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Event

鈥淭he khalla is running away from us:鈥 Gulf capital, deficient deserts and property-making in central Sudan. A guest lecture by Professor Nisrin Elamin

Monday, April 7, 2025 12:30to14:00
Peterson Hall Room 116, 3460 rue McTavish, Montreal, QC, H3A 0E6, CA

Abstract:聽聽In the agricultural Gezira region of central Sudan, the term khalla means open land or expanse and refers to communal land that is partly used for grazing animals or rain-fed farming; what is often referred to as 鈥榯he commons.鈥 Beginning with the provocation that the khalla is 鈥渞unning away from us鈥 due to large-scale land investments and agribusiness practices, this talk takes up the khalla as method (Khayyat 2022), repository and medium through which to trace and analyse how past and emergent forms of capital accumulation and empire-making, structure everyday life at the edge of the Gezira scheme. It draws on Michel-Rolph Trouillot鈥檚 (1988) insight that landscapes testify to the layering of successive forms of colonial intrusion in a way that unites time. In telling the history of the region through the khalla, this talk lays out some of the ways people have negotiated and contested these intrusions, constructing an archive in the process that testifies not only to waves of dispossession and destruction, but also to processes of recovery and regeneration.

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