Necessity Is Empire’s Alibi

This course asks how empire domination thrives through mandated arrangements to present itself as ordinary, useful, and unavoidable. Empires for long have been treated as either invasion or extraction, or both, however, in this course we follow the stories, sciences, commodities and infrastructures through which the actual dependence is made, and that is the road that must be opened, the language that begs correction, the sugar becoming part of daily life, the shipping lane that controls mobility, the weapon made for purposes of so-called defense, and the medicine blocked by lawful pressure. By positioning our initial lens on the broader settler colonial regions, we move outward each session through the United States, Antigua/the Caribbean or Palestine, Britain and the Atlantic sugar world, China’s Belt and Road, the Persian Gulf/Arabian Peninsula and Djibouti/Bab-el-Mandeb, and Iran and Sudan. The question we seek to answer is “what is made to feel necessary, who is sheltered by it, and who is shut out?”

Guiding Questions 

Weekly focus

• Week 1: The story of necessity: dependence as something made
• Week 2: Science, language and the promise of progress
• Week 3: Taste, commodity and the everyday empire
• Week 4: Mobility, logistics and permission
• Week 5: Power dressed as defence
• Week 6: Sanctions and access to necessities

Delivery mode: In person at IPCS, 78-80 Curzon Street, North Melbourne, 3051, Wurundjeri Country

Days/times: Thursday 5:30PM-7PM AEST.

• Week 1: Thursday 16 July 
• Week 2: Thursday 23 July 
• Week 3: Thursday 30 July 
• Week 4: Thursday 6 August
• Week 5: Thursday 13 August
• Week 6: Thursday 20 August 

Scholarship places: full fee scholarship places are available for First Nations or unwaged participants. Please email info@ipcs.org.au with a brief EOI to apply.

Accessibility: Please note that IPCS is not wheelchair accessible. There are several steps to the room from the front door of the building (78-80 Curzon St). Masks and hand sanitizer will be available. If you have any accessibility queries and/or requirements, please reach out to us at info@ipcs.org.au

Educators:

Amir Farshad Shirzaei is a PhD researcher in theatre and performance studies, with a background in English literature, colonial theory, and postcolonial cultural studies. He is a co-founder of Lantern Theatre in Zahedan, Sistan and Baluchistan, a resistance theatre initiative shaped by collaboration with Baluch communities and regional questions of language, belonging and political imagination.

Sohrab Assa is a researcher and educator in science, technology and innovation policy, with graduate training in science policy and additional study in STI indicators, innovation data analysis, WTO/climate debates and science diplomacy. His interests include technological dependence, public policy narratives and the politics of innovation.

IPCS is located on Wurundjeri Country. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri peoples of the Eastern Kulin nation as the sovereign owners and custodians of the land; sovereignty was never ceded and connection to Country is ongoing. IPCS stands with Indigenous struggles for liberation from settler colonialism and imperialism on this land and globally.