Matthew Weinert (University of Delaware) gives a lecture with the title “The Art of In(Humanity): Cultural Heritage, (De)Humanization, and the Making of the World” (on the destruction of cultural heritage by the Islamic State - see the abstract below). 

Everybody is welcome and the department has kindly offered a free lunch for all participants. 

Please let Tonny Brems Knudsen know (before Wednesday 10^th June, 12.00) if you want to participate! 

The Art of (In)Humanity: Cultural Heritage, (De)Humanization, and the Making of the World
Matthew S. Weinert, University of Delaware

The so-called Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS) bombs, beheads, kidnaps, tortures, and otherwise brutalizes its way through Syria and northern Iraq, and in the process incontrovertibly verifies that ancient Roman adage, Homo homini lupus est: man is a wolf to man. But ISIS also bulldozes and sledgehammers its way across Mesopotamian lands. The ancient cities of Hatra, Nimrud, and Nineveh have reportedly been destroyed by ISIS militants, while countless priceless artifacts have either been sold on the black market to fund ISIS operations, or, if too unwieldy, destroyed. Homo homini lupus ad culturae hereditatem: man is a wolf to cultural heritage. Sadly, what ISIS does is not new; culture has long been deeply implicated in the projects of (de)humanization. This talk will explore the nexus between (de)humanization, the subject of my recent book, Making Human: World Order and the Global Governance of Human Dignity, and cultural heritage, the subject of my new major research project. Specifically, the talk proposes that by attending to how we think about and construct notions of ‘humanity’ and ‘cultural heritage’, we yield theoretically and empirically richer conceptions of those familiar yet ambiguous tropes we call ‘the world’ and ‘world society.’

Further information:
Tonny Brems Knudsen, IR Section