Personne ici n’est personne : Chaque pas est double. La scène du présent n’est pas le souvenir du passé. Elle est son prolongement, sa mue.
▻https://liminaire.fr/chronique/entre-les-lignes/article/personne-ici-n-est-personne
-
-
En Polynésie, « la grandeur de la France, je la porte avec ma leucémie »
►https://www.terrestres.org/2025/04/25/en-polynesie-la-grandeur-de-la-franceLorsque la France annonce la reprise des essais nucléaires en Polynésie en 1995, Tahiti s’enflamme et le monde se mobilise. Quelques mois plus tard, c’est la fin… sauf pour les victimes des retombées atomiques des 193 bombes explosées dans l’archipel. Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross est l’une d’elles. Militante indépendantiste et anti-nucléaire, elle raconte son combat difficile pour la justice et le soin en contexte colonial. L’article En Polynésie, « la grandeur de la France, je la porte avec ma leucémie » est apparu en premier sur Terrestres.
-
Comme une guerre qui ne finissait jamais
Deux vieux Piémontais de la province de #Cuneo racontent leur XXe siècle. Des vies de migrants, dans ces mêmes qui marquent la #frontière entre France et Italie, et qui sont aujourd’hui franchies par des milliers d’Africains en quête d’une vie meilleure.
Lus par deux jeunes Italiens vivant et travaillant à Marseille, les #récits_de_vies de ces deux Piémontais, recueillis dans les années 1970 par Nuto Revelli (1919-2004), anthropologue autodidacte, racontent la #pauvreté et la migration, le franchissement des frontières, le travail et la guerre, la circulation des cultures et des langues, l’attachement de l’exilé au pays natal plus qu’à la patrie. Ils sont accompagnés d’archives de différentes époques, qui renvoient à la migration comme constante historique de cette #frontière_alpine. Des enregistrements conservés au Mucem et des prises de son contemporaines in loco (#Briançonnais et #Valle_Stura) reconstruisent des paysages sonores réalistes.►https://soundcloud.com/user-897145586/comme-une-guerre-qui-ne-finissait-jamais-raphael-botiveau
#giorno_della_marmotta
#guerre #migrations #réfugiés #Matteo_Renzi #Matteo_Salvini #catégorisation #histoire #Piémont #montagne #Italie #France #frontières
#podcast #audio #Alpes_Maritimes #pas_de_la_mort #travail #décès #mourir_aux_frontières #frontières_sud-alpine #jour_de_la_marmotte #Oulx #Marmora -
Du signe de l’éclair : Chaque forme naît libre, circule, se cherche, jusqu’à trouver sa juste place sur la surface, comme un fragment d’univers en équilibre.
▻https://liminaire.fr/chronique/entre-les-lignes/article/du-signe-de-l-eclair
-
Un songe qui n’est pas rêvé : Appeler le passé et l’avenir au secours du présent. Vite, ici, maintenant, toujours. Et le vide alentour. Au hasard des rues.
▻https://liminaire.fr/chronique/entre-les-lignes/article/un-songe-qui-n-est-pas-reve
-
Encore n’est pas à présent : Ici, nous disposerons ce qui nous reste face à l’accomplissement impossible. Le silence est un mot qui n’est pas un mot. Les sons se répercutent à l’intérieur.
▻https://liminaire.fr/chronique/entre-les-lignes/article/encore-n-est-pas-a-present
-
Imaginer le futur agricole et alimentaire des territoires
▻https://metropolitiques.eu/Imaginer-le-futur-agricole-et-alimentaire-des-territoires.htmlComment rapprocher production agricole et #alimentation ? À partir d’une expérience #prospective menée avec des acteurs locaux, l’article explore la richesse de leurs récits du futur et les alternatives qu’ils proposent au système en place. Dossier : Transformer le #système_alimentaire ? Les impacts négatifs du régime socio-écologique dominant sont largement documentés, tant sur le plan social qu’environnemental (GIEC 2022 ; IPBES 2019). Dans le cas du système agri-alimentaire, l’un des enjeux identifiés #Terrains
/ alimentation, #agriculture, système alimentaire, prospective, #récit, #transition_socio-écologique, (...)
-
Récits à deux voix sur le deuil pendant le confinement
▻https://laparoleerrante.org/recits-a-deux-voix-sur-le-deuil-pendant-le-confinementDu 17 mars au 11 mai 2020, nous avons dû vivre sans pouvoir nous déplacer, ni nous retrouver. Les hôpitaux, les EHPAD, et autres lieux de soins ont mis sous cloche leurs patient/es et résident/es, les privant de tout contact avec leurs proches. Dans ce contexte où les possibilités d’organiser des obsèques sont limitées, où il est impossible de se rassembler ou de traverser le pays pour assister à une cérémonie, qu’est-ce que l’État impose comme travail de deuil aux vivants ? On a voulu faire entendre les récits d’Elsa et Ivan qui ont dû faire face au même moment aux décès de leur proche pendant le premier confinement ; et comprendre à travers leurs voix comment morts et vivants ont été maltraités, et quels combats il a fallu mener.
Ce podcast fait partie de l’émission L’écoute et L’écho#4, enregistrée et réalisée le 11 juin 2022 par le studio son de #la_Parole_Errante, et entièrement fabriquée autour du dernier numéro de la revue Jef Klak, Feu Follet
#audio #récit #deuil #confinement
-
Cette absence de limite entre la main et la lumière : Une sensation, une vibration, un léger frémissement de l’air. Ce petit rien qui fait qu’un instant appartient à celui qui l’a vécu.
