Imad Gebrael (Berlin) - Negotiating Bodies: Gendered Frictions and Fictions on Sonnenallee, Berlin (english)Lecture language: English

12. November 2025

Foto: Imad Gebrael

 In this lecture, Imad presents a chapter from his doctoral research on Sonnenallee, known as the Arab Street of Berlin. Drawing on the Sonnenallee Podcast as the primary method for his "ethnography of Opacity," he explores how gendered bodies are instrumentalized in public and political spheres, reproducing colonial figurations that shape urban migrant spaces and securitization mandates. These figurations cast the "Arab man" as a perpetual perpetrator while simultaneously instrumentalizing "Arab women and queer people" as perfect victims in desperate need of saving. Such instrumentalization, often seen in homo- and femonationalist discourses, contributes to the dehumanization and subjugation of Arab migrants across all genders. In line with the Caribbean poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant, Imad's research argues for the communities’ right to opacity as a prerequisite for negotiation and a necessary mode of resistance against public investment in—and scrutiny of—migrant beings and becomings.

Foto: Alicja Khatchikian

Bio:

Imad Gebrael is a Berlin-based designer and cultural anthropologist exploring self-Orientalism, counter-mapping, and archiving at the intersection of design and anthropology. He has lectured at various institutions, co-founded initiatives centered on Arab-migrant experiences, and completed his doctoral research at the Institute for European Ethnology, Humboldt University of Berlin, with a dissertation titled "The Arab Street Negotiates: An Ethnography of Opacity on Sonnenallee, Berlin."

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