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Narration as Method: A Palestinian Digital Poetics
Abstract
In this paper, I approach questions of language and translation from a point of convergence whereby contemporary Palestinian digital media forms confront the logics of settler-colonialism. I ask: what does it mean to narrate the Palestinian experience? More accurately, I ask: in what ways do a Palestinian digital media form invite new expressions of Palestinian sociality that do not require “permission to narrate?” To frame a logic of Palestinian narration, I draw on the discussion presented by Edward Said (1984) in his essay, “Permission to Narrate.” For Said, the logics of militarized violence produce a condition whereby Palestinian narration is rendered improbable due to the Israeli state. This improbability stems from the coercive and “disciplinary communication status” of the that state, whereby all renderings of Palestine and what it means to exist in the world as Palestinian are cast as “terrorist.” While what Said suggests is true, in this paper I look to the generative possibilities of Palestinian narration enabled by the Palestinian digital form. In doing so, I invite an engagement of Palestinian narration not arrested by the logics of settler-colonial erasure nor the militarized state– decolonial in practice and praxis. It is my intention that such a project not only reflects new possibilities in theorizing language and method, but also invites a reflection on ways of being and existing unfazed by the logics of settler-colonialisms which seek to erase and disperse.
Discipline
Literature
Geographic Area
Palestine
Sub Area
Media