São Paulo – The Edward Saïd Chair of the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp) is set to launch the first edition of Exilium – Revista de Estudos da Contemporaneidade (Exilium, a Magazine on Contemporaneity Studies) on its website, at 4 pm next Monday (31). Edward Saïd, whom the Chair is named after, was one of the foremost Palestinian scholars and a major champion of Arab causes.
The magazine launch session will feature Unifesp president Soraya Smaili and Postgraduate Studies and Research vice-president Lia Rita, plus Exilium publishers Olgária Matos and Maria das Graças de Souza.
At 5 pm, PhD professor Íris Kantor of the University of São Paulo (USP) will deliver a conference on “Arab Maps and their Latin Erasure.”
Exilium has been introduced as a magazine featuring reflections on the historical, geopolitical and cultural aspects of contemporaneity and all their implications, whether they be traumas or admiration as well as suffering.
“Revolving around the question of exile, of exodus, of departures voluntary or forced by war; racism, persecution or the loss of the symbolic and emotional sense belonging, Latin exilium relates to destabilization of the notion that one’s native language or place of residence are their own by nature. Exilium reveals itself as openness to the Other, as a first pharmakon offered by foreigners, at once remedy to another life and hardship in a strange, foreign country. As Edward Saïd noted in his ‘Reflections on Exile’ regarding the Palestinian exodus following the creation of the State of Israel, a people was expatriated and its condition ever since, in refugee camps, wandering permanently, is the condition of entire populations now,” the introduction reads.
The 200-plus-page publication includes the Oriente e Ocidente (East and West) section, featuring Edward Saïd’s On the University, Murilo Sebe Bom Meihy’s Xangô vai à Meca: Islã, comércio e as religiões tradicionais iorubás (Shango goes to Mecca: Islam, trade and the traditional Yoruba religions), and Laymert Garcia dos Santos’ Mahamoud Darwich, Palestino e Pele-Vermelha (Mahmoud Darwich, Palestinian and Red-Skin).
Exilium is already available online (here).
You can join the launch event on the Unifesp website.
Quick facts
Magazine launch – Exilium – Revista de Estudos da Contemporaneidade
August 31, 4 pm
Unifesp website
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
