Engin Sustam is Assoc. Prof. (maître de conférences) in the Department of Educational Sciences at Paris 8 University Vincennes Saint-Denis and research associate at the CETOBAC of EHESS Paris, CITERES of University of Tours. He is currently working on "Contemporary Art, cinema and decolonial approach, Alternative pedagogy, New Form of Global Uprisings and Autonomy experiences in the world " as a methodological approach. Since March 2016, he has been invited by several universities like the University of Geneva, EHESS and ENS, recognized as "academic at risk" by SAR (Scholars at Risk of New York University). He is an associate researcher at IFEA Istanbul. Currently attached as Assistant Prof. at University Paris 8. He is a independent curator and an art critic for contemporary art exhibitions on micro-politics, subculture, ecology, decoloniality, gender and memory. He currently realized with his collective team a Kurdish contemporary art project at NGBK Berlin (neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst ) 'Bê Welat – The Unexpected Stroytellers'. He is the author of the books "Art and Kurdish Subalternity, The Emergence of a Space of Subjective and Creative Production Between Violence and Resistance in Turkey" published by Harmattan in September 2016 and "Street Manifestations and New Uprisings" published by Edition Kalkedon in Istanbul. And soon to appear 'Unforeseen Uprisings: New Places of Emancipation' and 'Decolonial Aesthetics and Arts in the Kurdish Space'. Supervisors: Assistant Prof. (Docent or Maître de conférences) at the University Paris 8
100 ans après l’instauration de la République en Turquie, 100 après le Traité de Lausanne qui par... more 100 ans après l’instauration de la République en Turquie, 100 après le Traité de Lausanne qui partagea le peuple kurde en quatre pays distincts, l’article appréhende ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler la « question kurde » sous un angle nouveau. Il souligne d’abord combien celle-ci revêt désormais une perspective infra et trans étatique, portée par des combats nouveaux, écologistes, féministes ou encore municipalistes. Il donne à voir enfin comment l’art kurde réinterroge la perception de la mémoire de ce peuple en Turquie et dans la diaspora.
Bu yazı, Kürt sinemasının dekolonyal perspektifi içinde savaşa, şiddete ve kalkışmaya dair anlatı... more Bu yazı, Kürt sinemasının dekolonyal perspektifi içinde savaşa, şiddete ve kalkışmaya dair anlatısına ve kolektif mücadelenin bir hatırası olarak imgelerin üretilmesinde ortaya çıkan mikropolitik bağlama bakarken, Kürt sinemasının hafıza ve arşivleşmesinin farklı adımlarını analiz edecektir. Dolayısıyla bu makale, Kürt sinemasının tarihinden daha çok bu alana yerleşen filmlerin
Western modernity with its colonial application has created an identity trauma and patriarchal do... more Western modernity with its colonial application has created an identity trauma and patriarchal domination of the memory of colonized and oppressed peoples. Critiques from colonized territories encourage us to reread the colonial epistemes of modernity, whether or not centered on the West. The Kurdish political movement thus defines a new interpretation of modernity based on the critique of colonialism and global capitalism: "democratic modernity." This chapter problematizes the relations between modernity, the nation state, the destruction of ecology, social confinement, the relationship of the forces of these relations, but above all the modalities by which it becomes possible to act on them to break the "stalemate" of the modernity of thought in the twenty-first century.
This article focuses on the recontextualization of the interstitial
space over the last decade in... more This article focuses on the recontextualization of the interstitial space over the last decade in Kurdish space. It will specifically focus on the Middle East territories between Turkey and Syria. The aim of this article is to investigate how the urban interstices have affected the political mobilization of the stateless Kurdish society and state control process in the conflicted public sphere. The previously mentioned interstitial urban space is important for Kurdish mobility.
Cet ouvrage explore les enjeux de l’espace kurde en s’appuyant sur nombre d’etudes et de recits p... more Cet ouvrage explore les enjeux de l’espace kurde en s’appuyant sur nombre d’etudes et de recits produits par les acteurs de cet espace, et permet ainsi leur exploration, leur presentation qu’ils revisitent les mythes de la culture entre nation, modernite, creation et territoria¬lite. Il dresse le panorama de la production subjective et creative dont il est un tissu des annees de travail depuis 2006. J’espere qu’elle pourrait combler une lacune dans le milieu de l’etude kurde, des sciences sociales et le champ des arts, et que ce travail montrera une nouvelle perspective dans ces champs d’etudes. Cet ouvrage traite de la complexite de l’espace de la revolte qui engendre une nouvelle perception politique et un nouveau champ artistique par le biais du contre-pouvoir et de la reproduction contre-culturelle, qui donne a voir visiblement en dehors du comportement etatique. Ce lieu de passage de l’alterite et du contexte conflictuel englobe des maintes tendances heterogenes, articule un ap...
