Felicity Callard

@felicitycallard.bsky.social

2.4K followers 1.5K following 820 posts

Geographies & histories of what we have come to call “mental health” | the university | daydreams & fantasies | Freud | Marx

Editor, History of the Human Sciences @histhum.bsky.social

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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 4d

I wrote on psychic life and Palestinian resistance

– to ensure more people read Abdaljawad Omar @hamayel.bsky.social.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

For the Palestinian people, psychic life is just as much a site of struggle for liberation as social life. Palestinians are persistently refused psychological amplitude, characteristics easily granted to those who are never worried they might fall out of what is constituted as the category of the human. Abdaljawad Omar’s writings in English published since October 7, 2023 (as well as writings by other Palestinians, other Arabs, and those of Palestinian descent) offer means of understanding material resistance in relation to the terrain of the psyche. Omar offers distinctive accounts of mourning, loss, and ruins, as well as of how settler colonialism reorganizes experiences of time and relations between past, present, and future. The article reads Omar’s writings against other accounts of mourning and of psychic phenomena that are indebted to psychoanalysis. Omar’s analyses of Palestinians’ resistance to unfreedom and annihilation open up other ways of understanding the psychic vicissitudes of those who suffer, grieve, and struggle to exit a colonial condition characterized by the colonizer’s repeated attempts to break psychic worlds as well as erase bodily life. Understandings of psychic life that do justice to how Palestine is redrawing the world are central to the work of ‘cracking history open’.

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 1h

I remember exactly where I was, how burnt the taste in my mouth, when I read Sarah Aziza's "Doomsday Diaries
October 7–17, 2023" in @thebaffler.com on 18 October, 2023

thebaffler.com/latest/dooms...

Doomsday Diaries | Sarah Aziza

What does it feel like to stand at the edge of annihilation?

thebaffler.com

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 1h

Sarah Aziza's writing is always wrenching, indispensable

"We will never be after Gaza. However we choose to proceed, her blood is a sacred stain that will outlast all of us"

The Nation Magazine @thenation.com · 2h

A flurry of books and analyses began to circulate, postulating about the world “after Gaza.” Why?
https://bit.ly/4qbu8HT

www.thenation.com

Reposted by Felicity Callard, John Hogan

The Nation Magazine @thenation.com · 2h

A flurry of books and analyses began to circulate, postulating about the world “after Gaza.” Why?
https://bit.ly/4qbu8HT

www.thenation.com

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 8h

That passage in Freud has been living inside and gnawing at me for decades (as someone born in London and someone trained as a geographer) and it was only when I read Abdaljawad Omar’s essay, “Can the Palestinian mourn?” that I knew how I needed to write about it

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 9h

Thank you so much for reading Yasmin and for writing this

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 9h

Thank you so much for reading it

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 21h

I so hope that sense of freedom can continue for you, somehow. Good luck! What a loss for academia

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 1d

I needed to write about psychic life and Palestine because I remain so angry with how deeply psychoanalysis as institution has been implicated in the horrors of the last two-and-a-half years www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Consider the statement the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) made on October 8, 2023, in which it marshalled some of its distinctive linguistic tools to refuse engagement with the political rationalities of Palestinian resistance. It included the sentences:
This brutal attack on helpless persons is a reminder of the darkest moments in human history when splitting and projection become so extreme that they lead to a complete demonization of civil populations as part of the "bad other." It is the unrestrained release of the death instinct to cause harm to the innocent with no regard for moral standards or
other psychological balancing forces.

Reposted by Bonnie Honig, Felicity Callard, David Lay Williams

Megan Gallagher @megangallagher.bsky.social · 2d

Now that all of the pieces in our symposium in honor of Kirstie McClure are available online from Philosophy and Global Affairs, here's a little thread with each of the pieces. (1/8)

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 3d

The latest issue of Social Text has an article on autism by Ittai Orr (“White Flight from Idiocy: The Racial Biopolitics of Autism”) which I’m setting aside to read
read.dukeupress.edu/social-text/...

