The University and the Camp

Abstract

If we take seriously the concerns and problematics of decolonizing the mind, we might begin by looking for sources of knowledge in the refugee camp. Camps have long been sites of empirical research: in their darkest form, as sites of detention and concentration, and in a putatively lighter form, as liberatory vehicles for the rescued and their saviours. What if camps did not serve empiricist ends of knowledge, but instead, theoretical ones? If so, then the humanitarian would become the student, the refugee the professor, and the architecture of the camp that of the university. This lecture imagines this architecture. This text draws from the keynote address given on January 25, 2019, at the workshop convened by Somayeh Chitchian, Maja Momic, and Shahd Wari at the Max Planck Insitute for the Study of Religious & Ethnic Diversity: “Inside-Out / Outside-In: Shifting Architectures of Refugee Inhabitation.”