A Conversation with Gabriel Gatti (Professor of Sociology, University of the Basque Country, Spain)
Due in large part to humanitarian law and transitional justice, the categories of detained-disappeared and forced disappearance are today well established – so much so that in some places like Argentina and Uruguay an intense social life has taken shape around them and in their wake. Victims mix with institutions, laws, and professionals (forensic anthropologists, social scientists, jurists, psychologists, artists, archivists, and writers), occupying intersecting positions and doing so with varied narratives, from the epic and heroic to the tragic and traumatic. Based on extensive fieldwork in Argentina and Uruguay, Gatti analyzes these worlds in an attempt to understand how one inhabits the categories that international law has constructed to mark, judge, think about, and repair horror.
Gabriel Gatti is Professor of Sociology at the University of the Basque Country, Spain. His research and teaching focus on contemporary forms of identity, in particular those constituted in situations of social catastrophe, rupture, and fracture. He is the author of Identidades débiles, Identidades desaparecidas, Les nouveaux répères de l’identité collective en Europe, and Basque society. His latest work, Surviving Forced Disappearance in Argentina and Uruguay: Identity and Meaningwas published in august of 2014. He is also a main researcher behind the Mundo(s) de victimas (World(s) of victims) a study of four cases that deal with the construction of the “victim” category in contemporary Spain.
Professor Gatti’s visit is part of the Reframing Mass Violence Collaborative Series. Sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Study, the Human Rights Program, the Department of Sociology, the Department of Political Science and the Department of Spanish & Portuguese.
When the National Football League’s Washington Redskins franchise traveled to the University’s TCF Stadium to play the Vikings, they brought with them a considerable amount of controversy. It has been difficult to avoid the debate surrounding the Washington team and their controversial moniker. This is not solely a Minnesota phenomenon; nearly all of the team’s away games have seen a significant amount of protest by both sides. The use of the redskin name has pitted advocates of a change to a more inclusive name against supporters of the football team and their more than eighty year history. While fans of the franchise argue that the name does not reflect any racism, it is important to understand the origins of the term redskin and how it fits into the wider context of the Native American genocide.
Antisemitism from Muslims has become a serious issue in Western Europe, although not often acknowledged as such. Looking for insights into the views and rationales of young Muslims toward Jews, Günther Jikeli and his colleagues interviewed 117 ordinary Muslim men in London (chiefly of South Asian background), Paris (chiefly North African), and Berlin (chiefly Turkish).
Professor Vidal, who taught at the University of Minnesota from 1972 until his retirement in 2003, is widely known as an innovative, original, and productive scholar in the field of Latin American studies. The collective impact of his work and influence opened up new fields of intellectual inquiry to which he contributed through his high intellectual standards, independent spirit of inquiry, and unwavering commitment to human rights.
Dr. Günther Jikeli is a research fellow at the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies at Potsdam University. He is the co-director of the International Institute for Education and Research on Antisemitism (IIBSA). He earned his Ph.D.at the Center for Research on Antisemitism in Berlin and has served as an advisor to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe on combating antisemitism. In 2013, he was awarded the Raoul Wallenberg Prize in Human Rights and Holocaust Studies by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and Tel Aviv University.