White Flight from Idiocy: The Racial Biopolitics of Autism

Abstract. Arguing against the notion that autism was waiting to be discovered before its emergence as a unique diagnosis in the late 1930s, this article traces autism's invention to the demand for a c...

read.dukeupress.edu

Reposted by Felicity Callard

Jennifer Wallis-Bernard @harbottlestores.bsky.social · 3d

Today, 2.00 UK time, in person and online: www.imperial.ac.uk/events/19867...

Jennifer Wallis: Writing Oneself Into History: Researching Alcohol and Family Histories

In this talk Dr Jennifer Wallis discusses recent research that melded her usual historical work on the history of alcohol with memoir and family history.

www.imperial.ac.uk

Reposted by John Hogan

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 3d

I wrote about psychic life and Palestinian resistance to bring more readers to Abdaljawad Omar’s @hamayel.bsky.social’s writings.

Read his “Can the Palestinian mourn?” which responds to an essay by Judith Butler in @lrb.co.uk

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

rustedradishes.com/can-the-pale...

Can the Palestinian Mourn? - Rusted Radishes

Amidst the constellation of responses to the October events, I read Judith Butler’s article “The Compass of Mourning.” Charting mourning...

rustedradishes.com

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 3d

as its birth date. I read metropole and colony, mourning and melancholia, contrapuntally. And also emphasise Omar's insistence on how the ruin must be read not as "a relic to be mourned from a safe distance", but as a "structure of refusal" mondoweiss.net/2025/02/trum...

Trump’s Plan: Ethnic cleansing as fascist ambition

Trump’s call to ethnically cleanse Gaza is an affirmation of an ascendant global movement, with Israel in the vanguard, seeking to overturn long-standing international norms. Palestinian ties to the l...

mondoweiss.net

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 3d

Oh, one post got lost: I read Omar's "Can the Palsestinian mourn?" against a famous passage in Freud from 1909 in which Freud compared the traumatic experiences of hysterics with the monuments and memorials to be found in metropolises (particularly London). 1909 is the year Tel Aviv announces

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 3d

I wrote on psychic life & Palestinian resistance to bring more English-language readers to Abdaljawad Omar's @hamayel.bsky.social's work.

Thank you @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social for editing the special issue "Palestine as Paradigm: How Gaza Transformed the World"
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

‘Cracking History Open’: Psychic Life and Palestinian Resistance | Public Humanities | Cambridge Core

‘Cracking History Open’: Psychic Life and Palestinian Resistance - Volume 2

www.cambridge.org

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 3d

My essay on Abdaljawad's writings and Palestinian resistance is my attempt to answer the question that Fargo Tbakhi asked us in December 2023: 'What does Palestine require of us, as writers writing in English from within the imperial core, in this moment of genocide?'
proteanmag.com/2023/12/08/n...

Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide • Protean Magazine

Fargo Tbakhi writes with this reflective essay on the role and duty of writing in this time of a genocide. How do hegemonic prerogatives dictate style, content, and status? What can words do for us, w...

proteanmag.com

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 3d

1909, the year of Freud's essay, is the year the Zionist imaginary names as birth date of Tel Aviv, a city it describes as having “no past”. But Hawa tells us Tel Aviv didn’t “just emerge from the sand that yr” but “pulverised" Jaffa dispossessing Palestinians www.thewhitereview.org/feature/hati...

Hating it Lush: On Tel Aviv - The White Review

I They made the desert bloom, tall sparkling towers and clean Bauhaus lines, and apple-ring acacias, and teal blue shuttle buses, and stock exchanges, and theme parks, and for some it was the best t...

www.thewhitereview.org

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 3d

1909, the year of that essay, is the same year the Zionist imaginary names as birth date of Tel Aviv, a city it describes as having “no past”. But as Kaleem Hawa tells us, Tel Aviv didn’t “just emerge from the sand that year” but “pulverised Jaffa” dispossessing Palestinians archive.ph/UbUBs

archive.ph

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 3d

Abdaljawad Omar’s essay “Can the Palestinian Mourn?” offers profound rerouting and deformation of many psychoanalytic accounts of mourning, melancholia, memory and loss — which I take up by reading Omar’s formulations rustedradishes.com/can-the-pale...

www.cambridge.org/core/product...

