Memory and minorities in post-earthquake Antakya - Séminaire avec Seçil Daǧtaș
Schedule
Tue, 05 May, 2026 at 02:00 pm
UTC+02:00Location
MMSH (Maison méditerranéenne des sciences de l’homme), 5 rue du Château de l'Horloge, 13090 Aix-en-Provence, France | Aix-en-provence, PR
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𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭-𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐲𝐚 - 𝐒𝐞́𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐜 𝐒𝐞𝐜̧𝐢𝐥 𝐃𝐚𝐠̌𝐭𝐚𝐬̦ 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐢 𝟓 𝐦𝐚𝐢 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔, à 14h00, à la Mmsh (Aix-en-Provence), en salle A219, le séminaire de recherche de l'équipe Sciences sociales du contemporain accueillera Seçil Daǧtaș (Iméra/University of Waterloo) pour une intervention intiulée “𝐀𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐨𝐬𝐬 𝐀𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚 𝐂𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐡𝐞: 𝐃𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐌𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐌𝐚𝐩𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐏𝐨𝐬𝐭-𝐄𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐲𝐚”.
When the February 2023 earthquakes destroyed Antakya in southern Turkey, the city’s minority communities turned to digital platforms to document what official narratives obscured — from the scale of human loss and the dispossession of minority residents to histories of coexistence at risk of erasure. This talk examines crowdsourced digital mapping initiatives that emerged in the aftermath as forms of post-disaster archiving and minority witnessing. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and collaborative involvement in several of these efforts, I analyze how these projects mobilize distinct temporal and spatial logics in response to catastrophic loss, functioning as memorials and evidentiary repositories while also serving as platforms for community reassembly across dispersed geographies. Rather than simply preserving the past, they reactivate pre-earthquake lifeworlds, document ongoing loss, and contest state-produced absences through intimate knowledge and collective claim-making. The talk also attends to the politics of digitization, showing how digital archives depend on place-based memory, embodied knowledge, and community labor for their creation and survival, even as they enable marginalized voices to circulate beyond official channels. Moving beyond frameworks that treat minority archives primarily as sites of preservation or future repair, I reconceptualize archival labor in zones of catastrophe as a multitemporal practice operating across retrospective, immediate, and anticipatory registers.
𝐒𝐞𝐜̧𝐢𝐥 𝐃𝐚𝐠̌𝐭𝐚𝐬̦ is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Waterloo, Canada, and currently a Region Sud/Iméra Chair in Germaine Tillion : demain, la Méditerranée in Marseille. She is the author of "Under the Same Sky: Everyday Politics of Religious Difference in Southern Turkey" (Penn Press, 2025) and numerous articles published in venues such as "Cultural Anthropology", "Social Politic"s, "Geopolitics, and the "International Journal of Middle East Studies". Her research examines gender, religion, and everyday sociality across the Mediterranean and the Middle East, exploring how urban coexistence, border dynamics, and solidarities generate alternative political imaginaries beyond state-centered frameworks.
A retrouver sur le site de l'IREMAM : https://iremam.mmsh.fr/fr/memory-and-minorities-post-earthquake-antakya-seminaire-avec-secil-dagtas
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Where is it happening?
MMSH (Maison méditerranéenne des sciences de l’homme), 5 rue du Château de l'Horloge, 13090 Aix-en-Provence, France, 5 Rue Château de l'Horloge, 13090 Aix-en-Provence, France, Aix-en-provenceEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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