate Professor of Arabic literature in the Department of Af
 rican\, Middle East\, South Asian Languages and Literatures (AMESALL) at R
 utgers University. Her research and teaching interests include contemporar
 y Arabic literature and poetry\, cultural memory studies\, and human/anima
 l relationships in Arabic fiction. Her first book War Remains: Ruination a
 nd Resistance in Lebanon was published by Syracuse University Press on May
  15\, 2023. It examines the figuration of the ruin as a site of resistance
  and potentiality in modern Lebanese novels\, poetry\, and sites of memory
 . Khayyat has articles published in the Journal of Arabic Literature\, Jou
 rnal of Middle East Women’s Studies and Critical Inquiry\, among others.
 \n\nRESERVE A SPOT\n\n\n
LOCATION:The People's Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, 10018\
 , United States
GEO:40.754457;-73.993267
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