▻https://liminaire.fr/chronique/entre-les-lignes/article/cette-absence-de-limite-entre-la-main-et-la-lumiere
-
When numbers play politics : How immigration data manipulation shapes public narratives
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMefDk4MfIwKPBS Border Reporter Gustavo Solis hosted Austin Kocher from Syracuse University for a brief conversation about immigration detention data. They showed how officials manipulate data to create false narratives and what consumers can to about it. Kocher also broke down different datasets to give us a more accurate picture of what the federal government is doing. He writes a newsletter on Substack that explores the complexities of the U.S. immigration system.
This transcription has been edited for brevity and clarity.
You wrote about how government agencies can shape public narratives through selective data releases and, sometimes, how reporters like me parrot those narratives. So, as an example, we have these social media posts from ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Tell us what we’re looking at and what could be problematic about this.
Kocher: Sure, so in the first week of the Trump administration, in an effort to show and to highlight the immigration enforcement activities that the administration was taking, ICE began posting numbers on their Twitter (X) page that showed growing numbers of arrests and detainees. The first time I saw this, I thought, I’m a big advocate of government transparency, so nothing I love to see more than data — so, potentially, great.
However, there was no context or information about the data. It really didn’t allow us to look at what the norm was before Trump took office. So that’s that was one red flag for me.
The other red flag for me when I saw this was knowing how long it takes the agency, many times, to produce this data. I was concerned that the data wasn’t really getting validated. My concern was: did they really take the time to make sure those are correct? The data systems that the government uses, they’re huge, they’re enormous, they’re very dynamic. And so there really does need to be some validation to make sure the numbers are correct.
The big picture problem here that I think everybody needs to be aware of is that even though it’s great when government agencies post data, if they’re not taking the time to do it accurately and to do it responsibly, it runs the risk of data being used to advance a political agenda more than actually provide meaningful transparency to the American public.
That brings us to like the second question. As a reporter, one of my favorite things to do is correct misleading narratives. And you kind of did that recently when it comes to who ICE is arresting.
The prevailing narrative coming out of the White House is that they’re arresting the worst of the worst, right? The “bad hombres,” the murderers and the rapists. But is that what the data show?
Kocher: The data is really inconsistent on this, and so it doesn’t necessarily support the government narrative at all.
The government is not really backing up those claims with data points. We don’t have detailed case-by-case data on the people that they’ve arrested. They could release that data, but they haven’t yet.
What we do have is a spreadsheet that Congress requires ICE to produce on a biweekly basis.
An undated table shows detained populations by ICE between January and March 2025.I’ve looked at this data very carefully and closely over the last several years. So, I feel very comfortable with the data. And what this data shows is: based on the number of people in detention at any given point in time, we’ve gone from about 38,000 people up to around 43,000 people in detention.
And when we look at that breakdown, what we see is: yes, the largest fraction of people in immigrant detention are people with criminal convictions. However, the number that has grown the most, which shows possibly who ICE is really focusing on, are people that don’t have any criminal convictions and don’t have any pending criminal charges.
Interesting. Tell me what we’re looking at here with the graph. What should people be focusing on?
Kocher: ICE has a lot of detailed data on detainees’ criminal histories, but the data that they report to the public in this spreadsheet really just breaks it down into three categories.
Immigrants held in detention with conviction — and let’s be very clear about what it means to have a criminal conviction; this could be anything from theft, stealing something from a grocery store and getting in trouble all the way up to potentially murder. So even that convicted criminal category represents a huge variety of people.
It also may include people with criminal convictions that are years, sometimes even decades old, not people who represent any kind of real public threat. So we can’t assume that convicted criminal necessarily means a real public safety threat.
The second category is immigrants held in detention with pending criminal charges.
And then the last category, other immigration violator.
That’s what ICE refers to as people who have immigration violations but don’t have criminal charges or convictions.
It went from 800 in January to almost 5,000 now. That’s a big jump, right?
Kocher: As a researcher and someone who focuses on this data, I’m looking at these three categories and just saying, “where is the main growth happening?” Because that is a little bit of a signal to me and hopefully to other people that, oh, this this is where ICE is putting their efforts.
When Trump took office, the smallest portion was other immigrant violator with 800 or 900 people in detention at that one point in time followed by the next largest group criminal charges and then the largest group is convicted criminal. Now, when we look at the percent of that on the right, we look at the breakdown, that’s really where we can see that change.
We see that the lowest level of offender, immigrants with only immigration violation, went from 6% of the detained population back at the beginning of January up to then 18% of the detained population by the beginning of March. Whereas the percent of convicted criminals in detention as an overall percentage of the population, that has actually gone down from 62% to under 50% now.
This is a very predictable pattern. We’ve seen this happen many times over my career. There really aren’t enough immigrants in the United States who have serious criminal convictions that the Trump administration could drive their detention and deportation numbers solely by focusing on.
The simple data reality is they’re going to have to focus on people who don’t have serious criminal convictions if they want to reach millions of deportations. It’s sort of the reality.
Lastly, I wanted to ask: Another one of your recent posts was about ICE detention numbers. They’re at capacity now, but Congress approved $430 million to increase capacity. Do we know how they plan to spend that money? Does it tell us anything about who they want to target and where they want to put them?