Can the Palestinian Mourn? - Rusted Radishes

Amidst the constellation of responses to the October events, I read Judith Butler’s article “The Compass of Mourning.” Charting mourning...

rustedradishes.com

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 4d

I documented Abdaljawad Omar's powerful intervention 'Hopeful pathologies' in @mondoweiss.net that responded to Adam Shatz's 'Vengeful pathologies' published in @lrb.co.uk mondoweiss.net/2023/11/hope...

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Hopeful pathologies in the war for Palestine: a reply to Adam Shatz

When Western intellectuals express dismay at the “vengeful pathologies” of Palestinian violence on October 7, they ignore its underlying military, tactical, and political precipitants.

mondoweiss.net

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 4d

I try to do justice to Abdaljawad Omar’s extraordinary 2023 essay “Crosshairs”, in which he writes of life in the crosshairs of an Israeli sniper, by thinking through Omar’s accounts of resistance, pathology and madness rustedradishes.com/crosshairs/

Crosshairs - Rusted Radishes

This essay was chosen from thousands of nominations for Best of the Net 2025. النبعة | Al-Naba’a, by Hussein...

rustedradishes.com

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 4d

I am looking forward to listening to this

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 4d

All my solidarity

Reposted by Felicity Callard

Beatrice Adler-Bolton @reallandsend.bsky.social · 4d

ICE just showed up at our house for the second day in a row. Four cars yesterday, today five. They rolled up slow, then got out to taunt us, and take pictures of the house. They want fear to overwhelm us, to project a fantasy of power meant to intimidate, isolate, produce obedience—not happening.

Reposted by Felicity Callard

Jake Romm @jakeromm.bsky.social · 4d

spoke with my favorite couple @shaabiranks.bsky.social and @seamus-malekafzali.com about international law, the so-called "war on terror," and the long shadow of colonial warfare for Turbulence

turbulencepod.substack.com/p/episode-11...

Episode 11: Deconstructing the Law of War

With Jake Romm

turbulencepod.substack.com

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 5d

Will get back to you. Thank you for emailing

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 5d

FFS Sweerts painting gets adult content warning

Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 5d

Maxi Wallenhorst’s @weakanalogy.bsky.social’s recent essay in @eflux.bsky.social www.e-flux.com/journal/159/...

The “Crisis of Masculinity” Crisis - Journal #159

Maxi Wallenhorst argues that instead of trying to “fix” a sexual order in crisis, we should try to change.

www.e-flux.com

Reposted by Brigitte Nerlich, Robert Black, Felicity Callard , and 11 more Brigitte Nerlich, Robert Black, Felicity Callard, Rebecca Tushnet, Alan Richardson, Robert Wolfe, Jelena Subotić, Mark Rice, Simon Lester, Guillaume Allègre, Manisha Sinha, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Nathan P. Kalmoe, David Darmofal

Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 5d

To avoid the possibility Holocaust remembrance might lead to empathy for migrants, Trump's antisemitism envoy claims Anne Frank "was in Amsterdam legally."

In reality, Margot Frank received a summons to go to a labor camp on July 5, 1942. After ignoring this call, they were in Amsterdam illegally.

Tweet from Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun: "Ignorance like this cheapens the horror of the Holocaust. Anne Frank was in Amsterdam legally and abided by Dutch law. She was hauled off to a death camp because of her race and religion. Her story has nothing to do with the illegal immigration, fraud, and lawlessness plaguing Minnesota today.

Our brave law enforcement should be commended, not tarred with this historically illiterate and antisemitic comparison."

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