This text, presented as a “travel guide,” addresses how state violence imprints itself on landscapes by shaping geography and the ways in which it is narrated. People who dwell in a landscape of violence develop ways of producing alternative truths about the places they inhabit. Through the format of a travel guide, the author explores how to write in the academic world about these truths and how to align oneself with those who become objects of state oppression. She argues that the way we write about life worlds has a direct bearing on state policies and on the framing of claims for justice. It is only by understanding the relationship between dwelling, belonging and violence as formulated within specific stories that we can overcome the domination of law-based claims for justice and attend to the particularities of experience.
A_Travel_Guide_to_Northern_KurdistanAnywhere But Now: LANDSCAPES OF BELONGING IN THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN. Edited by: Samar Kanafani, Munira Khayyat, Rasha Salti, Layla Al-Zubaidi. Heinrich Böll Foundation, Middle East Office, Beirut.