Kocher: No, I’m not clear on where they plan on spending all $430 million or how they plan on dividing it up.
The truth is immigration enforcement is expensive. It costs taxpayers a lot of money in addition to the economic cost of deporting people that we need in our workforce.
Detentions are very expensive, deportation flights are very expensive. Setting up a detention center in Guantanamo Bay and setting up tents that’s really, really expensive.
ICE is running short on money if they’re to accomplish what the Trump administration is asking and logistical challenges, frankly, are the main bottleneck.
But this $430 million additional dollars, I’m sure that’s going to go into detention. They’re building new detention centers and reopening old ones that they haven’t used for a while. They’re bringing back family detention in South Texas which is very expensive. It’s very expensive to keep mothers and children in detention centers together with all of their needs. They’re going to have to hire more staff. They’re probably having to pay their ICE officers and their deportation officers overtime wages, which is going to cost a lot of money.
Jet fuel is not cheap these days and finding pilots to fly deportation flights is very expensive. So, you can see how it adds up.
Thank you. If anyone wants to follow you, where can they keep up with your work?
Kocher: I’m on most social media platforms at this point at @ackocher. And really where I put most of my effort these days is Substack.
So if you go to austinkocher.substack.com, most days of the week I’ve got new analysis out there. It is really just to break down what’s happening in our system in a very simple, nonpartisan way that tries to help more people not just understand what’s going on, but try to take an interest in it.
▻https://www.kpbs.org/news/border-immigration/2025/03/25/when-numbers-play-politics-how-immigration-data-manipulation-shapes-public-nar
#chiffres #statistiques #migrations #sans-papiers #manipulation #récit #USA #Etats-Unis #détention_administrative #rétention #expulsions #déportations #ICE -
En Europe, les migrants premières victimes de l’intelligence artificielle
Alors que se tient à Paris cette semaine le Sommet pour l’action sur l’intelligence artificielle (IA), chefs d’État, chefs d’entreprise, chercheurs et société civile sont appelés à se prononcer sur les #risques et les #limites de ses usages. Des #biais_discriminatoires et des #pratiques_abusives ont déjà été observés, en particulier dans la gestion européenne de l’immigration.
Un #détecteur_d’émotions pour identifier les #mensonges dans un #récit, un #détecteur_d’accent pour trouver la provenance d’un ressortissant étranger, une analyse des #messages, des #photos, des #géolocalisations d’un #smartphone pour vérifier une #identité… voici quelques exemples de systèmes intelligents expérimentés dans l’Union européenne pour contrôler les corps et les mouvements.
« Ici, les migrations sont un #laboratoire_humain d’#expérimentation_technologique grandeur nature », résume Chloé Berthélémy, conseillère politique à l’EDRi (European Digital Rights), un réseau d’une cinquantaine d’ONG et d’experts sur les droits et libertés numériques. « Les gouvernements et les entreprises utilisent les environnements migratoires comme une phase de #test pour leurs produits, pour leurs nouveaux systèmes de contrôle. »
Des détecteurs de mensonges à la frontière
L’un des plus marquants a été le projet #iBorderCtrl. Financé partiellement par des fonds européens, le dispositif prévoyait le déploiement de détecteurs de mensonges, basés sur l’analyse des #émotions d’un individu qui entrerait sur le sol européen. « Les #visages des personnes, en particulier des demandeurs d’asile, étaient analysés pour détecter si, oui ou non, ils mentaient. Si le système considérait que la personne était un peu suspecte, les questions devenaient de plus en plus compliquées. Puis, éventuellement, on arrivait à un contrôle plus approfondi par un agent humain », explique-t-elle.
Expérimenté dans les #aéroports de Grèce, de Hongrie et de Lettonie, il ne serait officiellement plus utilisé, mais l’EDRi émet quelques doutes. « Dans ce milieu-là, on est souvent face à une #opacité complète et il est très dur d’obtenir des informations. Difficile de dire à l’heure actuelle si cette technologie est encore utilisée, mais dans tous les cas, c’est une volonté européenne que d’avoir ce genre de systèmes aux frontières. »
Drones de surveillance, caméras thermiques, capteurs divers, les technologies de surveillance sont la partie émergée de l’iceberg, la face visible de l’intelligence artificielle. Pour que ces systèmes puissent fonctionner, il leur faut un carburant : les #données.
Les bases de données se multiplient
L’Europe en a plusieurs en matière d’immigration. La plus connue, #Eurodac – le fichier des #empreintes_digitales – vise à ficher les demandeurs et demandeuses d’asile appréhendés lors d’un passage de frontière de manière irrégulière. Créée en 2002, la nouvelle réforme européenne sur l’asile étend considérablement son pouvoir. En plus des empreintes, on y trouve aujourd’hui des photos pour alimenter les systèmes de #reconnaissance_faciale. Les conditions d’accès à Eurodac pour les autorités policières ont également été assouplies. « Elles pourront le consulter pour des objectifs d’enquêtes criminelles, on retrouve donc cette idée que de facto, on traite les demandeurs d’asile, les réfugiés, avec une présomption d’illégalité », conclut Chloé Berthélémy.
