"Our inheritance was left to us by no testament" – René Char
Podcast: On the Need to Shape the Arab Exile Body (with Amro Ali)
This is a conversation with Amro Ali, author of the essay “On the Need to Shape the Arab Exile Body in Berlin.” He is also co-president of the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities, research fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin, and lecturer in sociology at the American University in Cairo (AUC).
What we talked about:
Moving from the centers to the peripheries
Why Berlin? And not London, Paris, New York or Istanbul
Berlin as an incomplete city and Germany’s past
Germany and the Arabs
The Koblenz trial, accountability in Germany (but not in the Arab world)
January 25 and the legacy of the Arab Spring for the exile body
Home as the place where all attempts to escape cease
Valuing public spaces
Survivor’s guilt and impostor’s syndrome
Challenges faced by Arabs and other non-white people in Berlin
Meeting other Arabs for the first time in Europe
The need for a connection between Berlin and other capitals, such as Beirut or Tunis
Politics of language and the use of Arabic in the diaspora
Recommended Books:
City of Exiles: Berlin from the outside in by Stuart Braun
Representations of the Intellectual by Edward W. Said
Exile, Statelessness, and Migration: Playing Chess with History from Hannah Arendt to Isaiah Berlin by Seyla Benhabib