Revue Le Télémaque, Philosophie-Éducation-Société, Université de Caen Normandie, 2018-2, No. 54, pp.27-36, 2018
Le thème de l’autogestion croise des dimensions à la fois politiques et pédagogiques, qui se situ... more Le thème de l’autogestion croise des dimensions à la fois politiques et pédagogiques, qui se situent sur le terrain de l’histoire des luttes et des mouvements politiques d’émancipation. Il est difficile d’aborder cette notion à partir d’une philosophie politique générale, tant il est nécessaire de toujours la resituer dans le contexte de pratiques et des histoires concrètes. De plus, ce n’est pas dans le cadre de cet article que nous pourrons en faire le tour de manière exhaustive. Tout au juste, nous essaierons d’en dégager quelques enjeux, et la manière dont ceux-ci se jouent dans l’espace Kurde aujourd’hui.
Ecological Solidarity and the Kurdish Freedom Movement Thought, Practice, Challenges, and Opportunities, 2021
The Kurdish question in the Middle East currently expresses itself in a puzzle of political and s... more The Kurdish question in the Middle East currently expresses itself in a puzzle of political and social ecology. This chapter examines this and theorizes a change of political values in Kurdish life. We will speak of the micropolitical ecological emancipation at the center of Turkey’s Kurdish region (Bakûr) and Syria (Rojava). It has taken the shape of a heterogeneous movement which is challenging the crisis of colonial society. It also struggles for the environment, feminism, and the emancipation of the Kurdish people. This chapter offers an analysis of Kurdish space during a time of new uprisings and global authoritarianism. The topical analysis of Kurdish spaces of resistance crosses over with other movements, in which new and unique Kurdish subjectivities create emancipatory experiences, an important concern for wider alternative politics.
Sustam, E. (2021), ‘Kurdish Art and Cultural Production, Rhetoric of the New Kurdish Subject’, in Bozarslan H., Günes C. & Yadirgi V. (eds), The Cambridge History of Kurds, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, April, pp. 775-805, 2021
The article analysis Kurdish cultural and artistic work. One of the most intriguing contributions... more The article analysis Kurdish cultural and artistic work. One of the most intriguing contributions of this text is its emphasis on artistic and cultural production within the actual political arena, interrogating how it contributes to the transformation of the new Kurdish subjectivity that situates itself across borders. The questions underpinning this research investigate how through counter cultural and artistic efforts create or rather recreate a cognitive territory of an oppressed people. The article explore contemporary art and cinema in the Kurdish area in the Middle East and on a global scale. Artistic production for Kurds signifies the memory of a stateless people and a decolonial aesthetic trying to survive amids the hegemony of the dominant national cultures and the traumas of the repression of Kurdish subaltern-culture. Hence, analyzing the participation of contemporary artists and producers in the Kurdish area in the midst of conflict and violence enables us to highlight the emancipatory capacity of their work. During the 1990s and 2020s, theatre, music, modern art, cinema festivals began to be hold in European countries (in diaspora) also extended to the four parts of the Kurdish territories, leading to the propagation of both inter-generational and trans-border artistic and cultural activities. This reterritorialization of Kurdish counter cultural memory may not be a renaissance of Kurdish subaltern-cultural production but instead should be considered a cultural serhildan.
Keywords: Kurdish Subalternity, Contemporary Art, Decolonial Aesthetic, Cultural Serhildan, Kurdish Cinema, New Kurdish Subjectivity, Visual Arts, Trauma, Emancipation and Kurdish Area.
100 ans après l’instauration de la République en Turquie, 100 après le Traité de Lausanne qui par... more 100 ans après l’instauration de la République en Turquie, 100 après le Traité de Lausanne qui partagea le peuple kurde en quatre pays distincts, l’article appréhende ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler la « question kurde » sous un angle nouveau. Il souligne d’abord combien celle-ci revêt désormais une perspective infra et trans étatique, portée par des combats nouveaux, écologistes, féministes ou encore municipalistes. Il donne à voir enfin comment l’art kurde réinterroge la perception de la mémoire de ce peuple en Turquie et dans la diaspora.
