Description:

"Seeking Asylum: Lip-Sewing and Truth-Telling"

In recent years, many asylum seekers have protested their conditions of confinement by resorting to corporeal, self-destructive acts. This paper will explore the lip-sewing practices of asylum seekers in detention centers as a form of resistance that protests unjust conditions of confinement by combining self-starvation with a withdrawal from speech.

Banu Bargu is Associate Professor of Politics at the New School in New York City. Her main area of specialization is political theory, especially modern and contemporary political thought, with a thematic focus on theories of sovereignty, resistance, and biopolitics. Her research interests are situated at the intersection of philosophy, politics, and anthropology, with a regional focus on the Middle East (especially Turkish politics). In her research and teaching, she draws upon the traditions of continental and critical theory as well as the history of Western political thought, with a keen interest in interrogating these traditions from the perspective of current political issues and practices.

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