Or, ces collectes d’informations mettent de côté un principe clef : celui du #consentement, condition sine qua non dans l’UE du traitement des données personnelles, et clairement encadré par le Règlement général de protection des données (#RGPD). Les politiques migratoires et de contrôles aux frontières semblent donc faire figures d’#exception. Lorsqu’une personne pose le pied sur le sol européen, ses empreintes seront collectées, qu’il soit d’accord ou non. Selon l’EDRi, « l’Union européenne est en train de construire deux standards différents. Un pour ceux qui ont les bons papiers, le bon statut migratoire, et un autre pour ceux qui ne les ont pas ».
Un nouveau cadre juridique qui a d’ailleurs été attaqué en justice. En 2021, en Allemagne, la GFF, la Société des droits civils (qui fait partie du réseau de l’EDRi) triomphe de l’Office allemand de l’immigration, condamné pour pratiques disproportionnées. Textos, données de géolocalisation, contacts, historique des appels et autres #fichiers_personnels étaient extraits des #smartphones des demandeurs d’asile à la recherche de preuve d’identité.
Automatisation des décisions
Une fois les frontières passées, l’intelligence artificielle continue à prendre pour cible des étrangers, à travers sa manifestation la plus concrète : les #algorithmes. Examiner les demandes de #visa ou de #naturalisation, attribuer un #hébergement, faciliter l’organisation des #expulsions, prédire les flux migratoires… la multiplication des usages fait craindre aux chercheurs une administration sans guichet, sans visage humain, entièrement automatisée. Problème : ces systèmes intelligents commettent encore beaucoup trop d’#erreurs, et leur prise de décisions est loin d’être objective.
En 2023, l’association La Quadrature du Net révèle que le code source de la Caisse nationale d’allocations familiales (Cnaf) attribue un « score de risque » à chaque allocataire. La valeur de ce score est ensuite utilisée pour sélectionner ceux qui feront l’objet d’un contrôle. Parmi les critères de calcul : avoir de faibles revenus, être au chômage, ou encore être né en dehors de l’Union européenne. « En assimilant la précarité et le soupçon de fraude, l’algorithme participe à une politique de #stigmatisation et de #maltraitance institutionnelle des plus défavorisés », estime Anna Sibley, chargée d’étude au Gisti. Quinze ONG ont d’ailleurs attaqué cet algorithme devant le Conseil d’État en octobre 2024 au nom du droit à la protection des données personnelles et du principe de non-discrimination.
Autre exemple : l’IA a déjà été utilisée par le passé pour soutenir une prise de décision administrative. En 2023, le ministère de l’Intérieur a « appelé à la rescousse » le logiciel #Google_Bard, un outil d’aide à la prise de décision, pour traiter la demande d’asile d’une jeune Afghane. « Ce n’est pas tant le fait que l’intelligence artificielle ait donné une réponse négative qui est choquant. C’est plutôt le fait qu’un employé du ministère de l’Intérieur appuie sa réponse sur celle de l’IA, comme si cette dernière était un argument valable dans le cadre d’une décision de justice », analyse la chercheuse.
#Dématérialisation à marche forcée
En 2024, un rapport du Défenseur des droits pointait du doigt les atteintes massives aux droits des usagers de l’ANEF, l’administration numérique des étrangers en France. Conçue pour simplifier les démarches, l’interface permet le dépôt des demandes de titres de séjour en ligne.
Pourtant, les #dysfonctionnements sont criants et rendent la vie impossible à des milliers de ressortissants étrangers. Leurs réclamations auprès du Défenseur des droits ont augmenté de 400% en quatre ans. Des #plaintes allant du simple problème de connexion aux erreurs de décisions de la plateforme. Un casse-tête numérique contre lequel il est difficile de se prémunir. « Les services d’accompagnement déployés sont trop limités », constate Gabrielle de Boucher, chargée de mission numérique droits et libertés auprès du Défenseur des droits. Selon elle, il est important que la France reconnaisse aux étrangers le droit de réaliser toute démarche par un canal humain, non dématérialisé, un accueil physique.
Le biais discriminatoire
Autre écueil de la dématérialisation croissante des administrations : le biais discriminatoire. Puisque les systèmes intelligents sont entraînés par des êtres humains, ces derniers reproduisent leurs biais et les transmettent involontairement à l’IA. Illustration la plus concrète : les erreurs d’#identification.
En 2023, un homme a été arrêté aux États-Unis après que les logiciels de reconnaissance faciale l’ont désigné par erreur comme l’auteur de vols. « On peut légitimement avoir des craintes sur le respect des droits, puisqu’on sait, par exemple, que le taux d’erreur est plus élevé pour les personnes non blanches », s’inquiète Gabrielle du Boucher. Comme elles sont sous représentées dans les #bases_de_données qui nourrissent l’apprentissage de l’IA, celle-ci sera moins fiable que lorsqu’elle devra, par exemple, se concentrer sur les personnes blanches.
►https://www.infomigrants.net/fr/post/62762/en-europe-les-migrants-premieres-victimes-de-lintelligence-artificiell
#IA #AI #intelligence_artificielle #migrations #réfugiés #victimes #frontières #technologie #contrôle #surveillance #accent #langue #discrimination -
Le Fredensborg : le Naufrage d’un bateau négrier entre Arendal et Narestø en 1766
▻https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_%C2%ABFredensborg%C2%BB
▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fredensborg_(slave_ship)
à relier à▻https://www.visionscarto.net/esclavage-moderne
Le mercredi 26 mars à 19h, nous vous invitons à une conférence (par Selma Lauvland et Anders Hervik) pour évoquer la manière dont la traite négrière dano-norvégienne a influencé le récit national norvégien et ghanéen.
