Temporal cognition has been conceptualized as a triangular relationship between perception/present, memory/past, and anticipation/future. Even when this linearity is ruptured, the present remains primary; it is from the present that we imagine the future and map out the past. Much more than simply dragging the past into the future, what are the relations between imagination, fiction, futurity, present, and reality? How can these ruptures be made to insist on life instead of obliteration?

This talk engages the work of geographer McKittrick to shift between past and present and to explore the incoherence and discontinuity of interlinked hauntings and absent presences: streets in Amman named after Palestinian cities and Palestinians in the streets of Palestinian cities as echoes and ghosts.

The talk is in English.

Hanna Al-Taher is a recipient of the 2023-2024 Darat al Funun Dissertation fellowship, she is a PhD candidate at the University of Kassel. Born and bred in Amman, Al-Taher is a political scientist, writer, and researcher. In her doctorate Hanna researches gendered citizenship in Jordan, discussing the convergences and contradictions of claiming, resisting, and imagining belonging. Hanna is a lecturer in political theory and gender studies.