Wasafiri 118: Abolitions Launch Event

Wasafiri is delighted to celebrate the publication of Wasafiri 118 Abolitions: Writing Against Abandonment on 4 July, 2024 at Reference Point in London.

In the absence of liberatory possibilities in electoral politics, join us to celebrate the launch of our summer special issue in our 40th anniversary year. This issue explores the work of those organising against the degradation of life under racial capitalism from India to Lebanon, Palestine to France. Here, writing is offered as a tool for liberation, with language as resistance to enforced isolation for incarcerated people, and translation as a tool for building solidarity across borders.

Chaired by the issue’s guest co-editors Farhaana Arefin and Dr Abeera Khan, this will be an evening of music (DJ set by Tope Olufemi) and readings by Mahvish Ahmad, Maymana Arefin, Basil Farraj, Pear Nuallak, Shripad Sinnakaar, and more.

Copies of Wasafiri 118, alongside a selection of issues from our archive, will be on sale at the event. 

You can also purchase a print copy of Wasafiri 118 Abolitions: Writing Against Abandonment via our website, or our curated Abolitions bundle.

When: Thursday, 4 July, 2024, 7-11pm

Where: Reference Point, 2 Arundel St, Temple, London, WC2R 3DA

Tickets: Full price £12, with options down to £0. Pay what you can afford.

Access: Wheelchair accessible

Buy your ticket here.

Speakers (in-person & online)

Mahvish Ahmad works on political organising and documentary practices in sites of disappearance, tracing circulating techniques of imperial and sovereign violence, as well as the material legacies of anti-colonial and left movements. She is an Assistant Professor in Human Rights and Politics and a Co-Director of LSE Human Rights at the London School of Economics. She is also a co-convenor of Revolutionary Papers: Archives of the Disappeared (with Mezna Qato, Yael Navaro, and Hana Morgenstern).

Farhaana Arefin is an editor and organiser based in London. She is a co-founder and co-publisher of Hajar Press and a consulting editor at Hurst.

Maymana Arefin is a British-Bengali writer and facilitator based in London. Her practice spans mediums such as spoken word poetry, clay work, collage, and painting in response to themes of ecology, grief, embodiment, and the power of collective imagining. In 2020, Maymana founded @fungi.futures, a space to map radical alternative futures guided by her joy and passion for fungi. Maymana’s award-winning MSc research, which is available to read online, explores how the mycelial networks of fungi may be used as a metaphor for mutual aid. She is strongly committed to justice – in all of its forms – and believes that in order to realise this, we must prioritise care.

Basil Farraj is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University, Palestine. He is an Arab Council for the Social Sciences’ Early Career Fellow working on a research project that explores the global circulation of Israeli carceral practices. Basil is also a policy analyst at Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. He has written extensively on the Israeli carceral regime and Palestinian prisoners’ resistance practices.

Abeera Khan is Lecturer in Gender and Sexuality at the Centre for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London. Her knowledge production and pedagogy are concerned with the interrelatedness between empire, gender, race, and sexuality. Abeera’s work provides critical interventions in queer of colour critique, particularly regarding the category of ‘queer Muslim’. She has published in Feminist Review, Feminist Formations, lambda nordica, Religion and Gender, and Kohl: A Journal for Gender and Body Research.

Pear Nuallak was dug out of the side of a hill in the late twentieth century. They like drawing and writing stories. Their debut collection, Pearls from Their Mouth, was published in 2022 by Hajar Press.

Tope Olufemi is a musician, DJ and writer from North London. They are the founder of the club night Happy Survival, which supports Black artists and DJs bubbling under the surface.

Shripad Sinnakaar is an anti-caste writer and researcher from Mumbai, India. His poems are featured in The White Review, Dalit Art Archive, and Mumbai Urban Art Festival.