-
Tell us about your project. What time(s), place(s), and topic(s) does your work/project cover?
Palestine Open Maps (POM) (►https://palopenmaps.org) is a platform that allows users to explore, search and download historical maps and spatial data on Palestine in English and Arabic. The platform includes historical maps with layers that piece together hundreds of detailed British maps of Palestine from the 1870s up to the mid-1940s. Most importantly, this allows users to see hundreds of towns and villages immediately before the Nakba, and to view this side-by-side with present day mapping and aerial photography.How did you come to develop your project? What sources and/or analytics did you draw upon?
The initial idea for POM was inspired by our discovery that hundreds of 1:20,000 scale British Mandate era maps of Palestine had been digitised and made available through an online document viewer by the Israeli National Library. The maps within the viewer could not be downloaded at a high resolution, and were not connected to the spatial data that would allow people to search for specific locations or navigate between the individual map sheets in a meaningful way. However, we immediately saw the potential to scrape the maps at a high resolution, stitch them together and open source them to the public.
Having scraped the maps, our opportunity to realize the project came about through Impact Data Lab, a data hackathon event co-curated by Visualizing Palestine and Studio-X Amman in early 2018. Over four days, we were able to georeference the maps and cross-reference population data for over a thousand localities from sources, including Palestine Remembered and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, to build an initial proof-of-concept map viewer.
The development of the initial POM website was supported by Visualizing Palestine and launched roughly two months later on Nakba Day 2018. We have continued to develop the site largely as a hobby project since that time, adding features including map sheet downloads, split-screen view, vector map overlays, links to other platforms, and an experimental 3D mode.
What is your aim for the project? For example, who do you hope to reach? How do you hope people will engage with the work?
Aside from a historical archive, we view POM as a critical component of a larger project of reimagining the space and politics of the region through a geographic lens. The genocide in Gaza has reminded us of the urgency of building a political future for Palestine, beyond genocide and apartheid. We believe that identifying such a political future requires deep study of the history of the region, and thoughtful engagement with archival materials that tell that history.
Through an open approach that models custodianship principles, we actively encourage other projects to utilize the maps and data that POM has helped to open source. Numerous people have told us that they are independently using POM and its maps and data, and are able to do so because of our open approach to managing the project.
If you visit the Wikipedia pages of the depopulated villages of Palestine, you will find that most of them include excerpts of maps downloaded from POM. POM’s approach to historical maps has inspired projects such as the Palestinian Museum’s Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question as a way to visualize their database of places in Palestine, and have been used as a source for investigations and reports by Forensic Architecture and the Financial Times.
Individuals such as Tarek Bakri rely on POM as one of their essential tools for their investigations to find the homes of Palestinian refugees returning to visit their villages of their grandparents. In fact, the usage data for the website suggests that it is more used in historic Palestine — and particularly within the territory occupied since 1948 — than in any other country.
We ourselves have also made use of POM maps and data in a range of other projects. For example, Ahmad used POM map layers as a base for the Palestinian Oral History Map (►https://libraries.aub.edu.lb/poha-viewer/map/en) developed with the American University of Beirut. He also utilized the maps as a basis for the A National Monument exhibit in collaboration with Marwan Rechmaoui at Dar El Nimr in Beirut, and the One Map, Multiple Mediums follow up exhibit at Jameel Arts Centre in Dubai.
We hope that, by elevating the visibility and utility of these maps, we have been able to contribute in a small way to transforming narratives of the past, present and future of Palestine.
How do you see this work, or mapping in general, contributing to academic and/or popular conversations on Palestine?
The driving principle of POM has always been to open source the maps and data that it contains, and to provide a rich resource for present and future generations of Palestinians, contextualizing the geographic knowledge in time and narrative. Further, beyond being a repository of map data, to us POM also represents an infrastructure for a wider community of people engaged with the question of Palestine through land, memory, and future imaginaries. We run events called “mapathons,” where people help us to extract data from the historical maps using easy to learn GIS tools based on the open source OpenStreetMap infrastructure.
We have conducted mapathons in places such as Baddawi Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, Birzeit University in Palestine, Milano Design Week in Italy, and even the British Library in the UK. In each of these mapathons, participants contribute to our public dataset of historical geographic information, and contribute to the reappropriation of the maps from their colonial origins, transforming them into a collectively owned, continuously expanding and evolving digital resource.
Each mapathon is an engagement with a new section of the community, with a wide variety of different motivations to contribute to the project. Whereas in the camps in Lebanon, we were typically greeted by young Palestinian refugees interested to find and explore their own towns and villages in Palestine, in other communities we found people with a general interest in historical maps and digital mapping technologies, and many others simply trying to find their own small, meaningful way to contribute to the Palestinian struggle for liberation and return.
▻https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/46592
#cartographie #Palestine #visualisation #données_spatiales #données #histoire #cartes_historiques #photographies_aériennes #Palestine #génocide #destruction #histoire_orale #récit #mapathons #archive #effacement #historicisation
via @fil-
Palestinian oral history map
This platform allows you to navigate geographically and chronologically through the #Palestinian_Oral_History_Archive (#POHA), an archive of over one thousand hours of interviews with Palestinians who lived through the Nakba, hosted by the American University of Beirut (AUB).
-
Counter-Mapping the Archive
Tell us about your project. What times, places, and topics does your work cover?
