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Fanon in Palestine: Indigenous Humanity towards a Liberation Praxis
Abstract by Dr. Rana Barakat On Session 237  (Fanon and West Asia)

On Sunday, November 18 at 11:00 am

2018 Annual Meeting

Abstract
This paper argues that working through Franz Fanon’s theorization of colonialism as a structural and violent process of dehumanizing natives reveals the mechanisms employed by the settler state to ethnically cleanse Palestine. The Nakba in/of Palestine, understood as the historic and on-going process of the attempted destruction of Palestine and elimination of Palestinians, is the manifestation of this structural violence. Exposing this process, however, is not enough to understand the dialectical questions embedded in indigeneity in Palestine. While Fanon's work has been used towards understanding the violence of Zionist settler colonialism, the Nakba, I ask in this paper if Fanon’s theorization (read in its entirety) can also be use towards understanding an indigenous humanity formed through a liberation praxis in Palestine. Settler colonialism has worked to dehumanize natives – thus, understanding settler colonial violence in that sense helps us understand that de-humanizing logic and, as Fanon described, the resulting native un-human subjects. An apt description of setter colonial violence is only part of the narrative though, and I argue in this paper that we can use Fanon towards framing Palestine and the history of the Nakba in/of Palestine within a politics of indigenous humanity.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Palestine
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries