Rita Segato on the 'Year 1 After Gaza' and the Pedagogies of Cruelty

• Anthropologist Rita Segato discussed the nature of systemic violence and the moral implications of the war in Gaza during the Culturh Festival in Granada.
• Segato rejected the framing of the rescinded invitation of author Ariana Harwicz as a matter of free speech, labeling it instead as an refusal to offer a platform to complicity in crimes against humanity.
• She argued that the world has entered a historical turning point—'Year 1 After Gaza'—where traditional political and legal vocabularies have been exhausted.

Pedagogies of Cruelty

• Based on her book 'Against Pedagogies of Cruelty,' Segato explained how exposure to violent media and discourses systematically dulls human empathy.
• She defined patriarchal structures as the underlying foundation for various forms of oppression, including sexual violence used as a strategic tool in war.
• She emphasized that men themselves are primary victims of the masculine mandate, which forces them to demonstrate cruelty and destructive power to gain social acceptance.

A Path Forward

• Segato advocates for 'disobedient languages' found in art, poetry, and local reading circles as a necessary refuge against the collapse of institutional discourse.
• True emancipation, she suggests, will not come from state apparatuses but from the transformation of everyday conviviality and interpersonal ethics.
• She concluded that social change occurs through body-to-body, concrete relationships rather than abstract political labels.