Research Meeting Visiting Speaker: Nivi Manchanda

This Research Meeting features a presentation by visiting speaker Nivi Manchanda.  Dr. Manchanda is a Reader in International Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London, where her research and teaching focus on the history of imperial knowledge production and its material manifestations. She is the author of the book Imagining Afghanistan: the History and Politics of Imperial Knowledge, and has many other research contributions in the form of articles.  

Title: “Jean Genet and the Praxis of Resistance: Borders, Violence, and Revolutionary Solidarity”
Speaker: Nivi Manchanda, Reader in International Politics, Department of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary University of London 
Date: September 11^th
Time: 11 a.m.-- 12:30 p.m.
Location: Asia Centre Auditorium

RSVP: https://forms.gle/vxUpVMXZdBK1aZXJA  

Paper Abstract:

This talk explores Jean Genet’s radical approach to solidarity and resistance, tracing his trajectory from outsider in French society to committed ally of global anti-colonial movements. Focusing on Genet’s engagement with the Black Panthers and, above all, the Palestinian revolution, the presentation interrogates how Genet redefined solidarity not as humanitarian empathy or cultural affinity, but as a political and revolutionary practice.

Genet’s writing and activism challenge both liberal and nationalist paradigms by foregrounding solidarity as a praxis forged in struggle and refusal—insisting on alliance at the very limits of legality, belonging, and state-sanctioned violence. Through readings of Prisoner of Love and his accounts of witnessing the aftermath of the Shatila massacre, the talk shows how Genet approaches violence not as aberration, but as both a reality of resistance and a terrain of ethical and political contestation.

Instead of glossing over Genet’s ambivalent and sometimes contradictory, espousal of solidarity, I use his work as a provocation and as a way to think through the contemporary moment and how we may tentatively advance a politics of that does not accept genocide, colonialism, capitalism and ecological collapse as ‘facts on the ground’. 

              Photos from the Event