On Taboos and Traumatic Experiences in Democratic Societies: Palestinians in Germany and Switzerland

HISDEMAB seminar with Sarah El-Bulbeisi

Although the Nakba is closely intertwined with the history of National Socialism, to this day it is not only not remembered as part of European history, but it is excluded from European collective memory and public discourse, its commemoration is suppressed. In my book, I show how Palestinians in Germany and Switzerland have been dealing with the tabooisation of their experiences of violence. I show how this tabooisation shaped conceptions of the self and the world of different generations of Palestinians and the relationships between them.

Sarah El Bulbeisi is a postdoctoral research associate at the Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB) with a focus on postcolonial studies, gender studies and psychoanalysis. Before joining the OIB, she was a research associate at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich and coordinator of the DAAD Higher Education Dialogue “Violence, Forced Migration and Exile: Trauma in the Arab World and in Germany” between Palestinian and Lebanese universities as well as the LMU. She did her PhD at LMU Munich and her licentiate degree at the University of Zurich. Among her publications: Tabu, Trauma und Identität (Transcript Verlag, 2020) and “Palestine in the Imagination of the Imperial German Self” (Jerusalem Quarterly, 82, 77).

See also: Video Conference: Trauma und Tabu: Palästinenser*innen in Deutschland und der Schweiz, lecture, ICI Berlin, 15 November 2022.

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