Bu yazı, Kürt sinemasının dekolonyal perspektifi içinde savaşa, şiddete ve kalkışmaya dair anlatı... more Bu yazı, Kürt sinemasının dekolonyal perspektifi içinde savaşa, şiddete ve kalkışmaya dair anlatısına ve kolektif mücadelenin bir hatırası olarak imgelerin üretilmesinde ortaya çıkan mikropolitik bağlama bakarken, Kürt sinemasının hafıza ve arşivleşmesinin farklı adımlarını analiz edecektir. Dolayısıyla bu makale, Kürt sinemasının tarihinden daha çok bu alana yerleşen filmlerin
Western modernity with its colonial application has created an identity trauma and patriarchal do... more Western modernity with its colonial application has created an identity trauma and patriarchal domination of the memory of colonized and oppressed peoples. Critiques from colonized territories encourage us to reread the colonial epistemes of modernity, whether or not centered on the West. The Kurdish political movement thus defines a new interpretation of modernity based on the critique of colonialism and global capitalism: "democratic modernity." This chapter problematizes the relations between modernity, the nation state, the destruction of ecology, social confinement, the relationship of the forces of these relations, but above all the modalities by which it becomes possible to act on them to break the "stalemate" of the modernity of thought in the twenty-first century.
This article focuses on the recontextualization of the interstitial
space over the last decade in... more This article focuses on the recontextualization of the interstitial space over the last decade in Kurdish space. It will specifically focus on the Middle East territories between Turkey and Syria. The aim of this article is to investigate how the urban interstices have affected the political mobilization of the stateless Kurdish society and state control process in the conflicted public sphere. The previously mentioned interstitial urban space is important for Kurdish mobility.
Cet ouvrage explore les enjeux de l’espace kurde en s’appuyant sur nombre d’etudes et de recits p... more Cet ouvrage explore les enjeux de l’espace kurde en s’appuyant sur nombre d’etudes et de recits produits par les acteurs de cet espace, et permet ainsi leur exploration, leur presentation qu’ils revisitent les mythes de la culture entre nation, modernite, creation et territoria¬lite. Il dresse le panorama de la production subjective et creative dont il est un tissu des annees de travail depuis 2006. J’espere qu’elle pourrait combler une lacune dans le milieu de l’etude kurde, des sciences sociales et le champ des arts, et que ce travail montrera une nouvelle perspective dans ces champs d’etudes. Cet ouvrage traite de la complexite de l’espace de la revolte qui engendre une nouvelle perception politique et un nouveau champ artistique par le biais du contre-pouvoir et de la reproduction contre-culturelle, qui donne a voir visiblement en dehors du comportement etatique. Ce lieu de passage de l’alterite et du contexte conflictuel englobe des maintes tendances heterogenes, articule un ap...
Revue Le Télémaque, Philosophie-Éducation-Société, Université de Caen Normandie, 2018-2, No. 54, pp.27-36, 2018
Le thème de l’autogestion croise des dimensions à la fois politiques et pédagogiques, qui se situ... more Le thème de l’autogestion croise des dimensions à la fois politiques et pédagogiques, qui se situent sur le terrain de l’histoire des luttes et des mouvements politiques d’émancipation. Il est difficile d’aborder cette notion à partir d’une philosophie politique générale, tant il est nécessaire de toujours la resituer dans le contexte de pratiques et des histoires concrètes. De plus, ce n’est pas dans le cadre de cet article que nous pourrons en faire le tour de manière exhaustive. Tout au juste, nous essaierons d’en dégager quelques enjeux, et la manière dont ceux-ci se jouent dans l’espace Kurde aujourd’hui.
Ecological Solidarity and the Kurdish Freedom Movement Thought, Practice, Challenges, and Opportunities, 2021
The Kurdish question in the Middle East currently expresses itself in a puzzle of political and s... more The Kurdish question in the Middle East currently expresses itself in a puzzle of political and social ecology. This chapter examines this and theorizes a change of political values in Kurdish life. We will speak of the micropolitical ecological emancipation at the center of Turkey’s Kurdish region (Bakûr) and Syria (Rojava). It has taken the shape of a heterogeneous movement which is challenging the crisis of colonial society. It also struggles for the environment, feminism, and the emancipation of the Kurdish people. This chapter offers an analysis of Kurdish space during a time of new uprisings and global authoritarianism. The topical analysis of Kurdish spaces of resistance crosses over with other movements, in which new and unique Kurdish subjectivities create emancipatory experiences, an important concern for wider alternative politics.
Sustam, E. (2021), ‘Kurdish Art and Cultural Production, Rhetoric of the New Kurdish Subject’, in Bozarslan H., Günes C. & Yadirgi V. (eds), The Cambridge History of Kurds, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, April, pp. 775-805, 2021
The article analysis Kurdish cultural and artistic work. One of the most intriguing contributions... more The article analysis Kurdish cultural and artistic work. One of the most intriguing contributions of this text is its emphasis on artistic and cultural production within the actual political arena, interrogating how it contributes to the transformation of the new Kurdish subjectivity that situates itself across borders. The questions underpinning this research investigate how through counter cultural and artistic efforts create or rather recreate a cognitive territory of an oppressed people. The article explore contemporary art and cinema in the Kurdish area in the Middle East and on a global scale. Artistic production for Kurds signifies the memory of a stateless people and a decolonial aesthetic trying to survive amids the hegemony of the dominant national cultures and the traumas of the repression of Kurdish subaltern-culture. Hence, analyzing the participation of contemporary artists and producers in the Kurdish area in the midst of conflict and violence enables us to highlight the emancipatory capacity of their work. During the 1990s and 2020s, theatre, music, modern art, cinema festivals began to be hold in European countries (in diaspora) also extended to the four parts of the Kurdish territories, leading to the propagation of both inter-generational and trans-border artistic and cultural activities. This reterritorialization of Kurdish counter cultural memory may not be a renaissance of Kurdish subaltern-cultural production but instead should be considered a cultural serhildan.
Keywords: Kurdish Subalternity, Contemporary Art, Decolonial Aesthetic, Cultural Serhildan, Kurdish Cinema, New Kurdish Subjectivity, Visual Arts, Trauma, Emancipation and Kurdish Area.
“Neoliberalizmin nihai kurnazlıgı militan depresyondur. Politik
yenilgilerin bir sonucu olarak ço... more “Neoliberalizmin nihai kurnazlıgı militan depresyondur. Politik yenilgilerin bir sonucu olarak çogu, solun bile, kendisini yenilginin rehavetine bırakıyor: alternatif bile yok! Oysa Engin Sustam bu kitabıyla bizi, göremedigimizi dü ünmeye davet ederek ayaklanmaların öngörülemezligine i aret ediyor. Türkiye’den Fransa’ya, Rojava’dan Chiapas’a veya Santiago’dan Hong Kong’a isyan, bu eylerin düzenini ters çeviren devrim degil, ama bir ihlaldir: umutsuz bir dünyada, yeni ku aklar bugün umut alanları açıyor!” Éric Fassin
Ausstellung zur Politische Kunst im Widerstand in der Türkei, Türkiye'de Direnisin sanati Sergisi... more Ausstellung zur Politische Kunst im Widerstand in der Türkei, Türkiye'de Direnisin sanati Sergisi için
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Papers by Engin Sustam
space over the last decade in Kurdish space. It will
specifically focus on the Middle East territories between
Turkey and Syria. The aim of this article is to investigate
how the urban interstices have affected the political mobilization
of the stateless Kurdish society and state control
process in the conflicted public sphere. The previously
mentioned interstitial urban space is important for Kurdish
mobility.
Keywords: Kurdish Subalternity, Contemporary Art, Decolonial Aesthetic, Cultural Serhildan, Kurdish Cinema, New Kurdish Subjectivity, Visual Arts, Trauma, Emancipation and Kurdish Area.
space over the last decade in Kurdish space. It will
specifically focus on the Middle East territories between
Turkey and Syria. The aim of this article is to investigate
how the urban interstices have affected the political mobilization
of the stateless Kurdish society and state control
process in the conflicted public sphere. The previously
mentioned interstitial urban space is important for Kurdish
mobility.
Keywords: Kurdish Subalternity, Contemporary Art, Decolonial Aesthetic, Cultural Serhildan, Kurdish Cinema, New Kurdish Subjectivity, Visual Arts, Trauma, Emancipation and Kurdish Area.
yenilgilerin bir sonucu olarak çogu, solun bile, kendisini yenilginin
rehavetine bırakıyor: alternatif bile yok! Oysa Engin Sustam
bu kitabıyla bizi, göremedigimizi dü ünmeye davet ederek
ayaklanmaların öngörülemezligine i aret ediyor. Türkiye’den
Fransa’ya, Rojava’dan Chiapas’a veya Santiago’dan Hong Kong’a
isyan, bu eylerin düzenini ters çeviren devrim degil, ama bir ihlaldir:
umutsuz bir dünyada, yeni ku aklar bugün umut alanları açıyor!”
Éric Fassin
kurdish space, art and production, subalternity, postcolonial critic,