Free zoom event Eyal Rozmarin, Ph.D: For a long time, I have been interested in the relations between individuals and collectives: the groups they are, and feel, part of; the groups they identify with, and in the act of identifying, becoming who they are. In other words, I’ve been interested in belonging: in how we are forced and-or choose belong, and in what the power-desire knots of belonging do to us. The paper I will be presenting is about my own difficult belonging with the warring collectives that lay claims to the territory I was born in, a territory known by the already revealing dual name: Israel-Palestine. The difficulty was there from the start, but it has been increasing. It has become a permanent identity crisis. The state of exception Walter Benjamin speaks of is now the rule. It is how I feel my very own self now. I believe that many of us are going through something similar in these times of wars of extinction in the Middle East and Europe, and arguably the entire planet: who do we belong with, which also means who we are. I hope my paper could serve as a springboard for us to to think together about the life and death paradoxes of belonging, and how we might address them going forward.