The Minor Detail of Palestine in Holocaust Archives

The Minor Detail of Palestine in Holocaust Archives: On Secular Denial and Palestinian Refusal of Displacement

Abstract:

What does Palestine in the Holocaust archives effect in a context in which uttering the word “Palestine” is equated with Antisemitism? By tracing how the word Palestine appears in visual Holocaust archives, this talk demonstrates how Palestine is activated by embodied archives of Palestinian women to disrupt German secularism, predicated upon the existence of Jewish difference in historical Palestine.  This talk, based on fieldwork in German civic education and archival research, introduces the notion of refusal as a political praxis in reaction to secular denial, a state-sanctioned policy to deny speech about Palestine as threatening to Germany’s reason of state.  By mobilizing “minor detail” as a method, this presentation argues that Holocaust archives in here material and epistemological displacements not just of European Jewry, but also of Palestinians.  

Dr Sultan Doughan | Goldsmiths, University of London

Dr. Sultan Doughan holds a Phd from Anthropology at UC Berkeley. She is Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London in Anthropology, School of Global Change, where she directs the MA Anthropology and Museum Practice. She is also the interim co-director of the Migrant Futures Institute (MFI) at Goldsmiths. Her first book project, Converting Citizens: German Secularism and the Racial Politics of Holocaust Memory, is based on her dissertation research in Berlin, Germany and deals with the minority question in Europe after the Holocaust. 

The Material, Visual and Digital Culture Seminar series explores the material and visual dimensions of human life — from artefacts and images to emerging digital worlds. Held weekly during the autumn and spring terms, the series welcomes speakers from UCL and beyond, addressing a wide range of topics within material, visual, and digital culture.

> Explore the full Spring 2026 calendar of Material, Visual, and Digital Culture Research Seminars