My research concerns mapping and counter-mapping in Palestine, from British and Zionist (later Israeli) mapping to Palestinian and anti-Zionist counter-mapping. I have two main objectives in my work: to analyze the relationship of mapping and power in (and of) Palestine; and to assess the potential of counter-mapping as part of a project of decolonization.
The Palestinian condition is such that any map is treated by Palestinians as a dubious object, capable of deceit. Maps represent more than just a physical image of place. They possess agency and should be read as texts just like paintings, theatre, film, television, and music; they speak of the world, disclosing and realising manifold spatial relations.[1] It follows, then, that a range of approaches are needed to make sense of maps. My work, as a policy fellow at Al-Shabaka; the Palestinian Policy Network, as an artist and filmmaker, and currently as a doctoral candidate at Newcastle University, has been to interrogate the possibilities and limitations of cartography in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea between 1870 and 1967. I begin in 1870 because the first large-scale survey of this region was produced by the British-led Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) between 1871-1877. The PEF produced by far the most precise and technologically sophisticated maps of the region to that point and paved the way for the British to assume colonial control over Palestine during the First World War, fifty years later. I stop at the Naksa of 1967 (the “setback,” or Six Day War as it’s known outside of Palestine) and the extension of the Israeli occupation to the entirety of historic Palestine as well as the Syrian Golan and the Egyptian Sinai.
Simultaneously, I analyze (and produce) counter-cartographies of Palestine. Often termed “counter-maps,” these are alternative maps which attempt to recognize the past, critique the present and (re)imagine the future. As such, they are not bound by a timeframe. I include “traditional” and digital maps as well oral or memory maps, literature and poetry, tatreez (Palestinian embroidery) and visual and performance art. The nature of this work means that I have combined traditional approaches such as archival research with the deliberate subversion of colonial artifacts. This includes my own counter-mapping efforts through poetry, visual art, and documentary film – such as my 2021 experimental short, The Place That is Ours, co-directed with Dorothy Allen-Pickard (figure 1).
The ongoing genocide in Gaza has, in different ways, transformed the goals of my research, not least since many of the geographies depicted in historical maps of Gaza have been annihilated. But it has also called the specificity of decolonization in Palestine into question, because discourses around what constitutes decolonization in Palestine have irrevocably altered since October 2023.[2] Just as I seek to interrogate the archive – the ways it evades and conceals – so too have I found that my own research has become an archive of sorts: a survey of a landscape which has since been hit by a devastating earthquake. Making sense of this research, both the maps and the contextual frames that surround them, and asking what value (if any) they have is a painful preoccupation. These reflections are intended to contribute to a broader, more urgent, conversation around the politics of mapping Palestine and its role in the work of liberation in this current moment, when the very existence of Gaza is under threat.
How did you come to develop your project? What sources and analytics did you draw upon?
My interest in maps was sparked in 2017 when I used the iNakba app (since renamed iReturn) developed by Israeli anti-Zionist organisation Zochrot to find my destroyed village in the Tiberius region. The app’s interactive map has pins in the locations of 600 Palestinian villages destroyed in the Nakba of 1947-48 with otherwise obscure Google Maps and Waze coordinates. It also includes demographic information on each village (for instance settlement before and after 1948; what military operation, if any, destroyed it, and so on) in Hebrew, Arabic, and English – information synthesised from Walid Khalidi’s 1992 seminal work All that Remains.[3] I used the only image the app had–a grainy picture of the landscape with rolling hills and palm trees–to check we were in the right place (figure 2). The land did not lie, even after seven decades.
In the years since, I have contemplated the clandestine cartographic practices I had to resort to in order to re-discover this place. Israeli maps deliberately obfuscate, omit, and ignore Palestinian localities, both populated and depopulated. Just as the Israeli state has been built on the ruins of Palestinian villages, towns, and cities, the Israeli map has been drawn to negate any Palestinian presence.[4] A map is well-suited for this task. The “duplicity” of maps, what critical cartographer J.B Harley calls their “slipperiness,” is the essence of cartographic representation.[5] This is in large part because mapmakers were, and in many ways, still are, presumed to be engaged in an “objective” or “scientific” project of knowledge creation.[6] From this perspective, maps are perfect, scaled representations of the world, based upon unbiased factual information and accurate measurements.[7] Scientific positivism has created the perception that maps are detached, neutral, and above all, accurate graphic representations of space.
But how does empiricism (and its discontents) apply to Palestine as a site of contemporary colonialism, where indigenous land is confiscated and contested, where any map is out of date almost as soon as it is issued, and where the map acts as a prophecy for colonial intent? Most significantly, in what ways does debunking cartographic myths act as an important case for any designs on material change towards a decolonized world? These questions are the backbone of my work. My hope is that this research produces new knowledge on historical and contemporary practices of mapping in Palestine and will make conceptual and empirical contributions to debates in critical cartography, settler colonialism and decolonization.
Can you tell us a bit about your methodology? What do you include in your maps and what do you leave out? Why? How do you see your methodological choices in connection with analytic and political questions?
The archive features prominently in my research; in many ways it acts as my point of departure, not because of what it contains, but because of what it does not. I have carried out research in eight archives across the UK and US including state, public, university, and personal collections and have found many overlaps, contradictions, and silences. But most maps of Palestine (along with their ephemera – explanatory notes, special volumes, sketches, registers, census data, field guides etc.) are held in archives broadly inaccessible to Palestinians. Whether in the colonial archives of London, New York, Washington DC, Tel Aviv, or Jerusalem, Palestinians have limited access to large parts of the history of their land and people, particularly as seen through the colonizer’s eyes.
