Charlotte Mertens
#Unimelb Gender/violence, race, decolonisation, colonialism, empire, humanitarianism, archives | DRCongo | Australia | Belgium
- Let the summer begin!
- Rediscovering the work and spirit of Hafiz.
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- Adriennne Rich’s poem ‘Rape’ remains as haunting and relevant as ever.
- Excellent analysis by @kristoftiteca.bsky.social on the new peace deal between DRC and Rwanda negotiated by the US. “Peace is not a real estate transaction.”
- Brilliant piece by Elizabeth Strakosch, Natalie Ironfield, & Shillan Shelby on Unimelb’s racist, harmful ‘anti-racist’ politics. overland.org.au/2025/06/rebr...
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- People in Bukavu keep telling me about daily targeted arrests, about gunshots and killings every night. They are living in a ‘psychose totale’. Unlivable.
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- Sharpe’s voice will stay with me for a long time @hystericalblkns.bsky.social Ordinary Notes finds beauty despite living under brutal and violent regimes of anti-blackness. What an achievement. Read it.
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- “Every day you wake up and there’s something trying to break your heart.” Dionne Brand.
- Reposted by Charlotte MertensIstanbul protest image destined for book covers 📸 Ümit Bektaş, @reuters.com
- Now more than ever we need to read bell hooks’ timeless book. And implement it. And throw it in university leaders’ faces and never forget the power we have as educators. ✊🏾
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- I feel this is only the beginning.
- Reposted by Charlotte MertensWhoever described generative AI as the aesthetic of fascism made a sharp point.
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- My heart is in Bukavu. 30 years of cycles of violence. Courage and strength to the people of Bukavu ❤️
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- That this even went to trial is insane. The cop called her ‘little missy’, she called him ‘white and stupid’.
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- Butler: ‘If we continue to be gripped with outrage and stilled by stupefaction by each day’s new proclamation, we will fail to discern what links them. To be gripped by his statements is precisely the aim of their utterance.’
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- Grateful to @OverlandJournal for publishing my piece on Unimelb’s response to last year’s Gaza encampment. None of the University’s reconciliatory gestures (land acknowledgements, Indigenous strategies etc) have any meaning if we cannot speak about Palestine.
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- The wretched of the earth ready to wreck the earth
- Scorched earth tactics. Billions of dollars spent to completely destroy land and infrastructure. But the people will never be defeated. #FreePalestine
- Our paper on the structural nature of DFV now has a home. Drawing on research with the Federation of Community Legal Centres in Australia, we argue that a distinction needs to be made between what is genuinely structural change and what is system reform. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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- In the belgian Congo mixed race children were stolen from their families, discriminated against and villified. Five women - all in their 70s now - took the Belgian state to court which found the state guilty of a crime against humanity (systematic kidnapping) www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/202...
- Teffera, Human Rights Watch researcher, describes the ruling as “a historic win because it recognises the obligation of European governments in addressing their legacies of colonialism”. It sets an important legal precedent and may lead to further reparations www.theafricareport.com/370402/activ...
- Historic judgement as the Belgian state has been found guilty of crimes against humanity for the forced removal of five mixed-race children from their mothers in colonial Congo. www.theguardian.com/world/2024/d...
- More than 70 years after being taken away from her mother, Bitu Bingi, and four other women have accused Belgium of crimes against humanity for their forced removal and placement in religious institutions. Hope justice prevails.
- The struggle of imperial leaders to conceive that the ICC might issue arrest warrants against them is something to behold. www.reuters.com/world/france...
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- At least she waited until the puzzle was almost finished.
- If you’re in Melbourne today, come to this conversation with PhD candidate Kendra Russell and myself where we will discuss the coloniality of sexual violence. How is sexual violence linked to colonial modernity and who does it serve when these links remain hidden? Today at 11.30am in Linkway Unimelb
- Reposted by Charlotte MertensExtraordinarily repressive plans from Uni of Sydney to undermine academic freedom on campus, in the Orwellian guise of ‘New Civility Rules’: www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
- Reposted by Charlotte MertensPortuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos has stepped down from his position, following accusations by more than a dozen women of sexual assault, harassment, and intellectual theft.
- My piece, published earlier this year, on sexual violence in the #DRC conflict, the silences and erasures that stem from the rape-as-weapon-of-war framework and the importance of situating this within histories of conflict, dispossession and colonial violence. abusablepast.org/the-weapon-o...
- Watching Arcane and hearing Stromae’s latest release Ma Meilleure Ennemie 🔥❤️🔥
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[Not loaded yet] - I for one would love to hibernate. aeon.co/essays/how-a...
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- Check out our new paper on the colonial archives and how they can challenge the post-colonial politics of erasing imperial violence and contribute to decolonial futures, drawing on research in the African Archives in Belgium and fieldwork in #DRC. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
- The sadism is palpable.
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- The extraordinary beginning of Judy Atkinson’s Trauma Trails on the transgenerational effects of trauma in Indigenous Australia. Goosebumps.
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