The importance of archiving cannot be overstated, as Jaques Derrida and Eric Prenowitz remind us: “There is no political power without control of the archive, if not of memory. Effective democratization can always be measured by this essential criterion: the participation and the access to the archive, its constitution, and its interpretation.”[8] How can Palestinians understand their relationship to the land and imagine return without full access to the archive?
This is not unique to Palestinians. Indigenous peoples rarely have access to or exercise power over state archives, spaces often filled with documents and histories that instrumentalize the past to ensure settler presents and futures. Despite this marginalization of indigenous people and their relegation to a spectral presence in archival spaces, there has been a recent surge in the exploration and reclamation of archiving in indigenous, especially Palestinian, movements, many of these in the form of counter-cartographies. This might be understood as a reaction to the condition of exile. Beshara Doumani offers this interpretation: “I mention the attraction of archiving the present, not just the past, because Palestinians are still incapable of stopping the continued and accelerating erasure of the two greatest archives of all: the physical landscape, and the bonds of daily life that constitute an organic social formation.”[9]
It is perhaps for this reason that I find myself perennially drawn to the archive. The lacunae of the archive call for its subversion and reclamation. The archive has become a springboard for counter-mapping and alternative imaginaries. Saidiya Hartman, through her revolutionary “critical fabulations,” summarises this elegantly: “every historian of the multitude, the dispossessed, the subaltern, and the enslaved is forced to grapple with the power and authority of the archive and the limit it sets on what can be known, whose perspective matters, and who is endowed with the gravity and authority of historical actor.”[10]
In many cases, these limits are not only to be found in the contents of the archive – in my case, maps – but, importantly, also in the physical edifice of the archive itself. For instance, all maps of Palestine before and after the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, some dating back centuries, are labelled “Israel” in the vast collection of the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. (a practice shared with the Royal Geographical Society archives in London). It is not uncommon to find a folder initially labelled “Palestine” crossed out and replaced with “Israel” (figure 3).
Such a brash overwrite acts as a synecdoche of the broader Zionist imperial project and its logic of elimination. As Patrick Wolf reminds us, the settler’s impulse is first to erase and eliminate the native, and second, to erect a new colonial society on the stolen land.[11] The archive facilitates the former, the state (and its allies) execute the latter.
And yet, Palestinians insist on imagining and creating a reality beyond the present. Whether in Palestine or in exile, academics, mapmakers, organizers, and artists have learned to destabilize the archive to conceptualize alternative realities. In my own case, I have used technologies and practices including Photoshop, Risoprint (best described as digital screen printing), collage, embroidery and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software to reinscribe Palestine in cartographic terms. For instance, I geo-referenced a British colonial map from 1935 to depict villages destroyed in the Nakba (figure 4) and the location of Palestinian refugee camps across the region (figure 5).
https://kms.jadaliyya.com/Content/uploads/countermapping4.png 
https://kms.jadaliyya.com/Content/uploads/countermapping5.png Since 1948, Palestinians have held onto the memory of destroyed homes and villages through the creation of atlases, maps, memoirs, visual art, books, oral histories, and websites. The right of return for Palestinian refugees and internally displaced people is not just a political solution but also the first step in a process of decolonization. Decolonizing maps involves acknowledging the experience of the colonial subjects (Palestinians) on the one hand, and documenting and exposing the colonial systems and structures (Zionist expansionism) on the other. It requires what David Harvey calls “the geographical imagination” – linking social imagination with a spatial-material consciousness.[12]
While there is valid criticism that counter-maps reproduce or embed existing exclusionary territorial and spatial practices, ongoing counter-mapping efforts demonstrate how Palestinians and their allies are creating a decolonizing cartography beyond simply (re)asserting lines on an existing map.[13] Rather, these efforts put personal and collective memories in spatial terms and incorporate them into a legal and political framework. This includes initiatives and projects such as Palestine Open Maps in 2018, the first open-source mapping project based around historical maps from the British Mandate period, as well as Decolonizing Art and Architecture Residency and Forensic Architecture. This is largely thanks to technological advances in GPS and GIS, which provide a foundation upon which to play, imagine and (re)build in spatial-cartographic terms.
Moreover, the work of artists enables Palestinians to oppose and subvert the hegemonic discourse and assert an alternative vision of liberation and return. Examples include works by Mona Hatoum (“Present Tense” 1996, “Bukhara” 2007), Larissa Sansour (“Nation Estate” 2012, “In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain” 2015) and Amir Zuabi (“Cold Floors” 2021). The current onslaught has seen a wealth of incisive work from younger artists and architects who are creating despite intense repression; see for instance Mariam Tolba (“Map of Palestinian Displacement: Behind Every Infographic is a Million Stories” 2024), Omar El Amine (“The Shahada of the Olive Tree” 2024), Zain Al-Sharaf Wahbeh (“The Image as an Archive” 2024), Tessnim Tolba (“Saharan Winds” 2024) and Nadine Fattaleh (“Materials of Solidarity” 2024 – image 6).
Crucially, these initiatives are often reinforced by, or juxtaposed with, Palestinian efforts to return to destroyed villages in reality. For instance, the internally displaced inhabitants of villages including Iqrit, Al-Walaja, and Al-Araqib returned decades after their initial expulsion despite the risk of state violence and demolition, in addition to more coordinated events such as the Great March of Return in Gaza from 2018, the Unity Uprising in May 2021 or Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in October 2023. These actions lend credence to Edward Said’s assertion that geography may be “the art of war but can also be the art of resistance if there is a counter-map and a counter-strategy.”[14]
My work both within and beyond the archive examines maps not solely as visual artifacts of a bygone era; rather it is part of a search for blueprints. Clues remain for what a decolonized and liberated future for Palestine and its people could look like – and what beauty there is to find along the way.
▻https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/46572/Counter-Mapping-the-Archive
#contre-cartographie
-
-
Dans le monde à l’envers : L’écriture est un don de soi-même. Il faudrait commencer par les mots qui terminent. Dépasser la limite propre de la parole. Est-ce cela que nous voulons ?
▻https://liminaire.fr/chronique/entre-les-lignes/article/dans-le-monde-a-l-envers
-
Rien de ce qui fera le jour : Le vide fait peur. Le terrain vague est interdit. Le transitoire inquiète. Tout doit être utile désormais.
▻https://liminaire.fr/chronique/entre-les-lignes/article/rien-de-ce-qui-fera-le-jour
-
Être ici et ailleurs en même temps : Juste là, côte à côte, un instant. Il nous faut nous apaiser, penser à autre chose.
▻https://liminaire.fr/chronique/entre-les-lignes/article/etre-ici-et-ailleurs-en-meme-temps
-
Pendant que meurent les étoiles : Un point invisible de l’espace. Une forme de déréalisation et d’isolement.
▻https://liminaire.fr/chronique/entre-les-lignes/article/pendant-que-meurent-les-etoiles
-
Kro vidéo ludique | finis africae
▻https://blogs.bl0rg.net/finis_africae/2025/02/15/kro-video-ludiqueFanny Lignon (2024), Récits vidéoludiques. Le personnage réinventé. C&F Éditions
Fanny Lignon a un parcours atypique qui inclut philosophie, cinéma, sciences de l’information et de la communication et sciences de l’éducation. C’est avec ce bagage qu’elle aborde le personnage de jeu vidéo. Elle a également travaillé sur les questions genre puisqu’elle a coordonné le premier ouvrage collectif en français sur Genre et jeu vidéo en 2015 et reste la spécialiste francophone en la matière. Et c’est évidemment sur ce thème qu’on s’est rencontré…
-
Appel à contributions pour une brochure sur les pratiques de sports de combat quand on a vécu des violences domestiques
▻https://ricochets.cc/Appel-a-contributions-pour-une-brochure-sur-les-pratiques-de-sports-de-comOn est quelques personnes de collectifs de sports de combat autogérés d’Île-de-France à réfléchir à la pratique de sports de combat quand on a vécu des violences domestiques (intrafamiliales et/ou conjugales). On aimerait bien rassembler des témoignages, des ressources, des expériences pour sortir une brochure sur le sujet ! #Les_Articles
/ #Politique,_divers, Tourisme, sports & loisirs, #Textes_très_courts, #Récit, #Féminisme
#Tourisme,sports&_loisirs
-
Dans le temps à contre courant : Que reste-t-il du réel une fois dépouillé de ses mots et de ses images ? Une vérité insaisissable, toujours en fuite.
▻https://liminaire.fr/chronique/entre-les-lignes/article/dans-le-temps-a-contre-courant
-
#Cittaslow turques : un récit territorial alternatif aux métropoles
▻https://metropolitiques.eu/Cittaslow-turques-un-recit-territorial-alternatif-aux-metropoles.htmPlusieurs villes turques ont rejoint le réseau international Cittaslow des « villes du bien vivre » (Sakin șehir en turc). Benoit Montabone montre que cette labellisation véhicule des valeurs en rupture avec le régime métropolitain dominant en #Turquie. Les expérimentations territoriales liées au mouvement slow ont émergé en Italie dans les années 1990, autour de questions alimentaires. Un réseau international s’est ensuite constitué, en institutionnalisant le concept de lenteur territoriale autour d’un #Terrains
/ Turquie, #petites_villes, #développement_territorial, #aménagement, #label, #récit, Cittaslow
-
Tout disparaît dans la durée : Un regard comme un appel de l’obscurité. Quelque chose, on dirait, déborde à l’intérieur. Ici n’est pas là ni maintenant.
▻https://liminaire.fr/chronique/entre-les-lignes/article/tout-disparait-dans-la-duree
-
L’air d’attendre quelque chose : Rester là, immobile derrière son miroir sans tain, pour en formuler les vertiges. Dans la durée tout disparaît dans la durée. Comme chaque fois succède à d’autres fois.
▻https://liminaire.fr/entre-les-lignes/article/l-air-d-attendre-quelque-chose
▻https://liminaire.fr/local/cache-vignettes/L500xH334/33859270705_ec638bdee7_k-89953.jpg?1738490967
-
Le passage de la nuit : Dans l’espace poreux du rêve. Un sépulcre au lieu d’une effigie. Ce n’est pas un hasard.
▻https://liminaire.fr/entre-les-lignes/article/le-passage-de-la-nuit
-
Fragments d’un tout hors de portée : Les éclats de verre d’un miroir brisé, renvoyant leurs reflets multiples, instables.
▻https://liminaire.fr/entre-les-lignes/article/fragments-d-un-tout-hors-de-portee
